Unknown Pleasures: Inside Joy Division Read Online Free PDF

heaving him straight through the bar’s plate-glass window. They just left him hanging through the broken window, half in, half out, and sat themselves down and carried on drinking.
    We were out of there, scuttling back to our chalets. We sat together in one of them for security, shaking like shitting dogs and going, ‘We’ve got to get out of here – we’ve got to get out.’
    Then we heard a commotion from outside: two Cockneys, pissed. By now it was about two o’clock in the morning and next thing you know it was all going off again. A couple of Geordies ambushed them right outside our chalet, and for a while they were absolutely kicking the shit out of these two Cockneys. But then all the rest of the Cockneys came round the corner, caught the two Geordies and started kicking the shit out of
them
. At one point they had hold of this Geordie and were slamming his head on the wall of our chalet; meanwhile we were all inside, teeth chattering like Shaggy and Scooby Doo, still going, ‘Oh God, we’ve
got
to get out of here.’ We were only seventeen, remember.
    In the end we all just slept where we were. When we got up the next morning there was blood everywhere outside our chalets and that was it: we decided there and then that we’d had enough and went and quit.
    At the same time, 500 punters checked out because of the fight, and the police arrived to try to find out who had thrown the Geordie through the window of the Western bar – poor bloke was in intensive care. Co-operating fully with the investigation, we told the cops that we hadn’t seen a thing and were tucked up in our beds. All we wanted to do was work our week in hand and get the fuck out of Dodge – and when eventually we did, let me tell you, I have never been so happy to get on a coach in my life.
    On return to Manchester a job in sewage would have been preferable to Butlin’s but, thanks to Danny McQueeney, I got a brilliant job doing shift work at the Co-Op Tea Warehouse on Ordsall Lane. Where my duties included sitting on my arse and occasionally falling asleep in a lovely warm, wonderful-smelling tea warehouse. Every time I sniff a teabag I’m right back there. It was well-paid, too. I was there forsix weeks and was minted, absolutely minted, until my mum said to me, ‘You can’t work in the Co-Op Tea Warehouse, our Peter, it’s beneath you.’
    I didn’t bother arguing. She already worked for the Manchester Ship Canal Company, in King Street, and I think she persuaded them to interview me for a job at their Chester Road conveyancing office. I got the job, just near where the Haçienda ended up years later. My first day there my new boss, Peter Brierley, said to me, ‘You’re lucky, you are: this desk that you’re getting, that used to be George Best’s desk.’ Apparently he’d worked there before he went full-time at United, as part of his apprenticeship.
    Actually, I’ve got a George Best story for you. This occurred much later, when I was married to Caroline Aherne, who played Mrs Merton on telly. Me and her is a whole other story and we’re not going into it here – or anywhere, come to think of it (well, maybe in the New Order book) – but the point is we took a holiday to Spain, and were out one evening at a bar, and in the bar opposite was George Best with a load of blokes and a girl, who was very, very, drunk. She was lolling around all over the place, out of her tiny head, and the guys with George were taking turns feeling her up.
    Watching this, me and Mrs Merton really got the hump. So Mrs Merton said to me, ‘You know him, go over and stop them.’
    Now New Order had done the theme tune for the TV programme that Tony Wilson had presented about George Best and Rodney Marsh. He’d told us that Granada had no money for a theme tune and asked if we’d do it for free, which we duly did. That’s all it was.
    I said, ‘Well, I don’t
know
him, do I? We did the theme for the programme, but I