There were three main culprits that gave the karaoke night a touch of the Jekyll and Hydes. The first one is a fuck. Well five fucks actually. A somewhat dubious Turkish schnapps called Fuck (there may have been some tampering on the original label) was served up in five identical shot glasses set in a neat row along the bar. You then downed each glass one by one until the last one which you picked up with your teeth and simply threw your head back to down the drink. When this remarkable feat was completed, the barman handed you a certificate that read: ‘I had five fucks at Club Hab’.

The second culprit was a Flügel (vodka and Red Bull – and this was before you could find Red Bull in any bar anywhere). The drink was deadly, but more deadly for the barman. The drink was served in a large wine glass with a big chunk of ice in it. After you’d skolled your drink you flicked the large piece of ice at the barman as hard as you could. With ten or so people downing their drinks at once the barman would get a blitzkrieg of ice.

The third culprit was the most bizarre of all. It was called a ‘Nipple Suction’ and if that name conjures up horrible images, well, let me tell you that it was a whole lot worse. An iridescent blue drink was poured into a wine glass, set on fire by the barman and placed carefully on (usually) a man’s chest over his nipple. The oxygen is sucked out of the glass by the flame, the flame goes out and the person is left standing there looking rather silly with a glass of strange blue stuff stuck to their chest. The recipient then jumps up and down and dances around while the glass  remains firmly stuck. When it is finally pulled off, making the noise similar to a wet plunger being pulled off a kitchen sink, he would skoll the drink. What stopped me ever trying it was the terrible looking red welts left on the poor guy’s chest – which would often scab up. Seeing girls do it was even more entertaining – the glass would be full of breast. It truly was a weird and wonderful sight to behold. More amusing still, I once saw a guy try out on his testicles. This was not a pretty sight. He ended up with singed, smelly pubes and a rather red face.

Needles to say I can’t quite remember in detail many of those karaoke nights, but the photos on the wall always looked like everyone was having fun.

Sadly Club Hab closed down a few years ago, so I’m not sure where the visiting folk in Kirchberg get their fucks from anymore.

Even God Is Single, So Stop Giving Me A Hard Time.
English as a Second F*cking Language.
If You Can’t Live Without Me, Why Aren’t You Dead Yet?!
When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops?
Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Human Intelligence but Were Too Dumb to Ask.
How to Murder Your Mother in Law.
There’s a (slight) Chance I’m Going to Hell.
The Joy of Chickens. 

And sometimes titles just don’t quite work…

(…continued from previous blog)

I had my rather large stroke of luck in the stage between the ‘publishing editor’ and the ‘publisher’. My agent had sent my book to a ‘publishing editor’ who liked it but the publisher didn’t. The publishing editor, however, was about to move jobs to another publisher, so she asked if she could take it with her. She was moving to children’s books (and Rule No.5: No sex on the bus was perhaps a little risqué for seven year olds), so she handed it to another publishing editor. That publishing editor didn’t really like it that much, though, and wasn’t going to recommend it to the publisher. And this is where my good luck comes in. The publisher (Sophie Cunningham – who is now a successful author herself) walked past the publishing editor’s desk and saw my manuscript on the top of a pile and thought the title sounded interesting and picked it up. She had a read and three months later I signed a deal with Allen & Unwin.

About 12 months after ‘Rule No.5: No sex on the bus’ was published I was at a ‘publishing’ party (lots of people wearing cravats and berets) and I spotted the agent who said that ‘no one wants to read that shit’ (everyone was wearing name tags). I marched over to him and said, ‘What the FUCK do you know! That shit you rejected is a bestseller and has been re-printed seven times.’ Okay, I didn’t do that. I thought I’d get a couple of more beers into me to get the courage up and by the time I’d done that he’d gone. 

I’ve had quite a few emails over the years asking how I got started in the travel-writing caper, so I thought I’d share with you how it all began.

The first thing I did was to get retrenched.

Twice.

I’ve had two silly dreams come true after I got retrenched. The first time I ‘lost’ my job (I was working as an art director in advertising where retrenching is as common as refilling the water cooler) I searched for another job straight away, but there was nothing around. Then, one day simply out of sheer boredom, I was flicking through the employment section of the newspaper and spotted a job for ‘summer tour leaders in Europe’. That sounded like fun, but what really caught my eye was it also had ‘plus ski resort work available in winter’ (on my first ever European ski holiday in Switzerland I was so envious of the ski guide and thought he had the best job in the world). I got the job as a tour leader and in my first winter scored the job as a ski guide in Switzerland.

After destroying my liver for three years I returned home to Australia and back into advertising. Three years later the retrenchment axe fell again. While I was looking for work (well, while I was sitting at home watching Judge Judy) I started to write down some stories from my days on the road with Top Deck (I’d kept a detailed journal). After I’d written a couple of stories I thought ‘hey, this could make a really funny book’. I decided then to take four months off and told everyone I knew that I was writing a book (so that they’d keep asking how my book was going!). Five months later I had a 78,000 word manuscript. Fourteen drafts later, and after I made most of my friends read it and give comments, I sent the manuscript to ten literary agents (the pic above is of the cover I put together for the manuscript). It didn’t augur well to begin with, though. I had three rejection letters including one that said: ‘No one wants to read that shit’.  I’d almost given up when, in the space of a week, I had three agents write to me offering to take me on as a client. (click here for Part 2)