Shelley-Anne McAvoy R.I.P.

The Portadown News is no more! The website that first brought Shelley-Anne McAvoy to my attention... I'm sure that many of you, like me, have a special place in your heart for Shelley-Anne and many fond memories of her exploits such as these:


Our local talent this week is 19-year-old Shelley-Anne McAvoy from Edgarstown. Shelley is studying RSA Stage III fellatio behind the Brownstown Post Office, and hopes one day to achieve a position where some bloke actually looks directly at her during intercourse. Shelley's interests include shopping for yellow leggings in Poundstretcher, shopping for plastic earrings in Argos, and shopping for chips just about everywhere. She can also often be found sipping coffee in Gaynor's - a regular member of Portadown's cafe society! Shelley has one son, 18-month-old Tyler. "I named him after his dad," she told us, "who is a tiler."

[from Portadown News, May 2001]

In the Pink - Stockholm 1987

So that's what became of Nemo

1983

My first Saturday job. McDonalds had just opened on the High Street in Cheltenham. I ceased to be Andrew and became Andy, with a green badge, no stars and smelling of chip fat. Starting salary? 93p an hour. Wow!

1982

'O' levels (like GCSEs but harder). Left the Boy's Grammar and went to the Girl's Grammar, in order to do Russian 'A' level. I was one of three boys amongst 800 girls. Can you spot me and the other two in this picture of our year:

1981

More spots. More hair. Shaving.

1980

My first holiday on my own. I flew on my own to Basel, where my Aunt Margaret lived. Fantastic four-week holiday. We went all over Switzerland, up to the Black Forest. I swam in the Rhine. Didn't want to come home.

1979

I was really getting into pop music now. Me and my friend Toby used to discuss the Radio 1 Top 40 rundown in woodwork/metalwork whilst filing down bits of wood/metal until they were next to nothing and completely useless.




Parallel Lines was one of the albums of the year for me. I got a record player of my own, and could start to buy LPs with the words and everything! Generally, this was a year of change.

In May the family went camping in Brittany. I started to get spots (lots and lots) and hairy armpits. This is me and Iain, camping in Brittany before the hell started:






There was a lot of hype during the summer about a singer who wrote her own songs being signed to Elton John's label. I immediately wrote Judie Tzuke off as a pale Kate Bush imitation and I was expecting the cover of her new album Welcome to the Cruise to feature a girl in a sailor's hat with big tits and a clip board standing on the gangway of a luxury liner. However, her single Stay with me till dawn became one of the hits of the summer (and sadly her only hit), I bought the album and she's been one of my favourite singers since. She is hugely under-rated. Get hold of one (or more) of her albums and enjoy!

1978

This was the year I discovered Kate Bush. I remember hearing this weird voice and watching this even weirder dancing one morning on Noel Edmund's Multi-Coloured Swap Shop. I was quite surprised that my dad, normally a Maria Callas fan, liked her voice and I soon got into it too and bought her first album, The Kick Inside. At the time, I just had a top-loading mono cassette player and my dad wouldn't let me or my brother anywhere near his hi-fi, and of course tapes didn't come with the words. I loved Kate Bush's voice, but couldn't understand a word of what she was going on about, so I wrote to EMI and asked them to send me the lyrics, but they wouldn't. Bastards.

Second year at CGS. We did the opera Amahl and the Night Visitors at Christmas. I was Amahl, natch. My music teacher was worried my balls might drop before we got to the performances and he thought strenuous exercise might accelerate the process, so he managed to get me off games and PE for the whole Autumn term, yey! After the school performaces I got roped into two performances in Christchurch in Oxford when their Amahl's voice broke. Halfway through the second performance my balls did indeed drop and I sounded like Jimmy Savile (that sound he makes before he says "owzabout that then guys and gals." This was my first ever (and one of my last) paid gigs, I got a whole £5, which I spent on Kate Bush's new album Lionheart.

Shortly after Christmas, I discovered what my right hand was really for.

