You could hardly describe Michael Barratt as a normal kid. To be the youngest of eleven children makes you pretty special for a start, and how they were all squeezed into a small council house on the edge of Ely is anyone's guess. It's generally true to say that the youngest kids of large families grow up that little bit quicker than their older brothers and sisters did before them - they learn to walk and talk faster, motivated by the older children around them, with whom they want to catch up. That's not to say that they ever grow up completely, emotionally. For many, the search for eternal youth begins after they leave home and lose the security of being the "little one", guaranteed maximum attention before, but now just one in a crowd of millions. Methods of attention -seeking used by young kids in large, over-crowded families vary considerably, but for the young Michael Barratt, there was an easy way to stand out from the crowd which could be mingled with daydream fantasies.

Surely for him, the dream of standing on a stage, surrounded by adoring fans all gazing exclusively at him alone, must have been an attractive one, and the fact that he was a very good-looking boy with a passable singing voice must have helped him along. He had a lot of personal charisma even as a child. Dave Dutton, Mike's next-door neighbour and best childhood friend, remembers grinding his teeth with despair at the way Michael could attract girls, long before puberty might have given him the inclination. He would sit on his doorstep, strumming a plastic Elvis guitar which his mother had given him for his eight birthday, and looking carefree surrounded by all the local Cindy dolls, who no doubt dreamed of the day they would take this supposedly shy Welsh boy in hand and look after him. "It wasn't that he was actually shy, though," remembers Dave. "He could be quiet and even moody, but he never had all that much to say for himself, and I suppose this was

taken for shyness by all the girls who like that sort of thing." Dave ticks his teeth as he speaks, as if the memory annoys him. Certainly, it is revealed that throughout their long friendship Dave, despite his own undisputed good looks and lively personality, suffered much as the "friend" of the "fanciable one". At the age of twelve, Michael gave his white blond head of hair its first ever crew cut. He started singing a lot then, and perfected the Elvis hip wiggle. Dave ex-presses surprise that Michael now says he wasn't that much of an Elvis fan. "Elvis fashioned our whole style in those days," he recalls, "and although Michael's impressive record collection also included plenty of Little Richard and Eddie Cochran records, Elvis was there too, in force." Dave and Michael roamed fairly freely around their local neighbourhood - the large cemetery near their homes was a focal point of their activities, from wild games of cowboys and indians - Dave once broke his teeth on Michael's head during a particularly realistic battle scene - to organised wrestling matches in their early teens, when Dave would charge the other local kids to come and watch the athletic Mike take on all comers. Later on it would become a meeting place for girlfriends, the long, unkempt grass among the gravestones now hiding more secrets than the child Pocahontas could ever have imagined. Like most active kids, they loved playing football, and Sunday afternoon games would continue almost endlessly.

These particular kids didn't waste much energy on their local team, however. For the rock In' roll lovers, football heroes couldn't pull much weight. Neither could school, for that matter. Dave and Michael shared school adventures together at three hallowed establishments of learning around Ely - Windsor Clyde, Central and Hywell Neither of the lads would claim to be enormously bright, academically, but it can't have helped the progress of their general education when they didn’t actually bother to turn up at school for weeks on end, producing anxious visits from truant officers and beatings from the schools when they finally did manage to struggle along. But nothing seemed to deter them. For these budding stars, the dreams and aspirations which rock ‘n’ roll gave them were far more relevant on their existence than the history of the French Revolution or some other dusty subject.

