Red Hot Radio
Many years ago I used to have a Bedford Dormobile Mini Bus. The damned thing was falling apart with holes in the floor etc. front wings flapping like seagull’s wings, but this was in the days before M.O.T’s. Now a few of us had arranged to go fishing on the Sunday, but on the Saturday the whole exhaust dropped off ! So, I went out and bought one thinking that, if we fished somewhere like Blyth Quayside, the lads would help me fit the new one.
7.00 am Sunday morning, I collected two or three of the lads in the Newcastle area, where I lived at the time, and that left me only one to pick up – a young lad who lived in Whitley Bay. You can imagine what this thing sounded like with no exhaust on – I must have woken everyone up between Newcastle and Blyth.
Eventually getting to Whitley Bay we picked the young lad up – he sat himself down next to me on the passenger seat – off we went heading for Blyth along Whitley Bay sea front. Now, a couple of days before, I had been given an old car radio. This thing weighed a ton and was about 18 inches square. Where the hell you were supposed to fit that in a car I don’t know. What I did was to put it on the floor of the vehicle at the back with a piece of wire hanging out the back door as an aerial and the two power leads fastened directly onto the ignition of the vehicle. We just got onto the dual carriageway by the Briardene doing about 40 mph or so, when suddenly I smelled burning. All the lads in the back started yelling that we were on fire. Wondering what the hell they were talking about I turned round to see flames shooting along the two wires towards the radio and in the process, setting fire to the carpet.
The next thing I knew, the young lad sitting next to me, slid the door open and jumped out … but he forgot to let go of the door and was being dragged along. Now he had studded waders on and was sliding … with sparks flying in all directions from these studs … screaming in gibberish “Please Stop” !!! Meanwhile the guys in the back were doing everything trying to put the fire in the carpet out. One of them even pee’d on it and all that did was to poison us with the smell. It wasn’t funny at the time, but afterwards we couldn’t stop laughing.
Oh, by the way …I forgot … the name of the young lad was “Chris Stringer”… now one of the top North East sea anglers.
