Steven Wells, R.I.P. -- On British Surfing

"Banzai, dudes! Grab yerself a frostie and I'll sling another stinking dink on the napalm barbie!"
Why the crazy talk? It's because this week I'm surfing UK! Yes, I'm here sat on my free Nokia® towel on sandy Fistral beach in beautiful Newquay in sunny Cornwall to sort of watch the '03 Ripcurl WGS Boardmasters surf thingy in association with - get this - that chilled, pilled, wildstylin', beatifically smilin', crazy, hazy, laid-back'n'daisy-chained free-sheet of the revo-freakin-lution, the Daily Telegraph®.
TWO REASONS WHY SURFING IS BETTER THAN FOOTBALL
1) There are a lot of shit surfing movies. But then there's Apocalypse Now ("Charlie don't surf!") which is the best movie ever - OFFICIAL! While all football films are rubbish.
2) Surfing is the ONLY sport ever to inspire great pop music. That statement will, of course, have hundreds of When Saturday Comes readers choking into their herbal-tea-filled Philosophy Football® mugs.
"What about Some Bunch Of Norwich University Students' epic All I Want For Xmas Is A Smugly Obscure Away Strip!?" they'll shrill.
To which I can only reply -The Beach Boys, The Surfaris, The Ventures, Jan and Dean, The Chantays, The Tornadoes, The Penetrators, Plastic Bertrand and The Ramones. Surfing music isn't just funny. It isn't just good. It bastard ROCKS! In fact it's the third best musical genre ever after rock'n'roll and punk rock (with which it overlaps, obviously).
So how come then that the music they're playing here at the Fosters® surf centre on Fistral beach is winky-wanky, tinkle-tinkle plink-plonk jazz-lite shite for baggy arsed, gurly-haired, goatee-bearded lady-boy E-retards? Eh? We don't want this muzak! We want an hysterically high-pitched "WIPEOUT!" followed by insane Joker-style laughter, followed by The Ramones' awesome cover of the Surfin' Bird, followed by Dick Dale's truly sensational Let's Go Trippin' (as used for the theme music of John Peels Home Truths on Radio 4) - really loud, on a loop tape, 4 EVA!
Like what they're playing in the Garnier Fructis® Style Tent, actually. Last year Garnier's big idea was "bed hair", this year it's "surf hair". And next year they're going for "electric chair hair" and opening a salon in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba - which, by an amazing coincidence, has some fantastic waves. But Abdul don't surf. Least ways not manacled, blindfolded and with a ball-gag strapped over his mouth he don't. ANYWAY.
There'll be more from our sponsors in a moment. But first:
A BRIEF HISTORY OF BRITISH SURFING
1700: The denizens of the sleepy fishing village of Newquay look at their fantastic beaches with all like massive waves crashing on them and that and scratch their heads while munching rat pasties.
1750: These same denizens accidentally discover that if they build bonfires on the beach then ships will crash onto the nearby rocks and they can blag loads of great free stuff.
1770: Captain Cook "discovers" Australia which the British government promptly stocks with criminals possessed of the latent "good at sports which have yet to be invented" gene. By an amazing coincidence, many of these recidivist scum come from Newquay.
1779: Captain Cook hits Hawaii and is greatly amused by the gaudily-shirted natives who paddle up to his ship to the accompaniment of fantastic, horn-driven theme music. But then, lured onto the beach, the Cap is ambushed from behind by club-wielding assassins on surfboards. Look out, Cookie! THAWAK! THWAK! THWAK! AAAAARGH!
1968: Captain Steve McGarret is appointed the first head of the Honolulu homicide department - 189 years too late.
2003: The denizens of sleepy Newquay accidentally discover that by building a "surfing centre" on their beach and attracting corporate sponsors they can blag loads of great free stuff. They also build a giant, green-painted, white South African theme pub. All this has the delightful side- effect of turning the town, in the words of a local tax driver, into "a sort of shit Ibiza".
The Nokia® sponsored passel of metropolitan hacks arrive at the spectacularly located Headlands hotel and gibber excitedly. Most of them work for monthly fitness mags that are run by neo-Dickensian managements with minute staffs on abysmal wages. This is the first time they've seen the sea for years and years and years and they are quite literally pissing themselves with excitement.
Up the road is RAF Newquay - which serves as a prime nerve centre in the ongoing War Against Brown-skinned Folks Keeping Control Of The Oil. Down on the beach are thousands of lobstered Poms - building sandcastles, harassing crabs, frolicking in the spume and sort of watching the surfing. During WW2 this hotel was a hospital for flak-shocked bomber crews and is apparently haunted. But more on that later.
That night we toddle off to a restaurant in downtown Newquay. We pass hundreds of B&Bs rampacked with literally thousands of surfers, skateboarders and other young folks whose idea of a good time is to develop Basal Cell Carcinoma whilst in the latter stages of severe alcoholic poisoning. On the table next to us in the restaurant, some Australians are recalling the delights of the Munich beer fest. The phrases "lying in his own vomit" and "lying in his own vomit like totally naked" feature regularly. And the restaurant's resident DJ regales us with jazz-funk remixes of David Gray's most soporific hits. Or it could be Craig David's shittest b-sides. Or possibly both.
Still giddy with cabin fever and free Fosters®, the rest of my party decide to head off to Sailors Disco. There they will watch young men who think Triple X is a good movie get hogwhimperingly inebriated, dance badly to crap music and hit each other in order to attract the attention of young women in very short skirts.
I decide to walk back to the hotel. I get lost. On a road with no streetlights. I look up. My God! You can see the stars! And weird lights - flickering and dancing across the sky like a kind of low rent, black-and-white version of the aurora borealis. I apply Ocham's Pencil Sharpener. It's like Ocham's Razor except that instead of deciding that the most likely answer is probably also the true one, Ocham's Pencil Sharpener allows you to jump to the immediate and hysterical conclusion that it's definitely vampire aliens.
Back at the hotel I ask the young Australian lass behind the counter for her opinion.
"Aw, mate!" she says, the corks on her hat dangling mischievously, "it could be that they're doing something weird up at the RAF base!"
"Like testing retro-engineered space ships!" I gibber excitedly.
"Yeah!" rips the Sheila. "But it's most likely the lights from Disco Bertie bouncing off the clouds".
Wow! And that's when the truth hits me - like a diamond between the eyes! Those brain-battered RAF pilots sent here during WW2 were most likely diagnosed as doo-lally 'cos they kept on reporting UFO's - or "foo-fighters" as they were known back then.
But all along all the poor wretches were actually seeing was the lights from Disco Bertie! And it was all hushed up by the Illuminati who didn't want it to leak out that Newquay was in flagrant breach of the black-out regulations in order to test out space-alien inspired disco-lighting that wouldn't be "officially" invented for another 50 years! Or something.
The next day we all had a free surfing lesson and I was rubbish and then we played with our free Daily Telegraph® Frisbees® (I kid you the frick not) and had cream teas with lashings of ginger beer and I was sick on the coach and it was great. And an Australian bloke won the surfing competition.
Probably.
The end.