Even reading and writing didn't have much of a place in their lives and Michael was one of the many who left school (officially) at the age of fifteen without much skill in either. In later years this must have been a frustrating experience when, during the long periods on the road away from his wife, he couldn't while away the hours of boredom composing letters to her- Paul Barrett recalls him trying only once, but giving up almost immediately when the effort became too much. It wasn't that he lacked the skills totally, just that they didn't come easily enough for him to make them a part of his life. The poor excuses for teachers in the working-class schools around Cardiff couldn't have helped much. It would have been hard, for example, to have had much respect for the two teachers that regularly provided entertainment for Dave and Mike by making passionate love in a storeroom, happily oblivious to the audience they attracted, noses against a steamy window. Dave remembers

asking Mike, "It can't be right, them doing this all the time, can it?" Michael thought definitely not, but at least it was a form of sex education, something Paul Barrett never received in his school a few miles down the road. When the "A" stream of his fifth year were called together for their official lecture on sex education, his stream (predictably "B") also tried to sqreeze in. "Out! Out!" cried the horrified teacher to the eager gatecrashers. "I sincerely hope that none of you lot ever learn how to reproduce!" Then there was the Welsh teacher who used to bring nudie pictures into the classroom and ask the boys to come up to the front and tell dirty jokes - perhaps he despaired of obtaining their interest any other way. The chemistry teacher went one step further. Instead of handing out pencil and paper to his class as he usually did, telling them to get on with drawing while he disappeared, he one day rigged up an elaborate contraption and asked everyone to hold hands. When the contraption was switched on, the whole class was mildly electrocuted. When Mike and Dave transferred to their new school, they hoped,

alas in vain, for a regime they could respect. Their first experience, which must have dashed all their hopes, was with a teacher who drove around completely naked, pulling up alongside young schoolgirls and saying, "Jump in and give me a lift." He was duly arrested and put away, but by this time Michael and Dave had decided that school was for dunces. Intelligent people, they felt, could find more interesting ways to fill their days and here the two boys certainly didn't lack ingenuity or imagination. Dave and Mike formed their first rock 'n' roll band when they were just thirteen years old. They rehearsed wherever they could, in halls and empty rooms from New-port to Barry - where they went at least once a week and rehearsed under the watchful eye of a "professional" musician who played in a band called the Fireballs which had some local acclaim. From him, they picked up at least three good chords. Dave's first guitar was a Vox Club man, which he bought from a catalogue and which arrived in a self-assembly kit. "It never really worked

properly," he recalls. They called themselves the Olympics at first, but soon had to change when they discovered there already was a band with that name, doing well for itself. Casting around in some desperation for a new image, they came across a fashion shop in Crwys Road which displayed in its window a set of Russian-style shirts, as worn by the Dave Clark Five. In an inspirational moment, they bought the shirts, incorporated them into the stage show and called themselves the Cossacks. It was all totally out of context with their music, which was still out and out rock 'n' roll, but played now with silly Russian shirts on. Many local promoters were completely taken in by the name, however, and they got themselves one or two bookings they wouldn't otherwise have done with this new image. One fairly up-market joint booked them and put up bill-posters saying "Direct from a fantastic tour of Moscow- the Cossacks!" When the band arrived on the night, it was apparent that everyone was expecting something just a little more professional than they could provide. They crept apologetically onto the stage with their Grampian microphones, Futurama guitars, and speakers with no speakers inside the box (because it looked good) and started rapping out their three polished chords with as much balls as they could muster. It worked, though- they went down a storm, proving that local boys could make good music.

Another basic image problem they encountered as the Cossacks was the pathetic mode of transport that poverty and youth forced them to adopt. It was a wheelbarrow, which held all their equipment (such as it was) comfortably but which they had to take turns pushing while the others meandered behind at a safe distance, pretending to have no connection with this embarrassing sight. It can't have done much for their well practised cool to turn up to halls like the Church of the Resurrection and St David's where their heroes the Backbeats and the Alley-cats had played before them - and were still playing-huffing and puffing behind a wheelbarrow.

