Archive: Hunting For Dogs

From issue 2, March 2005:

Break out a fresh pair of panties, bitches of Nottingham — Snoop Dogg is coming to town. He’s the mack you can’t help but love, and it’s been over a decade since his last visit to Britain. The Stool Pigeon naturally wanted to grab an interview, so I started by calling his record label. “Snoop isn’t talking to anyone on this tour,” they say. What? Surely sometime in his week here there’ll be a half hour when I might be allowed to hang off his shirt-tails while he pads about his hotel room crossing the ‘t’s on an upcoming Hollywood movie deal or dotting the ‘i’s on the prototype for his upcoming signature barbecue unit, the Snoop DeGrill. The guy’s an icon. Half the young western world is saying “fo’ shizzle” because of him. He must be keen to explain himself to his British fans.

Four more calls later and it seems Snoop really is refusing to be interviewed. Pity. It might have been eventful, considering my record of needlessly disrespectful encounters with bona fide celebrities.

To John Cleese, between takes on a movie set: “Say John, can I get an auto…whoah, fuck ME you’re tall, CAN YOU HEAR ME UP THERE?”

To Boy George at the adjacent urinal in a nightclub toilet: “Karma karma karma are you trying to look at my cock?”

To Roy Walker in a refectory: “Fuck, sorry, was that your plate? SAY WHAT YOU SEE ROY! SAY WHAT YOU SEE! YOUR PASTA IS ON THE FLOOR!”

I wonder how the bad-boy megastar that has endured a public lifetime of murder trials and death threats would put up with my, uh, ‘hard-line’ questioning: “So, you’re called Snoop ’cos your folks thought you looked like Snoopy the fat cartoon dog, yeah? Were they fucking blind or what? Snoopy was white, and to be frank, you look like a scrawny cat, if anything…”

I can see the eyes narrowing already.

“You’re real first names are Calvin Cordozar, right? And you went and called your kids Corde, Cordell and Cori? Does your knowledge of the alphabet only go up to C? Honestly, not even Coco the Clown would be that stupid.”

Oh well. Perhaps it’s a good thing that Snoop is refusing to meet — he’d probably bust a cap in my ass if I let him know in person what I thought of his hair, all done up in those schoolgirl bunches. I did make an effort, though. I pestered the show’s promoter. “No way,” she kept telling me. “He won’t even be at his own after-show party.”

“Ignore her,” said The Stool Pigeon, “get into the show armed with a dictaphone and hunt him down. Pay off his bodyguards, if you have to. Do whatever it takes. I’ll reimburse you.”

In Nottingham it’s claimed that there are only ever a couple of degrees of separation between you and any other individual, and it’s as untrue as the legend that there are five women to every man here, but to this end I secured myself what I thought was a dead-cert slot in the hottest spot of the Nottingham Arena. One of the fancy private viewing boxes there belongs to a local construction magnate who just so happens to be a good friend of my hizzo’s pops. A few persuasive words later and I was sorted — not to hang about amongst the great unwashed, you understand, I was going to be in the best seat in the house, looking down on the motherfuckers. While ranks of council-estate neds threw spazzy gang signs in the stalls below, I’d be up in the gods, coolin’ out in the icy glow of their countless phone LCD screens, sipping waitress-served gin & juice and getting a hustle on with the city’s loftiest Havana-chompers.

If only someone had actually told them. If only someone had told me that they hadn’t been told. I discover via text message just two hours before doors that my chain of nepotism had a weak link. My lady wasn’t in town, her dad wasn’t even in the country and I hadn’t got a fucking ticket, had I? I couldn’t even bring myself to call the editor and tell him I wasn’t in. Instead I sulked — for hours. Finally, not wanting to throw an entire Saturday night down the pan, I accept an offer to join a few friends celebrating a birthday on trawl through some low-rent bars. I find temporary solace in a poisonous rotation of drinks — pear cider (a new one on me, never again), gin, beer, bourbon — whatever it takes to try and forget that right at this moment Snoop’s band are busting out a classic and I ain’t there to hear it.

