Everything’s on Youtube

“I’ll bet it’s on Youtube”, I told my friends at the pub tonight.

It was a story I didn’t know about my them, however, and their mid 80s appearance in a little known video clip by American singer, Meatloaf.

As we reflected on the anecdote later, and why the memory suddenly came back after all these years, we concluded it was possibly because one of them had ordered meatloaf for dinner. Life’s random, eh?

The story, as told tonight, and I’m sure The Best Judge will correct me if I have any of the details wrong… is that back in the 80s, he and another friend were sitting at a bar on Oxford Street together. It was The Exchange, actually, back in the days when the pub had bird cages and all manner of odd things decorating their back room.

A woman was, apparently, walking around the room that night chatting to people, which my friends assumed meant she was selling something.

When she came up to them, however she explained that she was recruiting extras for a video clip being recorded that night at the nearby Paddington Town Hall. “We don’t have enough people” she explained, and that free beer was on offer.

After some discussion, they decided the offer of free beer was more than enough to entice them to catch a cab and participate in what they discovered later was the recording of a video clip by Meatloaf.

Over dinner and drinks tonight, my friends told me about their involvement that night, about their creative contribution to the clip, and how neither of them had ever seen the clip in the light of day.

That’s when I said, “I bet it’s on Youtube”.

Coming home tonight, checking out the clip was one of the first things I did when I walked in the door. Although it’s reasonably grainy, obviously transferred from video to video to video, I’m reasonably sure I can make out my friends in the clip.

Aside from that, it was anotherwise lovely day.

Except for the weather. That was really shitty, of course.