The change from the Cossacks to the Denims came fairly quickly after the boys left school and with it came the new-look "denim" image - which Shakin' Stevens still favours to this day. "The thing was," says Dave, "that we were still basically too broke to afford proper Wranglers, so we all bought those cheap Texan imitations which looked fine - but wouldn't fade at all. We used to try everything know to man to get those damn things to fade, but all that happened was that they went threadbare. We used to wonder, "Where the hell do people get those faded jackets, while we rubbed away at ours, all in vain." With the new image came the beginning of success - of a sort, in the form of their first manager. His name was Ernie Leach, and he drove a three-ton lorry for Cavendish. This became the illicit tour-truck for the band, as well as the venue for a fairly riotous high- life. The boys were well into drink by now, and the delights of group-following girls could finally be experienced, as they never could in the wheelbarrow. Where the interior of the van jutted out over the top of the cab, they constructed a rough bed, which was put into immediate and regular use, before and after gigs. Dave remembers fairly wild parties in the back of that truck, which were all brought to an abrupt end one day when the truck was stopped by the police. Why, the boys in blue wanted to know, was the truck out so late at night, and what, they further demanded, was that unbelievable noise coming from the back! The doors of the truck weren't the usual kind which could be opened

with the fairly simple turn of a handle and swung side-ways, but had to be lowered down on chains. When the police finally managed to heave them down and blink curiously into the dark, a debauched sight indeed met their incredulous eyes with empty wine bottles rolling around among discarded clothing, musical equipment and half-naked girls. Poor old Ernie lost his job, almost on the spot. He was undaunted in his opinions of the Denims, however, and convinced that they were going to be the "new" Beatles. He joined his brother in the scrap business and invested in his own van - an open-backed Thames Ford - not a pretty sight for its time, and an example of an unsuccessful attempt by Ford to introduce a three-gear system, which made for a rough ride. Party-time was more or less over for the Denims with this mode of transport. They had to sit in the open back, covering their equipment as best as they could from the wet weather and huddling together in thick clothing as they bumped their way to and from gigs on wet or even snowy nights. Eventually, more to protect their health than anything else, the boys split with Ernie and bought their own van, a windowless affair which Dave and Mike would use in the joint window-cleaning operation they later developed. There was a time when Mike split with the Denims, very briefly. He joined an outfit called The Big Five as a singer - mainly, says Dave, "Because they had a much better van than we did - theirs had windows." The Denims got them- selves a new singer with whom they did quite well- better even than when they had Michael. But he didn't last very long - he lost his voice after gig upon gig of always playing in the same key. They were good, the Denims, but they still kept their reper- toire close to the three-chord format - they hadn't learnt any others even by then. Michael came back to the fold - the other members of the Big Five fell out with him pretty quickly after he refused point blank to sing up-to-date numbers by bands like the Small Faces whose existence he preferred to ignore, and after all, the Denims did play rock & roll!

Michael didn’t want to be just any star – he wanted to be a rock ‘n’ roll star, like the ones he’d seen in the films throughout his childhood, with ther Beverly Hills houses and smart Cadillacs. That was his dream, and he held onto it despite what must have been enormous pressure during these barren years for rock ‘n’ roll. The Denims had their moments, though. Their first trip up to London was to the Two Eyes Coffee Bar in Old Compton Street, birthplace of English rock 'n' roll and the jumping off point for such stars as Cliff Richard, Joe Brown, Tommy Steele, Lonnie Donegan, the Shads and numerous others too boring in their numerousness to mention. The band was a four- piece at the time, with Mike, Dave, David Home and David Watkins. They all had pet names for each other, in true rock 'n' roll style -some more repeatable than others, like "Rockin' Lord Robens" for Dave Dutton and "Daisy the Rockin' Wok" for David Watkins. Others were called "Horny", "Big Cock Up" and so on down the scale of good taste. A bright entrepreneur had lured them to the big smoke with a promise of a German tour if they could just pass this one audition.

