Hi John.

There's no easy way of carefully wording this, so I'll just go ahead and steamroller in. Sarah and I have been tremendous fans of Mark in his varied guises over the years. It's her 30th birthday on October 27th this year, and I'm trying to dream up some fantastic way of celebrating it. The idea is either to hire a cottage or a barge, get a sound system, a barbecue and a shitload of beer, and a night of drunken debauchery would ensue.

Then it hit me. The cottage could be anywhere in the country. The best thing in the world, ever, to mark her birthday would be to have Mark and Yves come along and play to her, and us. I've no idea what you would require in return to do this. I'd understand completely if you told me to get stuffed - I'm sure there are a lot of people who would like this to happen to them. The only things I have to offer are a potentially stunned audience of 20-30 people, lots of beer and food, money (not much, but we could arrange something perhaps), continued lifelong devotion, and my journalistic talents if you should ever need them for the band/Gethsemene.

There was a night in Planet X in Liverpool, with Mark and Brian playing some acoustic Chameleons tracks. There were about 15 people there, with Sarah and I standing right at the front. We were singing along with Mark, until they kicked them off because a bunch of leery twats wanted to dance. We still talk about it now - Sarah considers it to be one of the milestones in her life. Let me know if they could make another.

Thanks for listening,
andy

I contacted Mark and Yves a number of times subsequently, also speaking to them after their gig at The Borderline in Charing Cross Road, London - where Mark said goodbye to Sarah with a wink and a pronounced 'see you soon', which I thought would give the game away. She didn't twig, right up until the point where Yves called me on his mobile, and said 'We are outside your door'. And there they were, standing, tired from a four-hour nighttime drive, a guitar case each, and Sarah hugging them both.

They came inside, and instantly became comfortable with the atmosphere; chatting to everyone about anything and everything, about themselves, about the news, about music, about life; they ate, drank, played with the cats. And then they played. God, did they play. First Happy New Life, a song from the Sons of God album Zima Junction - just a glorious version. The crowd, such as it was, took some time to settle so the start was blocked by loud voices, but after a few seconds everyone was captured. Then Paradiso, Sarah's favourite, and a classic Chameleons track. Yves is a fan of The Chameleons, but he'd never really played many of their songs, so when Sarah and I asked them to play Paradiso he had some trouble initially, but he's a clever guy and he picked it up quickly. This made me well up with happiness, only at this point realising just who we had in our kitchen. Then it was a current Invincible classic, Think, followed by The Chameleons' Is It Any Wonder, then Invincible's Spooks, a future single. Lastly they played David Bowie's Moonage Daydream, one of Mark's favourite records. As Yves packed away his guitar, Mark began strumming chords, looking thoughtful with his cigarette dangling. He was practising the chords for Lou Reed's Perfect Day, one of Sarah's favourite records - although he didn't know this beforehand. He played it for her, while everyone else got on with the party, singing very softly as he wasn't sure of the words, encouraging her to sing with him because she did. It made her very, very happy indeed. I borrowed a digital video camera from work, and I have the whole set on tape which I'll try to digitise at some point and distribute here; but Perfect Day will rarely be seen by either me, Sarah, or anyone again; it will live only in our memory forever.

The rest of the evening was a blast; all Sarah's good friends together. We played games, drank stupid quantities of alcohol; I'm not a heavy drinker and yet I seemed to stay sober. Mark didn't want to drink after around 1am, because he knew he'd be driving back later. People started to leave about this point, until eventually it was just Mark, Yves, Sarah and I and the two cats. We talked incessantly, me wanting to learn more about my idol of some 15 years, and liking Yves so much I feel I've known him for that long. Throughout the evening Yves kept going through all our CDs, putting on odd tracks and saying "I love this," and "I love that." Some of the bands, albums and songs they love surprised me - Depeche Mode, for example - while others such as Smashing Pumpkins didn't. We got to talking about video games, which I make for a living (I work for Bullfrog Productions), and Yves has a PC while Mark recently bought a PlayStation. I got a bunch of PSX games together which I don't play any more, and promised to get some PC ones for Yves. Yves mentioned about him building an old 486 to automate his mixing desk, but not being able to get some of the bits: luckily I had a 486 in the garage, going damp, which I have been trying to give away - he took it with thanks. That was the thing that really struck me - they thanked us for allowing them to play for us. Unbelievable. They wouldn't take any money for it or anything, and they're not exactly well-off.

I can honestly say that outside of my group of close-knit friends and family, I have never met two more genuine, likeable, charming and entertaining people as Mark and Yves. As Sarah said later, 'it's impossible not to build your heroes up onto a pedestal, which gives them further to fall'. Well, Mark and Yves sure had a long way to fall; but I don't mind saying I cried when they left that morning. It's easy to say all we have now are the memories; but we have so much more. We have made contact with our idols; and they are great.

Andy

PS. I left a few disposable cameras around the room, and a few came out. See them here :)