1977

A jubilee-tastic year! We had a school pageant in which all year 5 pupils had to dress up as a king or a queen. We had no choice in the matter but were allocated characters - I was Prince Albert, husband of Queen Victoria, and I remember I had very scratchy trousers.

I left primary school and went to Cheltenham Grammar School with my friend Michael Richardson which was a very scary experience. Not just being among all those big boys but also the journey to school - past a horrible common secondary modern called Monkscroft (or Monkeys' Loft as we so drolly called it - no wonder they always beat us up).

I was into ABBA by this stage, which was perhaps an unwise move in the year of Punk.

CCTA's production this year was The Wizard of Oz and yet again I was gutted to be given the minor rôle of Joe the farm hand, especially when I found out that, unlike in the film, Joe doesn't become one of Dorothy's travel buddies in the land of Oz.

1976

I became a prefect at school (Cotswold House). We had to sit at the front of the school, either side of Mr Talbot the Headmaster, during assembly. We had to set an example to the school during prayers by closing our eyes and pressing our palms against each other. Mr Talbot used to accompany the hymns sometimes in a sort of boogie-woogie stylee. He was also a mean jazz recorder player, and would improvise on hymn tunes if someone else was playing the piano. On reflection it was quite bizzare.

CCTA's summer production was Where the Rainbow Ends (plot: A group of children find a magic carpet and set out to save their shipwrecked parents from a dragon). I was most put out after the previous year's starring rôle that I had to play a subsidiary part that only appeared in the first act! It was a rubbish play anyway.

1975

My big dramatic break-through. I joined Cheltenham Children's Theatre Association after having seen the previous year's production of Peter Pan. I was very nervous of appearing on stage, and I had this idea that I could sing the part from the wings, whilst my best friend James Harper acted and mimed the part on stage. unfortunately the producers didn't think that was such a good idea so I had to do it all myself.



It was a very very hot summer that year.

1974

Don't remember a lot about 1974.

I remember thinking that there was a perception out there that the Bay City Rollers were the biggest group on the planet. I didn't like them myself. There was this boy I knew called Adrian who wore horrible flares with tartan trims and a tartan scarf. He also used to smoke and light his own farts which I thought was appalling and common...

My musical influences this year were: Britten's Young Person's Guide (what a girly swot!); The Wombles and Olivia Newton John, cos she represented Britain in the Eurovision Song Contest with Long Live Love.

I also joined the choir of Holy Apostles Church. It's very different today, very happy clappy. This picture is from a couple of years later, when my brother joined too:

1973

Side, South Coast of Turkey. This is me and my brother in the lovely towelling beach robes that my mum made for us. She was a keen seamstress. She also used knit clothes for our action men, as they were so hard to come by in Turkey.




We moved back to Cheltenham in November. It was a massive culture shock for me. They made me wear shorts at school even in winter; the kids were so mean and talked funny...

1972

Alex and her familly and me and mine used to go on holiday a lot together. Here we are at Manavgat in Southern Turkey:

1971

We moved to Turkey next, where I met my oldest friend in the world, Alex:



Is that a book about soldiers or football or racing cars she's trying to wrestle from my grasp? No? Hmmm...

I went to a really great school in Ankara, the British Embassy Study Group.

1970

Tired of the tropics, we moved to Northern Ireland in 1970. Here's me at Mount Stewart in my lovely anorack:



And on my bike outside our house in Bangor (I didn't feel comfortable without stabilizers until 1998):



This is one of my favourite photos of my pa, my brother and me, I think on the sea-front in Bangor:

1969

Toute la famille en 1969:

1968

I went to ex-pat playschool, still in my pants:



Oh, and suddenly my world was in blooming technicolor:

1967

I spent most of 1967 in just my pants, or sitting on the front step looking wistful:




My brother was born this year, and was revered by Singaporeans as the second coming of Buddha (here we are with Arhan, our Chinese nanny):

1966

I spent a few more months in Cheltenham, before moving with my parents to Singapore. Here they are celebrating New Year's Eve in the Tanglin Club in Singapore:

1965

I was born in Cheltenham on 14 October, a marvellous 23-hour long birthday present for my mother.