Bearing closely in mind what a short sharp shock in the Fatherland had done for the Beatles, they climbed into their Thames van and hit the A4. Mike and Dave were still only fifteen and sixteen at the time, and Soho held a wealth of promised delights in its basements for them. They arrived during the afternoon and found the coffee bar. The gig was to be its first for a few months and all looked promising for the evening. After setting up their equipment in readiness and making sure that the sound bounced punchily enough off the basement walls, they launched out onto the streets of Soho. But a rude shock awaited the denim-clad boys, because they hadn't gone further than a few hundred yards before the drug squad pounced, throwing them roughly against the wall of a massage parlour and running their hands through their pockets. The lead guitarist, who had been walking ahead of them to make a telephone call home to his mother and who was actually in the phone box when he saw the commotion with his friends, crouched in helpless terror on the floor of the box, which must have been a highly suspicious sight. But despite their rock 'n' roll elders being familiar with the highs and lows of amphetamines and cannabis, the Denims were a clean bunch of boys who preferred the great god alcohol,

to any other form of drug. The police were bound to release them, with severe lectures about what would happen to them if they were caught in the vicinity again looking quite so disreputable. Dave Dutton and Mike Barratt decided to take refuge in a striptease joint and invested ten hard-earned shillings to spend the rest of the afternoon in heaven, Soho-style. They had never seen so many girls all parading naked in front of them, and watched fascinated for some time, open-mouthed and wide-eyed in youthful wonder. Then their attention was caught by an old man in a mackintosh, who was sitting near the stage, holding a box of Quality Street sweets (the ones made for sharing). Every now and again he would give one of these sweets to a girl, who would have to take it from him and eat it, as erotically as she could for his satisfaction. Soon Mike and Dave were in hysterics at the sight of this hitherto umdreamn't of kink, and, with the tears of laughter still rolling down their cheeks, they were rudely ejected from the club. The gig went well that night. Their benefactor

had managed to attract quite a prestigious audience to look them over, including Ray Davies from the Kinks, the manger of Them, a member of the Pretty Things and quite a few music journalists. Afterwards they were approached by the manager of Them, who said to Dave Dutton, "You know, you're a great R & B band - but your singer's all wrong for you. If you get rid of him, I'll get you a tour supporting my act in Germany." The Them were big stuff at the time, and the offer was a tempting one, but the bond between Michael and the three Daves was too strong for any kind of temptation to split them up. The aim and object of most rock 'n' rollers isn't to achieve fame and fortune, which is the norm today for a young pop band, who disband in despair after the first round of record company refusals. For the Denims, the thought of stardom was too much of a distant dream to make them sacrifice something as precious as a boyhood friendship to go in hot pursuit for it. They enjoyed playing their favourite music, and the added glamour which playing in a band gave them within their local community was enough for them. They didn't actually turn the offer down immediately - not until a friend pointed out to them that at fifteen, Michael was actually too young to go to Germany

and work. And so that was the end of that little episode. But not quite – when the boys left the club, bleary-eyed and weary at the end of the night, they had a shock in store: their van had been towed away. Altogemer It nad Deen an eventful first trip to London. The Big Smoke was to attract our youthful heroes many times again during their wayward teenage years together when life got too boring they jumped into their van and just drove up, guaranteeing themselves fun and games and a new brand of girlfriend in the bright lights. The sixties in London were fun, even for a couple of staid old out and out rock 'n' roll fans. Morals had changed radically from the fifties, when going with a girl was usually a fairly serious proposition. But in the sixties a good looking boy who protected himself with the mantle of wild rock 'n' roll bands could be fairly sure of finding the right kind of girl for his fairly uncomplicated purpose, which was to have fun, fun, fun. Of course, both Dave and Michael had by now found themselves steady girl-friends who were to become their wives, but

these were kept strictly apart from their bachelor lives, which neither saw as including faithfulness - at least until the wedding day. Michael had met Carole when they were both fourteen years old, and she was always the "only" girl for him. A sweet, uncom- plicated girl who found herself a job with the Littlewoods Pools company in Cardiff as soon as she left school, and remained there until just before the birth of her first child, she was to become Michael's mainstay and source of sanity over the coming years. Whereas even Dave found problems with smart girlfriends who didn't like to be shoved out of the limelight and adventures, Carole never complained once, happy to stay at home and bring up their three children. Before their marriage, she did attend some of his gigs, watching her future husband play with obvious adoration written in her dark pretty features. Perhaps she knew about the other women in Michael's life - such as they were. Perhaps she also knew that for him, they meant nothing.

