He clearly had to be dragged, kicking and screaming into the 21st century.
“Whatever you do now, you post on Twitter,” Max explained. “It’s what all the celebrities do.”
The current day equivalent of an olden day fan club, basically. A way to cultivate, keep entertained and to polish your fandom.
“Make a sausage sandwich, post a photo of it. Scratch your arse, tweet about it. The world needs to know. Oh and make sure you post plenty of selfies throughout the day. At least one every hour.”
Max put on such a positive slant, it rubbed off on Felix and soon he was tweeting more than a budgerigar:
“Fancy a cup of tea.
No milk.
Popped to Tesco.
So busy tweeting, I forgot about the milk.”
He was kind of starting to get the hang of it… except he tweeted about having a sausage sandwich and accidentally posted a photo of his bum. As you do.
However, this got retweeted and favourited over a hundred and fifty times and his followers slowly started to go up.
Who knew exposing your derriere could be so advantageous?
About a week later, Max Jacks was back from Spain and announced a special press conference to which he invited all of the band.
Holly and Cherry still weren’t getting on so had to sit bookending Rhino and Felix.
The press were gathered, well those of them that had bothered to turn up, and Max rewarded them with an all exclusive:
New single!
New album!
UK tour of small venues!
Felix was pleased. Rhino was pleased. And as a bonus the girls didn’t kill each other. Although Cherry was tempted.
It was much the same old story. Holly being the centre of attention. Cherry wasn’t sure how much more she could take of this. Surely it was now her time to shine?
Felix was even more excited when Max agreed they could record ‘Supermarket Checkout Operator’ as the lead single. Felix was sure it would be a total smash hit.
He laid down the lead vocal, while the girls recorded the backing vocals – separately, of course – and Rhino played the cymbal.
The finished studio recording sounded divine, even if Felix did say so himself.
And they had a big single release party to celebrate.
Well, in a small pub in Soho.
Felix was still tweeting everything he did:
“Great Party.
Free booze.
Hot chicks.”
Then one in particular caught his eye. She was blonde and ravishing, with a great set of tits. And she was trying to come onto him.
Felix was shocked when she introduced herself:
“I’m Fifi Wood, Holly’s daughter.”
She looked about half his age, and Felix did the math in his head.
Then he fainted.
Chapter 11. (Daddy Uncool)
Felix wasn’t easily shocked. He hadn’t labelled himself tri-sexual for no reason. He’d been there, done that and bought the t shirt on most occasions. But this one was new to him.
Could Fifi really be HIS daughter?
Holly interupted and dragged Fifi away from him, making up some excuse or other. She’d pretty much given Felix the cold shoulder since the night of the reunion concert. And now he was sure he knew why.
The only other thing puzzling him was Rhino Zagreb’s change in personality, or rather discovery of one in possession. Who knew?
Rhino of old made no effort to say boo to a ghost. New Rhino was seemingly everyone’s best friend. What a difference 25 years makes.
Felix ordered another vodka mixer and watched across the bar as Holly introduced Fifi to Rhino. She was flirting with him now, definitely a cut off the old cock, he thought, convinced now more than ever.
She had his good looks and personality.
When Holly started flirting with Rhino as well, it became too much for Felix to bear and he turned to face the opposite direction.
Cherry had yet to arrive and Felix was worried about her. She was becoming increasingly jaded by Holly’s spotlight hogging, and the bad feeling between them was just increasing tenfold.
As he was taking his latest selfie for his now some 67,000 followers, he heard gasps and some commotion going on behind him.
He turned around again to see that Cherry had finally arrived in her most sensationalistic outfit yet.
She looked like a bi-sexual man’s delight.
Like Dr Jekyll and Ms Hyde!
Half of her was dressed as the slut droppin’ Cherry Fontaine, with rosso corsa red bobbed hair, bright matching lipstick and a drop dead gorgeous, plunging neckline dress.
The other half was dressed as her nerdus mcdorkus alias Chesney Foster, complete with brown chords, plaid picnic blanket shirt and pattern-clashing polka dot bowtie; and most unusual of all: half a national health thick-rimmed spectacle frame.
Felix went over to tell her she looked great. Well at least half of her did anyway.
“I’ve changed my name by deed poll to Cherry Chesney,” she announced. “I’ve decided to embrace my unisexual androgyny.”
Needless to say all eyes were no longer on Holly Wood and she was absolutely fuming.
Some press from the Daily Mirror were there and hovered around Cherry taking her picture and asking questions.
Rhino popped over with a drink for Felix.
“How’s it hanging?” he asked.
“Well it was to the left, until the girls showed up,” replied Felix.
“The years have certainly been kind,” Rhino agreed, licking his lips.
“You seem to be getting on well with them both,” noted Felix.
“Holly’s great. And I like Cherry,” he nodded toward her. “She’s certainly looking the part tonight.”
Felix looked over and saw Cherry, still quite the centre of attention and loving it, and Holly not quite so much.
He then excused himself and went outside for a cigarette, where he bumped into Fifi Wood again.
The buttons on her blouse were becoming further undone every time he saw her and he was trying his hardest not to look where a magnet usually drew his eyes.
