As unlikely as it sounds, I am typing this shameless piece of self promotion dressed in jogging trousers and a sweat top … for I have been running. Having hit 44 a few weeks back – with very little to show for it except an expanding waistline, advancing decrepitude and as Saint Leonard so succinctly put it – aches in the places where I used to play, I decided to give fitness one last chance to prove itself.
For exactly one month, I have neither drunk, smoked, snorted, skin popped, dragon chased or banged up smack into my eyeball; in practical terms, I am now a picture of health. This enforced abstinence coincided very conveniently with the tragic, yet inevitable closure of my club - The Colony Room – London's greatest ever den of iniquity. Now that the gloss green womb is sealed for ever, the bad Moore resides there in perpetuity, blasting his liver and lungs, and quite possibly indulging in the kind of idiotic behaviour that provides David Mitchell with voice over work.
Now, the good Moore is polishing his halo and preparing for action.
As three of you might know – and two of you actually care about, the Black Box Recorder ceasefire is at an end and mainland operations are about to be resumed. Without wishing to draw my already svelte, talented and attractive colleagues into this, a certain amount of getting back into shape is called for on my part, both physically and musically. Having never been more than a week without some form of intoxicant since the age of 14, this absolute sobriety is a revelation – it's like being on drugs. I am the man in the Just For Men ad, whose daughters present their silver fox papa with a pot of hair dye and tell him it's time, and that he'd make someone a really nice catch – the fact that wives one and two reside beneath the patio is only hinted at.
The jogging – if you could call it that, was not exactly Kevin Rowland drilling Dexy's Midnight Runners into the tightest band on the planet, or even John Cooper-Clarke's Health Fanatic – more like Clarke himself actually.
Of course, as any self-respecting middle-aged reforming boozehound knows, jogging cannot be done without an iPod – the right soundtrack to this humiliating public spectacle is essential. You need a beat, something with some umph… but not the Eye of the Bleedin' Tiger or Chariots of Fire.
So my apologies to the late great Johnny Thunders and Jerry Nolan for utilising the peerless anthems of decadence and sleazy living that make up LAMF! And here's hoping that, had they made it to my age, they'd understand and forgive this crass adoption of their music … at one point on the run, I did think I might soon be joining them to apologise in person. Anyway, not bad for a first attempt, I managed to jog through two tracks before admitting defeat and succumbing to the embarrassment of being stranded in a tracksuit half a mile from home. Rock'n'roll will never die … but I might.