She was his absolute rock, comments Dave, in obvious admiration. "My girlfriends vanished into thin air if they found out about my bad behaviour - I even lost my first wife mainly through my addiction to the rock 'n' roll life-style. But Carole was different to all the others - I think she would have taken him back if he committed murder. I don't think he could have gone as far as he has if it hadn't been for her unquestioning support and total loyalty." She did show that she cared, though, in the days when her beloved boyfriend was only a singer in a band called the Denims. In one incident, Carole and Dave's wife-to-be, Pam, found a bunch of groupie-girls following the Denims' van, late one night. Climbing into their own little mini-van, they chased away the groupie-girls New York cop-style, driving along the pavement to scatter them - perhaps even to run them over, tempers had run so high. In later years, however, Carole seemed to have given up the fight. She must have felt very secure. The next major influence in the lives of our now dole-claiming musicians was a small- time businessman called Frank O'Connell, who owned part of a Cardiff taxi-business, and seemed to be the answer to all their problems. For them, he promised the big time.

It was the mid-sixties by now, and the latest rage was the disco scene. Discos were opening up all over the country and Cardiff kids were wearing out their shoes as fast as the kids every- where else. Frank saw himself cashing in on the boom and found himself a big, almost deserted warehouse, the upper half of which he envisaged as being the hottest disco in town - after suitable conversion. The only in-habitant of this exclusive joint at the time was a very seedy coloured man, who had converted as much of the place as possible into a liveable squat, and who was not at all pleased by the appearance of Frank's two new boot-boys, Dave and Mike, who were supposed to move him out and start work on the conversion, armed with paint brushes and gallons of black paint. Luckily for him. they didn't take their work too seriously and promised to let him stay and even join in on th~ir drinking parties. They were stagnating a little at the time - rock 'n' roll was going through a terrible period in which no one but the die-hards dared to even admit openly that they still supported it. The Denims were still getting the occasional gig in the valleys playing their Chuck Berry-style set, but more often than not they found themselves backing lady pop singers at the local dance halls, or doing cabaret spots. Any extra money or favours that they could earn for themselves by getting in the good books of Oçonnel seemed to be their only hope. But their attitude to the labouring jobs he gave them, on his disco warehouse, were somewhat casual, and it never did happen, in the event.

Dave and Mike's behaviour deteriorated as the weeks passed, and they probably ended up doing more damage than repair - they just couldn't take it seriously. They would arrive at the warehouse already drunk, and walk across newly concreted floors, turning a carefully smoothed millpond into a choppy ocean of filthy concrete. Then they would go into the newly-plumbed toilets, and stand on the seats pulling the chain, over and over until the inevitable floods came. Eventually their relationship with the Irish businessman descended from the hopeful to the ridiculous, until he threw them out, threatening them with dire consequences if they ever darkened his doors again. After that he must have despaired of the music business, because the warehouse disco never did open, and its black inhabitant may still be living there in peace today. Mike's last brush with O'Connell came while he was doing temporary work at a local brewery, loading barrels onto the back of trucks. Frank suspected Michael of stealing a Bayer microphone, and sent two men around to the brewery to shake it out of him. He took to his heels upon seeing them ( unsure of their reputation) and ran along the embankment breaking all speed records in an effort to lose them. Feeling that a cold, wet death would be infinitely preferable to anything they might be thinking of doing to him, he was just about to dive frantically into the water when, luckily for him, they gave up the chase.