Unwilling to endure a club when the pubs kick out, we wind up in an after-hours student bar so awful that people here wince when you mention its name. There is a collage of photographs on one of the bare brick walls depicting all manner of ‘hilarity’ previously witnessed within its confines — undergrads in underpants and ruddy-faced rugger lads (about to shit in a pint glass no doubt)… that kind of thing. Beside me at the bar is a fat lass in a skin-tight lime-green lamé catsuit. Her friend is dressed as Snow White, but she has the bodice on the wrong way round so it looks like she has tits protruding from her back.

As part of a futile attempt to bring joy to the remainder of the night, we plump for a large jug of some comically-named cocktail. Bizarrely, we find it contains just three shots of vodka and a glassful of sparkling wine — the remainder is dilute pink grapefruit squash. The draught lager tastes worse — it’s flat and packs a metallic tang like the one you experience when licking the contacts on a nine-volt battery. We drink it anyway, slumped miserably on a torn, sticky sofa opposite the DJ booth. My head swims around the notion that things couldn’t be more sour right now. And then the DJ fades out an Eminem joint, indulges a pregnant pause, and plays Snoop’s ‘Drop It Like It’s Hot’. The cunt. I swear he was laughing at me. Drunk and supremely pissed off I get up, put my jacket on and walk out — straight into the worst weather Nottingham has seen in recent memory.

With the wind taking branches off trees and whipping rain in sheets, all the cabs in the city are occupied, so I stagger home — uphill, into a howling headwind loaded with wet misery — while Snoop is no doubt cruising to a fine hotel in a warm limo. In fact, just then would have been the perfect time for his limo to swish right by me, veering into a huge puddle to soak me head-to-toe with filthy gutter-water. I finally fall through my front door looking like a shipwreck survivor, forego any preventative medicine for the oncoming hangover (a pint of water or a bite to eat maybe) and slug a throat-full of neat vodka from the fridge, crawl up the stairs and pass out. Somewhere, that fucking Snoop Dogg is grinning slyly. He’s pleasantly stoned, lying on fresh sheets between two coffee-coloured bitches feeding him redcurrants and pink champagne, one nuzzling his ear with her glossy lips, the other tickling his nuts with her scarlet nails. I’m forced to settle for making it through the night alone without choking on my tongue.

When I come to and am able to move again, the following afternoon, I can only just make out the messages awaiting me. One is a guilt-inducing plea from the editor, along the lines of “tell me you made it in and it all went okay”. The other is from my brother, somehow already informed that it went anything but. “Never mind, mate,” he jokes, “you could always interview Dog.”

Ah yes, of course — Dog, our trusty mechanic friend from Netherfield. Real name Dave, he acquired the charming title of ‘Dog Bastard’ following some comical misdemeanour that happened long before I met him. Now everyone in town just knows him as ‘Dog’. In fact, when you call the garage he works at (and it’s a right posh franchised one) even the customer service staff go blank if you ask for him by his real name. Good ol’ Dog. This could turn out all smiles if I write it up well. I’ll interview Dog for a laugh, turn the whole thing around, play on the name, make light of the missed opportunities and all that. I’ll call him Monday.

“I don’t get it, mate,” he says on Monday.

“It’s just a joke, Dog. I missed the Snoop show, so I’m gonna make it into a comedy thing where I interview you instead. You know, same name and all that…”

“I don’t know nothin’ about rap music, though. Some of it’s alright, but I don’t like none of that Indian stuff. Nyeow nyeow nyeow…”

“Don’t worry about it, it’s not supposed to be serious — we can just make something up if you want. I want a picture of you, though. We can run it with one of Snoop and…”

“Whoa there! Yer fookin’ jokin’, right? There’s no way you’re gonna print a picture of me in a newspaper.”

“Come on Dog, it’ll be a laugh.”

There’s a pause. “Bones mate, this bloke’s back for his motor and I’m not done on it. Gizza ring later in the week.”

Click.

And he hasn’t answered the fucking phone since. So, I failed to bring you a scoop on the D O Double Gizzle and I couldn’t even get a Q&A with my mate Dog, a Land Rover mechanic from Netherfield. Consider this my resignation, effective immediately.

Read a more successful attempt by Daddy Bones to interview Snoop here

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