READER'S WIVES

Hello everyone and welcome to Readers Wives where YOU are the stars.

Thanks to everyone who has written to us since last September - you're all a constant source of entertainment and confidence.

We should start with some long-overdue words from the illustrious winner of Issue 5's superb competition, Laurie Collins from the wonderful town of Melton Mowbray. Avid ALAN readers will be aware that we'd awarded Laurie the grand prize and asked for a short acceptance speech . . . which never came. We were all beginning to worry that Laurie had moved away and never received his prize when the following arrived in the PO Box:

I couldn't feel more guilty without committing grand theft. About and aeon ago I won the fabulous ALAN competition for a hunormous poster and tape of the I don't know/Fear of flying vids. In the meantime I don't appear to have bothered to conjure up a thankyou-style reply. It is this heinous non-act for which I seek your forgiveness.

You asked me to provide an acceptance speech, so here it is:
Cheers to Beth 'n' Dave for introducing me to RUTH.
Cheers to George Lucas for providing many obscure character names to be used as answers in competitions. And cheers to the RUTHboys for their tireless community work.
Sorry that this was a long time coming. Please don't hate me for too long.

Also congratulations to Beth Hartley of Worcester, nee Beth Collins of Melton Mowbray who wrote to say

Thanks for ALAN 6. Nice to know you're still alive and making records.

Could Beth be the very same Beth who introduced RUTH to Laurie? And who is the mysterious Dave? Could there have been a RUTH wedding?

ALAN 6 - matters arising

Just a note to say how much I enjoyed ALAN 6. It was as always SPLENDIFEROUS said Laila from Sidmouth. I do occasionally worry that ALAN comes through the door and then goes straight in the bin. But now I know that at least Caroline from Preston doesn't mind:

You can send me anything you like as long as it doesn't smell bad or explode.

Which seems simple enough to arrange. A man called Adam who comes from Leicester seemed most impressed by all things RUTH and ALAN:

If you really do write it, then you're really funny, interesting AND literate, which is unusual

Well, Ad, we do actually write it, but we soon found that you were merely trying to flatter us. Along with Adam's letter was a nominations list for the sought-after position of "No 1 fan". Nominations which included only himself, amongst long disclaimers regarding the closing date of nominations. He seems to believe that he is now the democratically elected No 1 fan - after all, the vote was unanimous. We can't really argue with this (after all, we're just a band), but I thought you ought to know in case there's anyone out there with a claim to the title. Can you prove you are No. 1 fan? Or is it truly Adam from Leicester???

In ALAN 6 writes Lisa from Co Durham you said hello to people in year groups but you failed to say hi to the people in year 1 of 6th form - explain yourselves!

Well, Lisa (self professed No 8 fan), I think you may have misunderstood. You see I was putting you in year groups according to how long you had been in ALAN, and since ALAN only began in September 1993, there were only three year groups . . . unless you've been a fan since ooh 1990, that's TWO YEARS before we started in which case you seem dedicated to the point of mania.

Speaking of mania, here are some excerpts from a letter from Readers Wives veterans Jo and Sarah from Dulverton (god only knows where that is)

We have just received ALAN 6. I (Sarah) have been quoted twice now. Both times you took the piss - its nice to know we are appreciated. Our first reaction was to abandon RUTH and cancel our ALAN membership, but what the hell, your music's great

Pretty miffed, you would agree - yet mere seconds later they change their tune dramatically:

You are quite welcome to take the piss. We are sure you will take us up on this

By the end they are begging us to mock them:

Every time you quote us in ALAN you get chocolate . . . we will make it our duty to try to get a slagging in ALAN 7 - it is our priority to achieve this

Kids these days. They don't know WHAT they want. (Does that qualify for chocolate?)

PEOPLE LIKE RUTH

Here's the obligatory section where we stick in all the nice things you've said about us for no other reason than we like to see them there.

RUTH are the best band around at the moment and I love you all says Helen from Ryde

I think you're much better than the likes of Northern Uproar and the Fugees and the god-awful Cranberries claims Iain of Saltash. It's always nice to hear people deriding the god-awful Cranberries.