Left to their own devices, without promises of fame and fortune to spur them on, the Denims slid into a life of gigging only when they wanted to and enjoying them- selves as much as they could for the rest of the time. They may not have been into the drugs and psychedelia of the sixties, but the freedom which it brought for teenagers was welcomed by them with open arms. Dave and Mike set up a joint window- cleaning venture using the communal van which he "The Denims" emblazoned across its side. They took it fairly seriously at first - it seemed a fairly easy way to earn a living, and, encouraged by Dave's mum, they got cards printed up, with Dave's address and their impressive advertisement "Independent Window Cleaners" which they decided would bring in custom from the posh end of town, which paid a bit more. They got themselves two licences to work, came off the dole, and went into business. Their equipment wasn't up to much at first - just one IS-foot ladder and a couple of cloths. Whenever they were asked to handle a house with windows which went beyond the capabilities of their ladder, they stood on each others' shoulders and reached, in hope. Needless to say, many windows were broken. One day, after they had been working for quite some time, Dave heard a familiar crashing noise at the top of the ladder and shouted up to Michael, "Let's give this one a miss, I think it's the same place we broke a window last time round this way." So, pushing some newly printed cards through the door, they disappeared. A few weeks later, Dave's mum received a rather pathetic letter from the lady of the house with no windows. It read:


Dear Mrs. Dutton,

Thank you for the card you pushed through my door recently. I don't know who you are, but for the past year I've had two boys doing my windows and they've caused so much damage it's had me in tears many times. But they never come back and explain what's happened - they always disappear without trace. Leaving me to clear up a mass of broken glass. So, I'm writing to you to ask if your firm could come and clean my windows for me from now on, because I'm convinced that any-thing is better than those two lunatics!


Needless to say, Mrs Dutton didn't respond to the letter. Dave and Mike's little business went from strength to strength, however. They managed to earn enough each morning to buy several bottles of wine and take the afternoon off on the local beach, getting drunk. Life wasn't without its disasters, though. When they first graduated from rags and paraffin to chamois leathers and a special ladder, they decided to expand into a smart area around Merch Road, where there were lots of multi-window, high-roofed houses. Luck was on their side at the first door they knocked on. A very friendly lady accepted their ridiculous price of 9/6 eguivalent to three bottles of cheap wine and asked them particularly to make sure that her top windows were clean.

Feeling that for such a lot of money they should at least start out honest, they told her about their inadequate ladder. "Oh, I'm sure that won't be a problem," the lady replies, getting her coat on to go out shopping, "the last window cleaner used to prop his ladder on top of the conservatory at the back - he had a thick plank that he laid over the roof to rest his ladder on, so that it was quite safe," Confidently taken in by their earnest expressions that they would "give it a try", she climbed into her car and left them to it. They went around to the back of the house. There was the conservatory, a sparkling glass construction which housed an array of beautiful, exotic plants. The intrepid pair found a suitable piece of wood to rest on the roof, but were already having doubts about their hopes of success. They realised that the previous window cleaner must have had a special plank just for the job, with indentations to hold the ladder in safety Mike climbed onto the conservatory roof and called down to Dave, "Come on up to hold the ladder." Dave wasn't so sure. "Mike I don't fancy doing this - it looks a bit dodgy to me -

let's quit before we do any damage " But Mike was more confident. "Come on man - it's 9/6. When will we get the chance to earn that much again in one morning just for a little job. It's all right, I promise. Just think of it - three bottles of wine. Say it over to yourself as you climb up." Mike immediately shinned up the ladder and started furiously poking at the upper windows while Dave gingerly hoisted himself onto the conservatory roof, all the time watching the piece of wood sway furiously back and forth under the vehemence of Mike's cleaning efforts. Dave heard a cracking noise. "Mike for god's sake come down." "9/6' came the reply and the swaying increased. Suddenly, inevitably, the crash came. Mike, the piece of wood, the ladder and several greasy chamois landed in a heap on top of all the beautiful flowers, flattening them and destroying totally the conservatory. Dave peered through the wreckage at Mike, who was already standing up unhurt, brushing broken glass off his jeans. "9/6?" he queried,

