LONG HAD the land been dark when Festering the Organslayer set out on his quest. After many travails spoken of elsewhere Festering lead his party at last to the secret Gilden Caves of the Drang Horsbreath. There beneath the watchful eye of Horloge the Time bender, the six Hope bearers laid down the 10 Partitions of Indulgence and the acid of Mroquin was once again washed clean from the land.

"And that," said Festering to his assembled troop, "is bastard that," they nodded.

"Worst sodding tour I've ever been on. Disasters? I've never seen such a shambles, look at this." Festering held up a gnarled fist to count off the catastrophes on his fingers: "No pre-publicity, terrible audiences, violence outside the gig and... er... a finger missing, plus something else I can't remember.

"I have had it with this hero lark. The pay is dreadful, the management's non existent, and my idea of a groupie is not some 6ft 5in Amazonian with bad breath and an archery fixation."

Ramalax the Axeweasel stood up to speak, which was unfortunate since in a fit of peak The Gorge Wizard had transferred his mouth in his ankle, and at moments of extreme excitement he now tended to shout into his shoe.

"There is still the Necklace of Peridon Tasc," sputtered Nutso the Pedant.

"Right now I wouldn't go after the Bowtie of Robin Day," proclaimed Festering. "What we need is out of this job, and that means finding someone stupid enough to take over. Boys, we're going to advertise."


The door flew open and in the pilot's seat was a small rumpled individual boiling with acne. "I've gorrus a gig," it scratched to the room and dragged a scruffy magazine from the shattered penicillin ward of its back pocket. It began to read.

"'Wanted; four axemasters for fame and fortune. Great opportunity for young band'. It's exactly what we've been waiting for."

"If that's so," snuffled Phil the guitarist, "why is the ad in a copy of Fangoria, with 'Do Not Remove From The Forbidden Planet Bookshop' stamped on it?"

"Dunno," said the first individual, "maybe they've had no luck from those music papers. No one reads them anyway. This is right up our street."

"So are a lot of doggy does, but I don't play with them. And what's this bit further down about 'must be experienced with dark powers.'"

"Er... well... it probably means there's no light show or something Blimey, ain't you picky. Look it says 'great opportunity for young band'."

"What it actually says is 'great opportunity for young band of reasonably violent psychopaths.'"

"Brilliant! We even get a new name — 'Ladees and genellmum, will you welcome... The Reasonably Violent Psycopaths'. Where's Pete, he'll know."

"Hiding from his Mum. He read in that Making Music magazine about how you can get better results from boiling your strings, so he did the lot. Now none of their curtains work and his Dad's hammock fell apart. Take things a bit literal, does Pete. Especially for a drummer."


The auditions had lasted most of the day but not because of a flood of applicants. There was only one other apart from the band, a huge lump in a fur coat, half man half wardrobe, with an unfortunate memory problem. Every time he came out of the interview room he'd remember enough to shout 'next please', then his mind would go blank. Since he was the only one already standing up that must mean that he was next, didn't it? So he went back inside.

Eventually, towards the end of the afternoon, Gruntha materialised for the last time, forgot what the word next meant, and fell asleep. They boys took their chance.

"Ha ha... The Reasonably Violent Psycopaths at your service," said Phil in his best imitation of Vivian from the Young Ones, which if anything was slightly more accurate than Ade Edmonson's.

The hopeful band peered into the gloom trying to make out the figures clustered on the other side of the table. There was a midget, a man with three ears (two of them on necklace), a horse with the body of a goldfish, an eight foot wide cardboard box chewing its own fur, a weasel shouting into its shoe, and a man cutting up gloves. "Be with you in a second," said the man, "they just don't make gloves to fit anymore." And he held up a hand that was a guitarist's worst nightmare.

The band stared in silence. Anger and disappointment mixed equally with contempt and utter indignation. Eventually Phil spoke the words which would be lavishly retold over pints and saloon bars for years to come. "There was nothing in the ad," he ground out, "about supporting The Gary Glitter band."

They left.