Fred Wedlock has loads of stories to tell. He has been in the business for over forty years and it's fair to say he has had one or two bad gigs along the way. Put it down to mis-communication, lack of publicity, bad luck, reputation of the venue or just being in the wrong place at the wrong time. What you would put this worst gig down to I don't know but Fred survived and lived to tell the tale:

One classic. Muslim military gigs can be challenging. Used to be wonderful sometimes, then you'd go to visit some very exotic places and I've seen some very interesting, illegal and dangerous parts of the world and some boring ones as well. Germany isn't the most fascinating thing you've ever seen, but one of the classics was a German gig I did at Rheindahlen at Sheik headquarters. The NAAFI at Rheindahlen is one of those gigs which, if you talk to anyone in showbiz - and you talk about the Glasgow Empire, people will start shivering or Sunderland Catholic Club, you know, - there are certain gigs which are known as rough. The NAAFI at Rheindahlen had this reputation.

I was touring with this guitar player Chris Newman, brilliant musician, and we regarded ourselves as a musical outfit really, you know doing more clevery stuff and wordy stuff, and a wonderful group of mates called 'Mechanical Horse trough' who come from Trowbridge. They raised obscenity to an art form and were a wonderful bunch of lads. There was also a girl singer who was lovely and willowy and pretty and folksy. We were touring a pantomime just before Christmas called 'Cat Whittington and His Dick' which we'd written specifically for service audiences. This was a long time ago, it was very rude and ...... gloriously and magnificently rude. We'd been doing this tour around the German bases mainly in the folk clubs and Chris and I were absolutely creaming it. We were selling records like God knows what and we were having a great old time. The lads kept saying 'yes Thursday's the NAAFI at Rheindahlen, don't worry too much about that' and we were saying 'whoooh we can cope with anything!'

So we get to Rheindahlen and it's huge and for some reason there is the largest contingent of ladies with sensible shoes that I've ever seen. Also every rough regiment you've ever heard of and mixed regiments as well, usually a bit of inter-service rivalry and that kind of situation. So we get up to do our show and we were doing our separate acts to begin with and then we were this pantomime to finish of in the second half. The girl goes out there to start off the show and within about ten bars you heard 'get your tits out', half of it's from the women the rest is from the blokes and the Padre is joining in as well! We were going 'God Almighty', then me and Chris go on and try and get away with it. 'Mechanical Horsetroff' and Jim tried to hold it. And its rough. We're handling hecklers, we're using every put down you know and everything. Then we start the panto in the second half. They're coming at us, we're going at them, we're altering lines as we go and every line is ending up with duck or rollocks and something like that and we get through it.

Bloody marvellous.'  And then they reeled of a list of top ranking artists, because it's a big NAAFI with lots of money, top artists who died and ran off in tears. They said 'Englebert Humperdink did three songs and they had him off and Tom Jones. Bob Monkhouse eleven minutes he lasted'. And we got through our act. Then the committee ask 'Can you come back next year?' .......'Yeah of course'  but we weren't going back really. It was unbelievable. We've had more frightening ones than that but we were mob handed on the stage and anyway there is a certain discipline within the Army and nobody's going to get up and attack you. There are checks and balances within but you get a lot that are amusing."

Fred Wedlock - Famous Bristol Musician