Lord, those chicks are hot. So damn hot, the firemen come runnin’ to put out their flames. Oh yeah, baby. Feel the heat. Mmmm-hmmm.
And so on, in a way anyone with a special fondness for Channel 5’s late-night output will recognise. Tonight was always going to be sold as the last word in molten sleaze, but it’s still a shock arriving to find fire engines throbbing outside the venue. As it happens, glamorously-named support The Toilet Boys torched the joint indulging delusions of [a]Gene Simmons[/a], but you can still see the audience’s eyes lighting up in the street. They know the truth. It was [a]Nashville Pussy[/a]’s guitarist Ruyter Suys combusting lustily in her leopard-skin man-made fibres that caused the conflagration. Uh-huh.
Let’s get this straight, and white, and male – Nashville Pussy are part rock’n’roll band, part classic porn set-up. Ugly blokes with bad facial hair. Statuesque blondes in cheap underwear. A bottle of champagne shaken over the crowd to leering applause. A spot of ersatz lesbian titillation as Suys and bassist Corey Parks (6ft 9ins, stetson, attitude like a post-coital praying mantis) share a quiet Bowie/Ronson moment amid whoops of male delight.
And for the laydeez? Singer Blaine Cartwright, a man who looks like a failed cryogenic experiment on GG Allin, who stomps like Rumpelstiltskin at a line dance and bellows like his breakfast grits are lodged in his oesophagus. Oh yesss. They make The Cramps look like a post-graduate seminar in gender theory. They sure are classy.
Southern-fried like Lynyrd Skynyrd eating Krispy Kreme donuts, this really is the band time forgot – or maybe just repressed deep in its poor tortured psyche. ‘Go Motherfucker Go!’ and – Waurgh! – ‘Snake Eyes’ might give good Motvrhead, but in a world where penicillin and the motor car are now part of daily life, it’s like discovering a tear in the very fabric of evolution. The singer tips champagne down Ruyter‘s cleavage. The crowd go wild.