WOEBOT

Back to Skool.

Was delighted to come across this ad in the back of yesterdays paper. I called the number and they said come on down. Which was on the floor above Office Angels on Oxford Street. I waited 10 minutes in the lobby (Aspidestra and a coffee table straining with back issues of Mojo and Q) before I was called in to see Tony.

Tony asked me if I'd had any experience of this kind of thing, whether I had any University qualifications (not that I needed them he said). I said I'd done some writing on the Internet, where I'd written exclusively about music for OVER A YEAR! Tony said: "Oh you think you're that bloke who's got a publishing deal do you! Wise up sucker!" He said you don't know anything sonny. Tony had apparently interviewed some of the big acts in the eighties: McCartney, T'Pau, Peter Tosh. People who had shifted serious units. Oh so you like that funny music do you Matthew! Tony proceeded to tell me some toe-curling stories about life on the road with Stiff Little Fingers. It's not what you know, any monkey can shuffle around on Google, it's WHO you know, and he hinted that previous graduates had been able to rifle through his little black book. One guy apparently works for Sky's magazine on the back of a phone-call Tony had made to a mate.

For the first 120 quid Tony would tell me what gigs I should attend, and he would mark 5 gig reviews. He'd also provide me with 3 recent promotional releases (2 Rock and 1 Dance) which I would have to review. One 500 word review and one 100 word review of each gig, again for his perusal. We laughed about the 500 review, apparently that gives the students a right headache. Tony said he could sort me out with a cracked copy of Microsoft Word if I needed one ("Word is your friend Matthew!") and even a laptop ("not the latest model, but satisfactory") I might even be able to get some things published through the course, not for money, but it always looks good on the old CV. The Academy has strong links with a load of mags.

Okay, that's not true.

This course is actually the brainchild of me, Dave Stelfox and Mickey Toughlove; and if you've got a blog or are a regular contributor to ILM you get a 25% discount (not applicable to over forties). We've got some big names down as Course Contributors; none of whom we've asked yet, but hopefully we'll get clearance before we publish the sylabbus.

Okay, that's not true either.