I spoke to him via transatlantic phone conversations and he came up with the idea of a shirt based on the Man United jersey with a Bizarro splodge for a badge, DLG instead of the AIG United shirt sponsor and the player's name and number GEDGE 50 on the back.
Despite being a staunch Man City fan I am always on board for anything based around football and music as I am obviously obsessed with both.
WP gig poster from the Casbah in San Diego in February 2006.
While I loved Ian's original idea, I offered to improve on it with my expert opinion, nothing too drastic, just a bit of tweaking here and there.
"How about we base the badge on the United/WP logo from the Casbah gig?"
"Sounds good" said Ian
"How about instead of DLG we put TWP for the sponsor logo and add something about the Barmy Army underneath the box?"
"Great"
Easy peasy.
The above conversation may or may not have gone quite down like that word for word and Ian may well have thought I was a cheeky twat for improving on his brilliant idea, but I digress.
Casbah gig inspired badge on Barmy Army shirt.
Two weeks before the tour was about to start I sent Ian a pm on scopitones as I knew he had been out of town of business and I hadn't heard anything from him for a while
"How are the shirts coming along?" I asked
"The design is there (I'll send you the mock ups) but time and cost are prohibitive. Steph is looking to see if there are any options with any of her clients. Unfortunately Alan, who prints the scopi calendars for us, no longer does t-shirts. It's not looking good."
"Oh bugger" I thought.
Front of Barmy Army "ManU" shirt.
I suppose I could have just left it there and nobody would have been any wiser as the shirts were supposed to be a surprise, but I desperately wanted to keep the tradition of the Barmy Army shirts going.
The guy I used last time took ages to make the last batch, so I didn't think he'd be any use to us this time around.
So knowing that Derek was in the media based business I figured that there was a slim chance he'd be able to help.
Front and back of Barmy Army shirt.
So I put in an emergency call and asked if he could do it.
I think we only had 10 days left before the Hoboken gig, so it was real tall order.
"I'll see what I can do" said Derek, "I know a couple of people but there might not be enough time to do it"
Once Derek confirmed it was on, I became a constant thorn in his side regarding the finer details.
Derek said the badge might hold up the process, I then informed instead of just making the shirts in red and black, that we should make more colours specific for the teams the Barmy Army travellers support back home.
So we had maroon for Kirk and Gav (Hearts and Northampton) green for Harry (Celtic), navy blue for Phil and Ian (Everton and Leicester City), sky blue for me (Man City) and despite Swindon Town wearing red Mark declined a red one because it was too ManU.
Other colour choices on Barmy Army shirt.
Derek wisely contacted me and asked if he could change the GEDGE 50 to BIZARRO 21
as it wouldn't be good PR for the band and would probably offend David.
In a split second I agreed with him, David probably wouldn't be too chuffed with his age plastered on the back of the shirt (This was later confirmed by Jessica)
And in fairness I wouldn't be too pleased if someone made a shirt with GILLESPIE 35 on the back of it, would I?
Barmy Army shirt as worn by our four stunning Barmy Army models.
So the details were finalised and it was touch and go as to whether they'd be done on time or not. Derek called me on Thursday and said they'd be done by the end of the business day and he'd be able to pick them up Friday afternoon.
After being designated to carry 3 boxes of Bizarro shirts from Boston to NYC for the band, Mark and I volunteered to get the bus from NJ to meet up and help him carry them back.
Of course the first thing we did was grab a box each, find and Irish bar and open up Derek's bag in order to see the Barmy Army shirts.
The first one out of the bag was a red one.
"F**k me, they're good" I said "too f**king good really"
And they were, it was like looking at a real United shirt.
I was excited to see the new shirts, but a bit gutted that they looked so good and so realistic.
But seeing a lot of the details were my idea I obviously had to swallow my pride and take one for the team.
David even sent me a text taunting me that "It must have killed me to wear those shirts"
Well I wouldn't go that far but after breaking out in a rash after wearing it to the Hoboken gig, I had to wear my City shirt for the Bowery.
Jokes aside, the shirts were brilliant and worthy successors to the original Barmy Army shirts of 2008.
So congratulations to Ian for the original idea, obviously me for improving it and especially Derek for enthusuiastically coming through under extreme pressure and saving the day for the Barmy Army.
Everyone in the gang loved them despite a strong dislike of Man United.
Now we'll really have to come up with something extra special to top them for the Seamonsters tour.
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