If you've been looking through my site and flickrstream, you'll know how good I am at making friends with the brilliant, the talented, the glamourous; hell, even when fate conspires to keep me from them, it seems it can't do any more than create the one degree of separation! In proof of which, I present my wife Pauline D's account of her friendship with one of my all-time faves - Sid Vicious! (The real lowdown on Sid Vicious - that's gotta be good for my site traffic! Wonder if I can get Pauline to write about her friendships with "Ratty Tatlock" - aka Glen Matlock and "Obla" (after the Beatles' "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da") - aka Wally Nightingale...)

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As a teenager I grew up in Hackney, East London. A bit of a rough and ready area, as London goes. I always worked as a child, various part time jobs which meant that I was always working in the evening after school and all day Saturday. At one point I was working at a fish and chip shop called "Fine Fry" which was the heart and soul of Well Street Market, and it was here that I first met John Beverley. Well Street Market was mainly a Saturday market, though some of the stalls set up during the week as well. You could buy almost anything at Well Street Market; from fish stalls, tights and make-up stalls, fancy goods stalls; all the way thru to animal stalls which sold puppies and kittens; and of course the ever present vegetable stalls. I can remember the Saturday that I met John as clearly as if it were yesterday. Fine Fry was a long, narrow chip shop with a counter running all the way to the back. Along the wall opposite the counter was a row of about eight or nine booths, each capable of seating up to four people. At the back of the shop was a small kitchen area where the fish filleting was done. I can remember coming out of the kitchen and walking behind the counter; I was getting ready to lay the tables for the lunch time sitting. My co-worker at the weekend was a girl named Sharon Say. She was polishing the knives and forks, and as I came around the counter behind her I noticed this really skinny guy sitting at one of the tables. What made him stand out so much was his Marc Bolan hairdo. I can remember saying to Sharon, 'look at that boy's hair, it's great; and look how thin he is.' I have always had a "thing" for skinny people. Anyway, Sharon said that his name was John Beverley and that she would introduce me if I wanted her to. If I wanted her to? Of course I wanted her to.  In the three or four years that I knew him, I never heard John refer to himself by any other name; and so I shall refer to him as John, the name by which I knew him. Others would have known him as Sid Vicious. It was the beginning of 1972 when I first met him and the Sex Pistols hadn't been thought of as yet. John became a regular figure in the chip shop every Saturday, and you could also sometimes find him there on a Friday evening, as it was there that he started selling speed. Over the weeks that passed we became quite good friends. I always found him to be a quiet, thoughtful person. I remember that I had only known him for about five or six months when he suddenly stopped coming to the chip shop. Nobody knew why. Then, after a few months he reappeared, charge sheet in hand. He had been to borstal; Ashford in Kent, I think. He was very proud of his charge sheet, but he never let anybody get more than a glimpse of it. One day, however, I managed to get a closer look at it, and in this way I learnt that his real name was Simon Ritchie, a name that he hated and never used. I could never understand why they insisted on using that name in the movie Sid and Nancy. It was a name he didn't want other people to know about and he would never have used it as he hated it. He always called himself John Beverley. If you called him Simon he would at the very least ignore you, at most give you a thump on the arm. I witnessed a few people who thought they were being smart get that thump on the arm. Why he hated his legal name so much, I don't know; he would never talk about it. John was always the last to go home. We used to hang around in a gang and as the evening wore on the gang would get slowly smaller, since we all had to be in at different times. John was always the last to go home, he didn't have to be in at any time. He was always the last one standing there looking so sad, as if he didn't have a home to go to. He did of course have a home, he lived in a block of flats behind Hackney Town Hall, kind of between Mare Street and Kingsland Road. His mother never seemed to be at home and on the few occassions that I visted his flat, there was never any normal food in the fridge. I can remember one evening when we were both starving, going back to his flat and all there was in the fridge was a lettuce and a garlic bulb.

"Abstract Sid Vicious" (2009). Painting: Die Brucke 2009.

 John was very fashion conscious, he had a huge collection of really nice expensive shirts. He always dressed well. He was very aware of his height, he hated being so tall. I remember once in the chip shop, I was in the kitchen with Sharon, who told me that John wanted to go out with me. I remember saying to her, 'but he's so big.' He was standing outside the kitchen door and he heard me. He looked so hurt. John Lydon, who I have never met, said in his book that John was a virgin when he met him. Well I'm telling you I know first hand that he wasn't. There are a few other myths that have been written about him, mostly by people who never even knew him. He was basically just someone who was very easily led. He would do anything, and I mean just about anything to get people to like him. He always wanted to be the loudest or the boldest, or the best at everything. He really just needed to be accepted and he needed to be liked. He was always kind and he loved animals. A few times over the Christmas holidays, he went with me to feed the cat at the chip shop. It was a black and white cat and its name, was (of course) Chips. I can remember John spending hours playing with that cat. John could be witty and very funny. I remember that there was a shirt that he wanted, but couldn't afford. It was a Ben Sherman. I remember John sitting up all night, converting one of his mother's blouses into a Ben Sherman. He replaced all the buttons with plain white shirt buttons, which he also stitched onto the collar; and he spent ages carefully stitching the famous fold down the back of the shirt. He was so proud. When I called at his flat that Sunday afternoon, he had just finished it. He was wearing it when he answered the door to me. I admired it at first, then I broke into laughter, because being his mothers shirt, there was a seam underneath the bust line. John was not put off, however. He still wore the shirt, but with a waistcoat. He was able to see the funny side of it, and was quite capable of laughing at the fact that he had sat up all night sewing that famous Ben Sherman crease down the back of the shirt and now nobody would see it as he had to wear a waistcoat over it because of the bust seams. He always used to lay in bed late on a Sunday. If I called round his flat after Sunday lunch he would still be in bed, usually with a hangover. You could buy red wine by the half bottle and quarter bottle back then. We used to by a half or quarter bottle of wine and a can of Coke. The Coke we would dump, then we would put the wine in the coke can and proceed to get drunk. So usually on a Sunday afternoon he had a hangover, as we all did. He would make such a fuss about how you had woken him up, and about how you were ruining his beauty sleep, but it didn't last long. He was always pleased to see you. He always made me feel wanted. He was a very generous person; if he had money and you didn't he wouldn't loan you money, he would just pay for you. I saw many people take advantage of his kindness. He never expected to get paid back; whatever he had he would gladly share with you.That's why he was never very successful at drug dealing. I used to see the same people every Saturday; over and over again, all of them saying, 'oh, go on John, please give us a fiver's worth of whizz, I'll pay you next week.' When next week came they were back singing the same song.
 When I left school I also left the chip shop. Gradually the gang got smaller and smaller as we all drifted our separate ways. I only saw John a couple of times after he joined the Sex Pistols. I can remember saying, "Hiya Sid". He simply said, 'don't call me that'. So I didn't. He drifted away too, and I didn't see him anymore. I can remember the morning when I read the headlines saying he had died. I remember crying; not for Sid Vicious, but for the funny witty boy that I used to know. The sad lonely boy who was always last to go home, because there was never anybody there to go home to.

"Pauline D" (2009). Painting: Die Brucke 2009.

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