RUTH are at least 1.8m long and my arms are only 2 metres long so that's pretty good reasons Louise from Maldon. A terrible thing happened where we sent her her Welcome to ALAN pack including a "Let me join ALAN" postcard which she filled in and sent back (on it she describes our music as "sweeping". What does that mean, Louise?) whereupon she was taken as a new ALAN and sent a Welcome to ALAN pack including a "Let me join ALAN" postcard. This could have gone on forever, but fortunately it didn't.

I am glad that you are such nice people wrote Nikki from Middlesex who helped us keep up a grand tradition by sending us these pictures of pants.


However, the awful truth was revealed by Katerini from Manchester, who wrote once to say

You lovies will do almost anything for your fans but had to write shortly afterwards saying I desperately want a signed picture of you all. I wrote a couple of months ago but so far I have received nothing

I must guiltily acknowledge that we still haven't sent her one. We'll get round to it soon, Katerini. People hear of RUTH by many strange routes, but no one's story is as cockle-warmingly family-oriented as the story of Robert from Liverpool:

Imagine the scene. A cold evening in watching the telly with my dad of all people, who of course was trying to be cool, And it came to pass that that he proclaimed "I'm cool. I know a band called RUTH. You'll like them, set a trend and buy their album (which isn't even out yet)" And then it came to pass that I laughed wholeheartedly at my cool father figure. "My arse" I proclaimed. And I didn't believe him and forgot about it and changed my pants. But a couple of months ago I saw Valentine's Day by a band called RUTH on the Chart Show and it was good! "Ooh" I thought "My dad was telling the truth after all."

There's a lesson for us all there.

After seeing your video on The Chart Show and laughing our pants off... write Nell and Claire of West Malvern we would also be kind of interested to hear where your influences lie as you have a unique sound that we find ....... "addictive"

Well, it's a very simple matter of really really liking POP MUSIC and wanting to make our own really really good like the stuff we love - Beatles Beach Boys Abba Police They Might Be Giants Paul Simon David Bowie Kate Bush Queen Smiths ELO Stevie Smokey Suzanne Howard oh and everything else, especially David Soul.

Passion for RUTH can be expressed in odd ways-

I don't know if you know that he said she said that I told you so on the point that something good has been heard on my CD player. Yes he said she said that Fear of flying was something good and I just have to tell you that, well, I told you so. What shall we do today? He said she said play this brilliant metallic blue CD as it looks so good. He's Justin love with it now and so am I says Stephanie, Leigh-on-sea.

I'm not sure but I suspect that she might have all the singles. And who'd have guessed they would turn out to fit into one cohesive story?

Gallagher bros vs Hales bros challenges Sophie Whatsyoursecondname,
Prefer your eyebrows any day. That's what she thinks, and she actually knows someone called Ruth Harrison. Speaking of appearances, here's this from Gavin, East Grinstead: Don't you think Ben Hales looks like Jim Carey? Errrrr.

I'm all for more "RUTH FORCE" having been one myself for the last 28 years Nottingham's Ruthie tells us. In a sense, all children of ALAN are part of the RUTH FORCE, but there is something formidable about people in ALAN who are called Ruth. It's probably something to do with square roots.

It's always good to get anonymous threatening postcards:

Nutty little William knows who you are . You are no longer safe

It is easy to be afraid of someone called 'Nutty little William'.

PEOPLE LIKED VALENTINE'S DAY

It may have only got to 106, but it got pretty high in the charts of your hearts

I think that Valentine's Day is amazing, best song I've heard in ages says Elizabeth who lives in Bournemouth

The Valentine's Day single smacked me in the chops - my girlfriend bought it for me and it's "bazzing" writes Paul, Liverpool. Your girlfriend bought it for you? Oh dear.

