Escaping a thigh piercing from the muzzle of a dribbling DMX and clutching at the box of an original Stylophone, complete with Rolf Harris’ How To Play 7″, Paul skips whistling from the curb where his driver waits, to a secret door between a beads shop and deep fried takeaway dive in furthest East London.
James Morrison, working the middle shift between Blunt and Hucknall, takes Paul’s coat to the hanger, then, stands with his back to the recent arrival before bending forward to touch his toes. With a sigh and roll of the eyes at protocol, Paul, as burdened as ever by his status, shuffles up tightly to his carriage, who pops his Sir over the shoulders and jumps each of the purple carpeted stairs.
Throughout the journey, the passenger pens some notes on his new instrument and before long has a melody to which he freestyles couplets about Prince’s choice in colour schemes and Harris’ ignorance towards left handedness.
“I’ll record that in morse and upload it in my name reversed’ he plans.
Panting, Morrison interrupts Paul’s chorus, sung predominantly in his newly picked up skills of ancient Latvian, to suggest the composer could hold the stylus in either hand as it doesn’t make a difference, but Paul’s already paged his team and Rolf’s just signed a contract to work on a left handed model of the device that he had actually only ever promoted rather than engineered.
Rolf has two weeks, will get no royalties for the work and will lose custody of all his rescued cats if he misses the deadline, which he works violently to beat whilst humming questions down his didgeridoo as to why it had to be him and not Stardust to come up against the wrath of McLaw.
At the top of the stairs, Morrison gratefully accepts his tip, a Wings pin badge, and places it with the rest on his blazer’s sleeve. Paul enters the lounge and sits with Bob who’s gargling a flute of pebble laced earl grey.
“Lil’ Wayne’s voice gets deadlier by the mixtape. I don’t know how much more of this I can take” says the angelically voiced Bob to Paul, avoiding eye contact in favour of his 61st ‘The Genius Of…’ Rolling Stone cover article.
“Don’t box yourself in Robert, man. The only way you’ll out crackle Lil’ is if you take to cough syrup addiction too. It’d be too blatant a gag, and where would it end? Just come clean. You’re a choir boy and can actually sing.” replies Paul.
Now, the fireplace rotates to reveal a 52” widescreen TV set that flickers with static before presenting the room with a cross atlantic, Hawaiian shirted Starkey.
“What’s up dudes? I’ve been listening to what you’ve said and there’s like, no harm in totally changing your slang, O.K?” he yanks, as the picture of him wearing an LA Lakers baseball cap and holding a hotdog fades, rotating back into fireplace flames.
“Was that vegan? It was vegan, right?” strums Paul on a series of cardboard toilet roll inners, blue tacked together and decorated with elastic bands to use as differently tuned strings for a forthcoming experimental project called ‘The Shit’.