Fifi was definitely her mother’s daughter. And as Felix feared, her father’s too.
“I didn’t realise Holly had married?” he said, taking another puff of his cigarette.
It was raining lightly and they sheltered in the doorway.
“She never did,” Fifi said, attempting to light up herself.
Felix automatically went to stop her.
“You shouldn’t,” he said. “It’s a really bad habit.”
He’d only had a couple of drinks, well two or three at most, but he suddenly felt really funny. And not funny ha ha either.
He went to move and lost his balance.
Fifi caught him before he could fall onto the pavement.
“Are you okay?” she asked, concerned.
Then she started to feel dizzy and stumbled herself.
They hold each other up as they walk down a dark alleyway, each feeling as sick as the other.
Fifi’s heel gets caught in a drain and she falls into the gutter.
They are not alone.
Someone is watching them.
Felix croutches down to check if she is okay and to help her back up, but everything is spinning and his vision has become blurred.
Then he blacks out.
Chapter 12. (Cliffhanger)
It’s the morning after the nightmare before and Holly is frantic.
“Open up Felix, I know she’s in there,” she screams, banging on his apartment door, so hard her knuckles are almost bleeding.
The door opens and Felix stands before her, stark bollock naked, holding all but his modesty in just one hand.
Holly brushes past him and heads straight to the bedroom. Felix follows puzzled, finding some boxer shorts on the way and putting them on as he does.
Holly checks under the bed and in the wardrobe too.
“Let me know when you’ve finished,” Felix says, bemused but clutching his forehead. His head is absolutely banging.
He goes into the bathroom to take some painkillers.
Holly joins him as he’s brushing his teeth.
“Where is she?” she demands.
“Where’s who?” mumbles Felix, with a mouthful of toothpaste, still confused.
Holly is practically in tears.
“Your daughter!” she squeals.
Felix is rinsing his mouth and nearly chokes on it, spitting as he does.
“My what?” he gasps.
“She never came home last night,” Holly sobs.
Felix is still a step behind.
“Fifi is my daughter?” he feigns in shock, though he is clearly feigning feigned shock. “And you never told me?”
“Actually I did once,” claims Holly. “But you were so drunk all the time, you forgot.”
This time the surprise is on Felix, or rather not. How could he forget his own daughter? Was his drunken 80s and drugged up 90s haze that bad?
“Does she know?” Felix asks. “Maybe she ran away?”
“No,” says Holly. “And she’s 24. Not 11.”
Felix has a flashback to the party and remembers being sick in the alleyway - with HIS FRIGGIN’ DAUGHTER - but then nothing. He elects not to mention it.
“I’m sure she’s okay. She probably just went home with a friend,” he insists instead.
“I’m calling the police,” Holly says as she frantically tries to dial her phone, but she’s shaking so much, she drops it on the floor.
They bend down to pick it up simultaneously and clash heads.
Felix catches Holly’s eye and they share a brief moment, but just as he’s about to kiss her – to comfort her, of course – her phone rings and she pulls from the would-be embrace.
Caller ID shows that it’s Fifi.
“Fifi! Where the devil are you?” Holly yells down the phone furiously, as she goes off into another room for privacy.
Felix finds some jeans and pulls them on, closely followed by a ‘Felix Says Relax’ t shirt, and starts to make a cup of tea.
When Holly returns, she looks like she’s carrying her tail between her legs.
“She’s fine,” she says, having calmed down a touch. “She slept on a friend’s couch.”
“I think we all had too much to drink,” Felix declares. “But from what I can remember it was a pretty good night.”
“I should probably go,” Holly says.
“Are you sure I can’t tempt you with a cup of tea?” Felix asks.
But Holly is too embarrassed, makes her excuses and leaves.
Max Jacks calls Felix to tell him some good news.
‘Supermarket Checkout Operator’ has been out digitally since midnight and has already reached the heady heights of no.177 in the midweek chart.
Now they just have to figure out a way to increase the bands profile and in turn, sales, to get it higher, which is going to be no mean feat given that half the band are still at loggerheads.
Felix is still in shock at discovering that Holly was in the same room with him, whilst he was wearing only his underpants, and able to resist his Sex-Godliness.
Oh and that he has a 24-year-old daughter that he never knew about!
And Holly is still smiting that Cherry overshadowed her at the single release party.
Felix goes to pour himself another cup of tea, officially cementing himself as a quintessentially old British tea drinking pensioner.
At that very moment, the paperboy pushes a copy of The Sun newspaper through Felix’s letterbox and to his utter dismay, his worst fears are realised.
Plastered all over the front page is a censored picture of him in bed with his daughter Fifi, along with the headline:
Pop Incest Shocker!
There is another loud knock on the door, but this time it’s the police… and he’s also under arrest for sodomising the Aunt Sally waxwork dummy from Master Tussauds!
It seems pop’s big comeback is almost over before it’s even begun.
Rhino arrives just in time to see Felix lead away in handcuffs, looking concerned until the panda cop car pulls away.
Then he grins wickedly.