Ed from London gave us these unpleasant facts:

You're great, you're amazing, you're brilliant. Valentine's Day has to be the best song this decade

Jaki from Fulham wrote a great review of it which she sent us, describing it thus:

One of the best anthems of all time ... a sad, bittersweet un-love song

I think she put her finger on it. Alan from Telford was the victim of all the different release dates we gave you before Valentine's Day came out. Sorry Alan

On 2nd September the staff in my local HMV are going to think that I am a raging psychopath because on a number of occasions I have complained that they have no copies of Valentine's Day and that it was released sometime in May . . . I think I'll get my mother to go and get it for me

Where do you get your shirts from in the Valentine's Day video? ask Cassie and Melissa. There's a little shop in Greenwich called "The Observatory" (after all, it is in Greenwich) where we often go for old strange clothes. I'm sure most of the shirts came from there - they also provided the Suits of Many Eras seen gracing the I don't know sleeve.

Can I resist sweets? Absolutely not! [That's the] reason why I get the wonderful Valentine's Day vinyl to decorate my blue wall writes Mayann from Marseille (my god! She's actually French!) on the back of a Jellybean card. We like chocolate.

You get some REALLY weird letters, begins Launa of Newport, and who are we to disagree? What is the "brick in your microwave" bit about?

She's lucky because I can tell her. The interesting thing about the microwave line is that that is where the whole song came from. I was standing in the kitchen watching some rice cook 1 and the image of a big red brick humming round in the microwave suddenly popped into my mind. Now, I've never tried this (and I'm sure it isn't a good idea) but I imagine that if you put a brick in your microwave and set it on full power for an hour (add ten minutes if your oven is 650w) it would eventually get soooo hot it just bursts open like a big microwave bomb full of bricky shrapnel. Not a nice thing to do to someone, but you could definitely get away with pretending to be dead afterwards. Being the kind of person who would do that (and why) was what the song grew out of. It's good to get that sort of word into songs - ones that are so magnificently bulky and unpoetic. "Helicopter". "Measurement". "Crisps". Matt once wrote a song that had the word "flask" in it. Result.

Sad news now from Worcester's favourite son David. His letter began innocently enough: Valentine's Day is a huge improvement over the demo version . . . the piano sounds excellent and I think it is the best song I have heard in my life. I am trying not to exaggerate. The B sides were the best I have ever heard.

But then the mood abruptly darkens

I had a copy of your O-Zone appearance but my sister erased it even though I wrote KEEP OR DIE! all over it

Poor David's sister. Now she's dead and it's all our fault. Mind you, you can't trust sisters

My sister STOLE my Fear of flying CD - Lucy from London tells us. Please, for your own good, don't mix RUTH and sisters. It's a recipe for disaster, as is "Give Steve a car". But that's another story.

REQUESTS I received my first copy of ALAN this morning and after reading the Readers Wives I want to be in ALAN too - Sarah from Bromsgrove (writing on Christmas Eve).

Please can you include my name in the Reader's Wives section of ALAN 7 - Leanne, Prestatyn.

OK then.

Howzabout putting a RUTHy penpals page into ALAN and letting all the shiny RUTHie people communicate with each other? suggests Katy who also included this EXCELLENT Fear of flying paper aeroplane (she informs us that Ash do Star Wars T-shirts too. Arse.)


I have decided to take Katy up on her suggestion; from ALAN 8 on there will be a LONELY HEARTS section where you can place your advert to attract letters from writing-inclined ALANsters. The rules are: your ad should be no more than 30 (ish) words long plus your address. Space will be limited and we'll only print the ones that amuse me so BE FOOLISH. RUTH cannot be held responsible for the results of your ad being printed (such as you not liking whoever writes). We will not print your full name, but your ad may be published on the internet.

We would appreciate a photograph or even a drawing of the lead-singer in that gorgeous T-shirt - Emma and Eleanor, Cambridge. OK then.


Hey! Lynne from Doncaster I trust the lyrics in this issue are correct. And here's the correct lines you were puzzled about:

In Good Luck, verse 2 begins "A hundred thousand faces scream a welcome/ Blinding light obscures their features" not "Expleen a welcome I'm delighted skills that beaches"

In Pillow the second verse begins "Falling asleep", not "Born in a sleep". I hope that helps

Finally, hello to Mags, Jody and everybody else who contributed to THE SHOE BOX (this included chocolate. WELL DONE). It was too intimidating to reply to.

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