stifling giggles at the sight of his fallen companion. "Bugger that, let's get out fast!" Which is what they did, ending their aspirations at a stroke of becoming window cleaners to the wealthy. An-other amusing incident occurred just a few weeks later, when Dave and Mike were working - sensibly - on a small estate of bungalows in Ely. One was inhabited by a young girl student - a lively, plump girl who impressed the boys with her self-donated title of poet. One day, while Mike was having a rest in the van, she invited Dave in to have a look at her poetry and hear some of her Bob Dylan records. Knowing that Mike wouldn't approve of such a hippy pursuit, Dave went in on his own and drank a polite cup of coffee and listened to her version of "Charge of the Light Bridgade" to the strains of "Universal Soldier". Then suddenly she disappeared, apparently to change the record in her bedroom. But when she re-turned, Dave saw to his amazement that the record wasn't all she had changed - she was completely naked. She stood before him. "Do you want to go to bed with me?" she asked, to which Dave, never a boy to avoid a new experience replied, "Don't mind if I do," and disappeared with her into the bedroom.

Minutes later he too was naked and alongside her in her pink-frilled bed, discovering the delights of her willing flesh and hardly able to believe his good fortune. She was fairly quiet for the first few moments of bliss, but then spoke up. "Are you into Christianity?" she asked our intrepid window cleaner. Heathen Dave considered. If she was into Christianity herself, he figured, she surely wouldn't be jumping into bed with window cleaners. He decided to be honest, hoping that it wouldn't spoil his chances. "No love, I'm not," came the wry reply. All hell broke loose. "You freak!" she screamed. "Get out of my bed. I'm not making it with any non-believer!" Literally throwing his clothes at him, she chased him out of the bungalow. But then she seemed to change her mind and called him back. Still doing up his flies, he returned, not sure if he would accept her hospitality a second time. But it wasn’t him she was interested in.

"Is your friend a Christian?" she asked. "Hold on," came the swift reply, "I'll go and find out for you." Dave raced round to the van where Mike was reclined with a bottle of wine in his lap, and grabbed him by the collar. "There's a hot woman in there, waiting for you-all you have to do is say you're into Christianity!" Mike fell out of the van and demanded that Dave explain his apparent fit of madness. "Have you just been with her, then?" he wanted to know at the end. "Half and half," Dave told him. "Well, no then, I'm not really interested. Tell you what though, let's both go back and get a meal out of her - she's got to be good for that at least, if she's lonely." So Mike turned down the opportunity of an easy lay on that occasion - although the boys became very good friends with the young Christian and visited her regularly to listen to her records and her poetry. He was fairly fussy, it seems, about going with a young girl just after someone else had been with her, although for a young band during the sixties it wasn't an uncommon experience for a girl to offer to sleep with all of them in the same night. Young girls then were just as much into experimenting with sexual experiences as were their boyfriends.

Mike had a way with the girls, though, even then. Dave remembers an occasion when the two lads were driving through the Canton district of Cardiff after a hard morning's window cleaning, when they spied two beautiful girls walking along, wiggling their mini skirts. He recognised one of them as the daughter of a local hotelier who he had desperately fancied for several months without her knowledge. "Stop the van and see if we can chat them up," he begged Mike, who was driving. Without a word, Mike pulled the van alongside the girls, opened the door and said, "Jump in girls," - and they did. Together they all went back to the girl's hotel and sat drinking. By the end of the afternoon they were all firm friends and had arranged to meet later on. They took the girls out that night, finishing up at a well-known lovers' haunt by a bridge. The boys had a deal whenever they picked up two likely girls; they tossed a coin and the winner got the use of the back of the van first while the other paced up and down outside, admiring the moon and the stars no doubt, in a bid to keep his girlfriend interested. Dave won the toss that night, so he took the girl of his dreams into the back of the van and started to make passionate love to her. But soon it was apparent that her thought were elsewhere - she was scratching herself furiously all over, and complaining. Dave heard giggles coming from outside the van, and suddenly noticed that Mike had unrolled a particularly coarse horse hair mat more usually used for protecting the equipment and laid it across the floor, making passion impossible. Cutting his losses, he made another date with the girl and together they chatted out-side the van while Mike went in and took his turn. And they chatted. And they walked, and they paced, until finally the van doors flew open and Mike came out, saying abruptly, "Let's take the girls home." Dave agreed, wondering what on earth could have happened inside the van to cause his bad temper.

