Buster Bloodvessel And Bad Manners

I loved Buster Bloodvessel and Bad Manners - one of the best things to ever happen to our pop charts. This is the Special Brew picture disc - cheers, Buster!

Here, Buster demonstrates posh nosh for the 1980s on Tiswas - pork pie broken up into a jar of pickled onions and swigged down straight from the jar. Yum!

The Sun, 8 July 1981 - and Buster Bloodvessel and Bad Manners are kicking up their Doc Martens for their version of The Can Can. Bliss. How do I love thee? Let me count the ways...

FRILLY BUSTER

Can-can your eyes believe it?

Big, bald, beefy Buster Bloodvessel, the lead singer of Bad Manners, as a can-can girl?

If you saw last week's Top Of The Pops they certainly can-can!

Buster, 22, is notorious in the pop world for looking outrageous.

But this time he has really done it. He turned himself into an ooh-la-la lovely to celebrate Bad Manners' sixth hit single, Can Can, which shot to No 3 in just ten days.

I was invited to Buster's final fitting of the bouncy, frilly frock.

There was our pin up-in all his glory. A lurid, yellow, shiny frock festooned with petticoats and ghastly black lace.

And poking out from under it all, his massive Doc Marten boots.

It took dressmaker Roz Tosh about twenty minutes to get round him. At 5ft 9in he measures 46-42½-45.

Our hero grinned and flexed his muscles.

Buster said: "I've always fancied the Can Can dancers - very ooh-la-la - but it wasn't until I heard the original version that I realised we should do it.

"Orpheus In The Underworld it is, actually.

"It came on the car radio one day when I was driving to a mate's home. It just blew my ears off.

"The others were as knocked out by it as I was."

Bad Manners have hardly put a foot wrong since.

The nine-man North London band have had little bovver when it comes to hits.

Buster (or Doug as his friends call him) is a nice, cheerful, friendly, fun bloke.

"Of course I'm happy," he said. "Of course I'm jokey. You have to be when you walk down the street and can hear people shouting 'Look at that fat bloke with the bald head'."

Buster lives at home with his mum in Stoke Newington, North London.

"We are all on £60 a week, so there's no way we can be flash on that," he said. "But I'm not complaining.

"I couldn't be happier. I couldn't give THIS for money."

And with an almighty effort he whooshed his right Doc Marten boot up in a kick as high as his head.

Roz said: "I'm thinking of offering his dress to Lady Di when Buster's finished with it."

It could always double as the marquee for her wedding reception!

The Sun again, October 23, 1981:

O Buster!

A Superman hit means he's quids down!

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it's... Buster Bloodvessel!

Pop's loveable bruiser donned his Superman suit this week after losing a £10 bet over Laurie Anderson's smash hit O Superman.

Bad Manners lead singer Buster, 23, says: "I went round to a mate's house a couple of weeks ago and he was playing this weird record called O Superman.

"He was jumping up and down, saying, 'Listen to this. It's going to be a big hit.'

"With great wisdom I said, 'Pull the other one.'

"It's a smashing record, but I never thought it would be a hit. So I bet him a tenner.

"Now it's at Number Two, and it looks like it'll soon be Number One!"

But Buster - real name Doug Trendle - is taking his losses lightly.

This week, Bad Manners notch up their fifth Top Twenty hit with Walkin' In The Sunshine (Magnet), and their new album Gosh It's Bad Manners has hurtled in at number 26.

What's more pop's unlikeliest pin-up looks set for a lucrative career in advertising.

He says: "I have to shove my head every morning. And I figured that since I use so much shaving foam and razor blades I might as well get paid for publicising it. Makes sense, dunnit?

"So I wrote off to a couple of companies and, would you believe it, they're interested.

And he is writing to the Milk Marketing Board (he drinks pints of it) and to every beer company (he drinks gallons of that, too). But his greatest ambition is to promote picked onions. He says: "Pickled onions are unbeatable. My trick is to open the jar, eat half the onions, then stick a pork pie in and shake it about a bit before swallowing the whole lot down. Lovely!"

British audiences will be seeing a lot more of Buster and the boys on stage. The nine-man band kicked off a marathon British tour last night in Birmingham.

They are playing 23 gigs in as many days and Buster does not deny that even his legendary energy will be sapped.

The boys drink "a few crates" before each performance and Buster downs six pints afterwards.

"Otherwise," he says, "I would be in danger of losing my figure." Beefy Buster has never considered his rippling 18 stones to be a problem.

He says: "I never used to think about my size until people started saying I was fat.

"But I don't care. My Beauty is part of my irresistible charm to women."

The Sun's Gossip Column revealed exclusively this week that Buster has been asked to pose in the all-together by a woman's magazine.

Buster still lives with his parents in Stoke Newington, North London. He would love to buy a place of his own, but he is in no rush to marry.

He says: "I'm a young lad yet with women dropping at my feet - literally.

"I might be big and bald and beautiful, but it's my boots they go for!"