He goes home, unlocks a padlock on the door to his basement floor hatch, turns on a torch and climbs down the steps inside his sex dungeon.
It’s dark and kinky, but there tied up in a cage in the corner at the back – naked, bound and gagged - is his absolute doppelganger.
Chapter 13. (Doppelganger)
So Rhino Zagreb is a changed man. In the 80s he was aloof and an unknown commodity. A man plucked from obscurity to bang a cymbal and mime next to three complete strangers for four years, nearly 30 years ago. A tagalong on a wild ride he didn’t really participate in.
FFWD to present day and he is unrecognisable, some might say literally as no-one can really remember what he looked like.
There is a vague resemblance. The only trouble is he also happens to have a complete doppelganger chained up in a secret basement sex dungeon.
So just who is the real Rhino Zagreb?
Let’s run through the possible scenarios, shall we…
What is the very definition of a doppelganger?
A vision of one’s self out of the corner of one’s eye. An apparition or double of a living person, someone that looks exactly the same as another person.
It’s derived from the German language, basically meaning ‘ghostly double’, one who completely resembles another that is of no biological relation.
But it is believed to be an omen of death if one ever sees one’s doppelganger and neither Rhino 1 nor 2 has croaked it yet, so I guess that’s that one out of the window.
Scenario 2: The long lost evil twin.
Were the Rhino’s twin brothers separated at birth?
Perhaps Mrs Zagreb had twins but could only be bothered (or indeed afford) to bring one child up, so she farmed the other out to an orphanage, maybe even left him in a cardboard box outside a church?
Cardboard box Rhino was brought up by an evil nun, always made to feel unwanted and unloved. And now he’s out for revenge, so he’s stolen non-cardboard box Rhino’s life, switching identities, as well as Swarovski crystal encrusted underpants.
Nah! This isn’t a cheesy soap opera!
Could kidnapper Rhino just be a bog standard imposter? An obsessed fan of rival pop band Pink Champagne called Hawky Andrews - so consumed with avenging Jade Astley’s death on the bridge of doooooom - he held a plastic surgeon up at gunpoint until he transformed him into Rhino’s double, to become a saboteur. His quest: to ruin Tequila Sun’s comeback.
Actually that’s not as far-fetched as it sounds. He is obsessed Pink Champagne fan Hawky Andrews. He is out to avenge the death of famed pop scrubber Jade Astley. And he is on a mission to derail Tequila Sun’s comeback.
But he didn’t hold a plastic surgeon up at gunpoint. He didn’t have to. Cos he’s a witch. And he just used a cloning spell.
He simply took a poster of Rhino from Look-In magazine, crumpled it up in his hand and tied a crystal to it with string. Then he touched a mirror with his non dominant hand - and holding the paper and crystal in the other – chanted:
“Body, body, body of mine-o, I will you to change into the body of Rhine-o.
By the power of the full moon, I will you to change soon.”
He repeated this three times and dropped his pants for full effect… and hey presto, the next day he woke up as the complete, absolute doppelganger of Rhino Zagreb… without the dying when they meet each other part.
And they met each other when Hawky kidnapped the real Rhino and encaged him as a prisoner in his sex dungeon. Comes in handy. Every home should have one.
He also cast an additional spell to wipe real Rhino’s memory and make him believe he wasn’t real Rhino at all. In fact he doesn’t know who – or what -he is.
So Hawky is now Rhino. He just has an
amnesiac pet pop star in his sex dungeon. As you do.
I’d recommend this spell to anyone. It really does work. Although please be aware I’m not advocating pop star kidnap and cloning’s. Though if that hot hunk-a-spunk with a ‘tight fit’ was in town…
Anyway fake Rhino’s plan is now fully in motion.
He talked Cherry Fontaine into becoming Cherry Chesney and stealing the limelight from Holly… if only to extend their animosity towards each other.
He spiked Felix’s drink and tricked him into believing he had slept with his own long lost secret daughter Fifi… just to keep him and Holly at arm’s length.
And he was also responsible for Felix getting arrested for the infamous waxwork dummy incident.
The scandal was soon all over the trashy tabloids and fake Rhino hoped it would spell the true, very final death of the band.
But it didn’t.
In fact, his plan backfired.
Felix was released from prison, all charges were dropped.
And the public loved it and lapped it up.
Tequila Sun were not only back but they were back in their very own soap opera too. And it was so far-fetched it was almost incredible. This was the Tequila Sun the public well and truly loved.
Felix was a star again.
And with all the free publicity, the band’s comeback single ‘Supermarket Checkout Operator’ stormed the pop charts.
Soon it was hovering just outside of the top 10.
It may have stalled at number 11 but mark my words, Tequila Sun were back in the big-time again.
And fake Rhino only had himself to blame.
Chapter 14. (Unlucky Star)
Felix is a free man again!
He’d spent almost a week behind bars, dropped the soap and lived to tell the tale.
While at his lowest point, sat cowering in a prison cell, convinced his life (and career) were over, he’d lamented his bad luck and written a song about the irony of it all.
He serenaded the other prisoners, particularly his back scrubbing buddy.
And it went something like this...
Pop Tarts: Omnibus Edition Page 4