But he was destined not to find out, for soon after they had dropped the girls home and before he could get a chance to talk to his friend, they spied another two girls walking along the road. Dave knew them as notorious lesbians, but Mike was determined to score that night, so for the second time that day he drew up his van, opened the door, smiled that charming smile and said, "Hop in girls," - and they did. This time, Mike drove them to a little lovers' haunt which was actually a disused pigsty, but yet again pulled the short straw. Dave took the only bisexual girl from the pair into the pigsty, leaving Mike fuming in the van with an equally angry girl, perhaps one of the few in the female race who was oblivious to his boyish charms. All the time Dave and his lady friend were in the pigsty together, she raved about Mike. Although accepting that Dave would have her first, she was insistent that he send Mike in when they had finished. Again he approached Mike: "Go on, it's your turn - she fancies you far more than me," but Mike just snorted angrily and put the van into gear, almost running Dave over. Unbeknown to each other, both Mike and Dave made dates with the girl for the following day, but yet again Mike struck out. Dave had somehow managed to get the earlier date, so that when he arrived at Mike’s house-havrng been almost literally assaulted, WIth a torn shirt and a neck covered with ugly red marks from her passion, Mike knew at once that his celibacy for the day was sealed. It was funny how often Mike failed to pull in his young days - girls literally flocked around him, and Dave knew that his best chance of picking up girlfriends was to stick close to Mike. If he had a pound for every girl who had looked up at him during a love-making session and said, with a sigh, "If only you were Mike " he would probably be a wealthy man now. He knew that at any time Mike could have stolen anyone of his girlfriends from under his nose, and yet he never did. To him, Carole was the most important girl, and rock 'n' roll was the only thing worth living for. He was becoming a man of simple tastes and preferences, and yet there was a side to him which was unpredictable and even a little frightening.

Dave remembers him as two completely different people - the quiet, simple boy who could be described as an introvert, who would sit, almost sullenly, gazing at his hands and refusing to speak for a whole night - which happened frequently on the nights he was dragged unwillingly to a disco in New-port which insisted on playing "mod" records for most of the night. Mike was such an out and out rock 'n' roller that to even be seen in this place was sacrilege. He would literally take a vow of silence until, in the last few minutes of the night, the disco played a couple of rock 'n roll records. Then he would straighten his back, and maybe even smile. But this Mike would never have been seen dead on a dance floor. The side of him that stood up on a stage and did crazy things was well and truly locked away when he was just one of the masses. No girl, not even Carole, could persuade him to dance in a crowd. Some took this as shyness, others as arrogance born of insecurity, the same insecurity which insisted he only per-form when he could be guaranteed the limelight.

The other Mike, the frightening one, could "spark off' at any given moment, although he was more likely to do this when he was drunk. Mike never could hold his drink too well. It really didn't take all that much to get him roaring and incapable and this was something that Paul Barrett had to keep a close eye on in later years, after several gigs had been irretrievably wrecked. This Michael could be sitting quietly - even moodily - in a pub with a drink and then suddenly get up, pull a red woollen hat over his face, and walk across the tables saying, "I'm a matchstick, light me." This was the Michael who as Shakin' Stevens just a few years later, climbed on the tables of a Christmas party where his band was valiantly playing, and with one foot in a salad bowl was able to shout, "Scream, damn you, you would scream for Tom Jones, so you can scream for me!" This was the Michael who could even turn violent, if provoked in this mood.