My Birthday by Chip Dale: An Account of The Missing Six Hours Compiled From Contemporary Sources, Friends, Family, and Police Records
Sharp. There’s no other word that adequately describes myself early on the evening of the 13th October, 2007. Freshly oiled, shaved, and with the anti-fungal cream still damp between my toes, I was in no mood to take any fashion prisoners. This was going to be a seek and destroy mission against the entrenched sticks and squares at the heart of Bangor town centre. From my vast wardrobe, I’d picked out the right clothes for the job. My killer lime green suit was to be assisted by a bright blue t-shirt with a large luminous lemon on the front and a mission to pacify the opposition. The logo beneath the lemon read, ‘Well Wrinkled’, as indeed was I down below where, hidden from view but not from mind, my loins were wrapped in my favourite thong, cut in silk with a single diamond sewn onto the front of the pouch with my name beneath it. It’s a Grenva, which means, as you probably know, it was made by Europe’s premier thong makers. Some people say they are pouch makers to Prince Philip, himself, though nobody has been able to prove as much.
With the star dressed for the evening, the secondary cast were also doing their best to look good for such a special occasion. Gabby wore a little figure hugging dress that did little to hide her womanly assets nor the razor-sharp stilleto strapped SAS-style between her buttocks. My agent for six years, Danny Piles, turned up at seven thirty, dressed in a full tuxedo with a tasteful purple cummerbund. Ten minutes, the three of us walked into Rotters.
I’d chosen to celebrate my birthday at the local nightclub in the belief that most of my friends would make it. I was not to be disappointed, but as soon as I appeared at the door to the disco, the room erupted with cheers from people I’d never before met. Apparently, the news had gone around Bangor about my open invitation to celebrate my birthday and scores of people thought they’d come along to press the Chipster’s flesh and get that most pious of individuals monstrously drunk.
Deluged with offers to buy me a drink, I was soon necking bottles of spirits with more enthusiasm than the not inconsiderable alcoholic community of Bangor. Men with purple noses and stains on their trousers would have been unable to keep up with me as I sucked Bangor dry of the liquid hard stuff. Soon I was overcome by the emotion of the evening and things began to get hazy. Luckily, Danny was on hand so we might now put the last minutes of my sobriety at around eight o’clock:
You were out of your skull by nine, Chip. That’s when you began to call yourself the best blogger in Wales and threatened to beat up anybody who said differently. We all laughed but then you turned nasty when a stranger called you Iain. Gabby managed to calm you down but I think you weren’t yourself after that. The rest of the evening was tainted by that incident.
As easy as it is to take Danny’s account as the truth, Andrew Morris, the barman at Rotters, tells a quite different story.
I’d say you were already blotto by eight thirty. I’ve never seen a man pour so much vodka down his throat in such a short space of time. You told me you were the best stripper in Wales but you were disappointed that people always think you are Lembit Opik. You said you’d always wanted to meet the man just to see how handsome he is. Then you began to ramble on about the state of Korean rubber and how you once taught Chuck Norris to throw a thong with his big toe. I just thought you were pretty far gone and I didn’t think you were going to last the night.
You might have noticed that the two accounts don’t add up. Or, at least, they don’t until we get to one important detail: both Danny and Andrew confirm that I’d begun to take my clothes off by nine thirty.
‘You were dancing topless with all the ladies around nine forty five,’ says Danny.
Andrew puts it a little earlier than that. ‘You didn’t have your shirt on when I saw you around nine thirty and it wasn’t much later than that when somebody told me that you’d got completely naked and were asking people to rub ice cubes on your lemons.’
However, Gabby tells a different story.
Chip, you embarrass me for last time. No more drink. You take clothes off for money and not for hobby. I’m just amazed you lasted until ten o’clock before you get naked. Those girls are just cheap. I don’t know what you see in them, with their big fake boobies. I saw you dancing with them. Hands all over them. You lucky I didn’t come over and cut it off. But it was your birthday…
Victoria Niles was my dance partner, so I thought perhaps it would be best to ask her the time I disrobed. I only know this because I was lucky to find her phone number written in lipstick on the inside of my thigh. She managed to confirm Gabby’s part of the story.
You were pretty drunk, Chip, but we all were. I can never say no to a hot body and a gorgeous face. And you were so naked. And it was kind of sweet the way you were drooling over me and kept asking me if I thought newts were fish or reptiles. It was your way of connecting, I guess.
Eleven o’clock seems to be the point when the action moved outside the club. A notice from the local police station asking me to drop in this morning to pick up some items of lost property gave me chance to talk to the two officers who stopped me around that time. Said PC Smalls:
We were responding to a report that somebody was standing naked on the end of Bangor Pier playing the trombone. We were too late to catch you there, but we did find you later standing in a fountain outside The Royal Tandoori Restaurant. You were wearing noodles on your head and were telling everybody you were Tommy Dorsey but, to be honest, sir, you weren’t doing a very good job with the trombone. You were much closer to Tommy Ball.
His partner, PC Timbleby, has five more years on the job and is a grade 4 pianist. His version sounds much closer to the truth.
It was definitely Angels by Robbie Williams and for a beginner on the trombone, you were doing a first class job. It was a shame about your being naked in a public place, otherwise we could have left you alone. You put your thong back on and that was the last we saw of you.
What happened to me after that is harder to explain. I apparently rang Danny on his mobile at twelve o’clock to ask him about seaweed. Again, the details elude me but Danny seems to think there was some method to my madness. ‘You were not alone but I have no idea who you were with,’ he says. ‘You were insistent that you needed to eat seaweed, though I could here voices in the background that sounded Chinese.’
I’ve rang around the local Chinese restaurants and none of them serve seaweed. Gabby too is at a loss as to my whereabouts.
I go home at eleven o’clock when you didn’t come back from club. I in bed and first thing I know if finding you on computer this morning. There is mess in hall, which Gabby clean up and Mr. Morris from downstairs says you sick on his decking. That is all Gabby know except Chip is stupid stupid man.
Even though my thong has been returned to me and I remember a few more facts about the evening, I have failed to fill in a few missing gaps. I don’t know who the trombone belongs to or how it came into my possession. My enigmatic mention of seaweed at the end of my last post of the evening is also unexplained. I’m beginning to think I should leave it like that. Perhaps I don’t want to know the truth, in case I discover the police are investigating a man seen swimming with Bangor’s dolphins with the hope of finding romance.
