RED FINALLY MAKE IT ALL THE WAY TO THE TOP*

AFTER YEARS OF graft, blood, sweat, tears, pokey dressing rooms, money-grabbing agents, badly tuned guitars and poorly packed kebabs, RED have finally hit the big time. The Mecca of entertainment venues: Hounslow Social Club. Guitarist and RED wheeler-dealer Malcolm Tongue takes up the story:

"I got the call on a rainy Monday. Business was uneasy. I was just about to pull down the blinds and head for the local lapdancing joint when the phone rang. The voice at the end of the line sounded as if it had seen the bottom of a few too many glasses of Bourbon in its time. It made Lee Marvin sound like Joe Pasquale. "Saturday 9th of August," it grunted, "8.00pm. Be there". "Where?" I replied. "We'll let you know". The line went dead. This dame obviously meant business.

I rolled a canny tab and considered the situation. Was this a wind-up? After all, you don't last as long as we have in this game without ruffling a few feathers along the way. Maybe it was a disgruntled former guitarist playing some sick joke. Or some mug punter trying to get payback for years of Mark Sullivan's ear-splitting fretwork. I went back to my one-room apartment on the south side of Stanwell and lay down on the bed. I was going to have to sleep on it.

I got to the office the next morning just in time to see the shapely rear end of the Croatian cleaning lady Penny disappear up to the fourth floor. "Tharr eez a mah-seej for you, Meester Tongue", she shouted down to me in her familiar Scottish accent. A bloodstained beer mat was pinned to my door. On the back there were just three words: HOUNSLOW SOCIAL CLUB. I froze. This was getting serious.

Yes, we'd had dealings with the place before. Tucked away in a seedy part of town, it had a reputation for hard talk, cheap lager and illicit bingo sessions. It wasn't the kind of place you took your mother unless she had a Lonsdale belt. Fortunately, my mother is the current Light Middleweight champion for Southern England so I took her along to check out the joint.

As we went in, the stench of a thousand spilled pints of Foster's hit us like a runaway freight train. We found a dingy office with the word "Manger" on the door. Before I could even think of fetching a marker pen to correct the spelling, the door creaked open. Behind the desk sat a man so large I figured he must have his own zip code. This was Big Les, leafing through the Daily Sport and sucking on a warm light ale. I threw the beer mat on the desk. "So what's the deal, fatso?". Les zipped his fly back up, put down his beer and looked at me with the kind of hate normally reserved for murderers, kiddy-fiddlers and Anne Robinson. "Two sets, eight-thirty 'til eleven. One break, no blues. Think your boys can handle it?". I laughed. "We eat the likes of you for breakfast", I rattled. To be continued...

Red are at the Hounslow Social Club, Grove Road, Hounslow, on Saturday January 31

* of Hounslow High Street