Shouting from the Hop

Sunie Fletcher
Sunie joined the NME staff not long after I did, in 1977, so we had some sort of affinity right from the start. She was just twenty, with brown bobbed hair, and a nice figure. Her father was English, and had served in the Korean war (or police action...) in the fifties, where he had met a local girl whose nickname was Sunie. After marrying and settling in England, they had their first daughter and they named her after this nickname.

Sunie could be quite naive at times, but was very confident in her own abilities, and was probably the most promiscuous woman I've ever known. She had been in a relationship with Jean-Jacques Burnel, The Stranglers bassist, having met him after a gig - Sunie could out-groupie anyone I reckon! She got to know him well, and even visited him at his home in Somersham, near Huntingdon (where funnily enough my parents had bought a house). She was forward enough to even send him a postcard containing just her name and phone number when he hadn't been in touch for a while, and he duly called her for a "date".

Before working at NME, she had worked at the Stranglers Information Service for a while.

I recall her 21st birthday quite well; she was at work that day, and we had drinks at lunchtime, then in the evening we returned to The Stamford Arms for a few more. She was joined that evening by a guy called Billy, and we had quite a good time chatting and getting a few beers in. She was going on somewhere with Billy, so we all left at around 8pm. It was still light as we walked down Stamford Street toward Waterloo. A small youth, about fourteen or so, was walking toward us and he quite politely enquired if we knew the time? From out of the blue, Billy screamed at him at the top of his voice "NO!", and the poor lad wandered onwards after giving us all a wide berth. It was only later, maybe a couple of years later, that I came to know that this Billy was in fact Billy Bragg!

Sunie was also quite infatuated with Patrik Fitgerald, a punk-poet cum folkie, when she first started at NME and used to come into the office with photo contacts of him that she had taken (but couldn't afford to get developed).

Three of us from the ad production department used to travel up to Kettering each week for press day, and if one of us was sick or on holiday, we would try to get someone to join us from the sales department. Tuesday was a pretty quiet day in the sales office (being as it was in fact the end of the sales week) so we normally had the help we asked for. Sunie came up with us a couple of times, but didn't enjoy the experience much either time. On the first occasion, she was on the Comp floor (where the composition of the paper would take place on boards) reading an article when my colleague Frank walked up behind her. Frank called over to one of the older comps (compositors) named Stan (a jittery old guy who had seen it all and now couldn't stop shaking...) and said loudly "Oi, Stan, cop a load of this", whereupon he proceeded to quickly lift up Sunie's jumper/top, completely exposing her half-cup bra! Sunie screamed and ran off while Frank, Stan, and the rest of the comp room fell about laughing! On the second occasion, Sunie said she was going to be out the night before press day but would travel direct and would meet us at the printers. She was traveling from Oundle, where she had been with Billy Bragg the night before, but mis-judged the frequency and length of time the buses would take in getting to Kettering and didn't arrive until lunchtime! My boss was not amused by our short-handedness that morning. In fact, as I was walking up to the pub at lunchtime with some of the editorial guys, Sunie was walking down the road toward us (just arriving), and she then joined us in having a few lunchtime bevies, thereby delaying her arrival for work that day even longer! Mike, my boss, went mad when he found that out, though I did try to placate him and protect her.

Sunie continued to do a good job on the sales side though, being very persuasive at times. She had good contacts, and promoted herself to these people and other potential clients/friends/future bosses. She had a relationship with Alan Edwards, a PR guru whom was diminutive but good looking, which she openly described as "30 minutes of ecstacy followed by 30 seconds of disappointment". She did maintain her friendship with Edwards, and eventually worked with him after leaving NME.

She also used her groupie route to get close to Blitz Krieg (Andy) from Blast Furnace and the Heatwaves, Nigel Bennett (The Members), Max Bell (NME writer), and Bill Drummond (Echo & the Bunnymen manager) with whom she eventually had her son Alex.

Sunie had a sister called Yvonne (not the policewoman Yvonne Fletcher who was shot outside the Iranian Embassy in the early eighties), and she was a chip off the Sunie block too in some respects (but not all). She used to love UB40, and I went to see them quite a few times with her, or saw her there when I went with others. She used to follow them around the country but I don't think she was ever romantically linked with any of the band - she just loved the music. She also loved football, being a Luton Town fan, and we talked a lot about ex-Charlton players Paul Walsh and Paul Elliott who now played for Luton. I took her out one evening - drinks, dinner, more drinks - but we didn't hit it off, and just remained friends. Later, she was involved in the Football Supporters Trust, set up after the Hillsboro tragedy, and I heard her speaking about the work the trust did on the radio.

Sunie left NME and worked all over the place for a while, doing PR work, writing for Record Mirror, etc, but then she had Alex and seemed to settle down a bit. I stayed one night at her flat at Surrey Quays after a party at Maz's house in Balham, and it was nice to meet Alex the next morning when he came back from the babysitter.

In truth, I was infatuated with Sunie for most of the time she worked at NME, but it was all unrequited. I haven't heard anything from her in years now, though I did find this link from a web search in October 2005 - I don't know if it is the same person - it could well be - but you never know...

Karla Faerber
Karla was funny woman who did the Classified ads for a number of years. She was small, and had had polio as a child, which left her walking with a limp. Actually, she didn't have much luck with medical matters and eventually had to have a kidney transplant in St Thomas's Hospital - her Super-Kidney she called it! That also meant she couldn't drink alcohol at all, though she would have the odd Cola down the pub every now and then.

She had spiky black fur rather than hair (very soft!), and wore bright red lipsticks, and Siouxsie style eye make up. She is the scary looking girl on the NME ad dept single cover I put up here recently. She was infatuated with Boy George for a time (as I mentioned under my Gary Crowley blog), and later with other "pop" stars.

She could talk for England, and sometimes it was difficult for her to control her runaway mouth, which would get her into trouble.

When she got bored with typing the classified adverts up each week, she got herself a job as the picture researcher for the editorial department just after they moved into Commonwealth House. This meant she was upstairs in a room on her own most days, without anyone to talk to (apart from the occasional phone call or visitor), so I used to go to see her when things were quiet so she could have a rant at someone.

In about 1988, she decided to leave NME, taking voluntary redundancy, the money from which she planned to use to pay for her hobby of designing jewellery and clothes (belts etc). I doubt she was very successful as the stuff she produced while still at NME wasn't very saleable in my opinion. Nobody heard anything from her after she went - she lived in Battersea, away from anyone else and didn't go out much at night.

Jilly Horne
Jilly was another of our classified girls, and just pre-dated Karla. I still know Jilly so I'd better be careful what I say!

Jilly was a Northern girl - the Witch Queen of the North she would call herself sometimes - and a big Stranglers fan (more High Cornwall than JJ though) and (as with Sunie) worked for the Stranglers Information Service for a while.

Jilly liked to dress glam, and had a few parties at her various flats over the couple of years she was at NME which were quite good fun (she is still a party girl at heart!). Jilly shared her flat for a while with two american women - Missy and Tanya - and my colleague Barry had good reason to remember Missy after the NME Christmas party one year, where they got to know each other more than a little!

She has a younger sister (the lovely Sally) and brother (Nigel), and I well remember her brother at one party responding when asked if he was OK by crushing a paper cup in his fist! Very strange, and not too cool either, as he got the remnants of the drink all down his clothes! He was young then, and still at college...

In fact Nigel is very talented now he's grown up, and he wrote a screenplay for a film (The Wedding Tackle) that premiered in 2001, and featured Adrian Dunbar, Victoria Smurfit, Tony Slattery, Leslie Grantham, Neil Stukes, James Purefoy, Amanda Redman, Sarah Stockridge, and a few others too. Jilly actually had a walk on part in it, and asked me to be an extra, which required me to sit in a Shepherds Bush pub for about five hours but I declined as I was too busy. Jilly invited us to the wrap party (at a bar near Farringdon), and also the premiere in Leicester Square. Also there were Vanessa Feltz (who complimented my girlfriend on her outfit!), and Jo Guest (exposing herself!). The film bombed unfortunately, although I thought it was quite funny, and it was even shown on BBC1 the other night! She has done a fair bit of local acting I think and also been a drama teacher at various schools since then.

Jilly eventually moved to Bath, and lived down there for a while (not far from Hugh Cornwall who was in Bristol...); I visited her after seeing Charlton play Bristol Rovers (who at that time played at Twerton Park in Bath) but as it was a very important last-game-of-the-season, and we lost, I don't think I was much fun to be around that weekend...

Jilly now lives up in Northumbria, with her ever faithful puppy dog Pilot (who is now about 98 years old!), and we still send postcards to each other from exotic places and threaten to meet up at every opportunity!