In 1991, Richard Markwell
was a young man poised on the brink of fame and fortune as part of
the boy band Egg Friday.
Despite some early success, with two top ten hits and a nomination
for Best New Act at the Brit Awards, their short career was to end in
tragedy for one member of the group.
“At the peak of our popularity we
were all in our early to mid-twenties. Somebody from the record
company told me to lie and say that I was 21. We all had to conform
to the back-story that had been written for us. After a club
appearance in Grays, which was down the road from where I lived, our
manager took me into a back room and instructed me to break up with
my girlfriend. When I refused he said: 'Well she can't come to your
shows any more and I don't want you mentioning her in interviews.'
“Sean was supposed to pretend to be
19, which was funny because he was already starting to lose his hair.
He used to wear a blue paisley bandanna to cover it up. When they
exhumed his body in the back garden at Morecombe Avenue...
“...I knew it was him even before he
was formally identified. I just had a feeling: That was where he
had been all this time... We never stopped looking for him.
Nobody ever gave up.
“His sister told me that he had been
buried still wearing the bandanna. As it rotted away the blue dye had
seeped into his skull and discoloured the bone.”
~
“From day one Egg Friday
was a manufactured band. None of us knew each other
beforehand. I answered an advert in the local paper and was called to
an audition at a community centre in Tilbury. We were all from
dancing/performing arts backgrounds, with the exception of Joe who
was a county swimming champion. We nick-named him the
'breaststroker'. Sean and Craig were both credible vocalists so they ended
up doing most of the singing. The rest of us just muddled along in
the background.
“Our career, if you can call it that,
was an eighteen month whirlwind. We were raised to a great height and
then dropped without warning. The amount of coverage we were getting
in the media, mainly in teen magazines was massively out of
proportion to our actual success. We all thought these articles and
appearances were driven by fan demand. The truth is that, beavering
away behind the scenes, there was a team of people who we never saw
attempting to create a buzz for our music. We were being positioned
and marketed to a target audience.
“In total we had three singles. The
first two were top ten hits. Egg Friday went in at number
seven but the following week it was number 33. Tender Lies was
number two for a week. We lost out on the top spot to a Luther
Vandross remix. Our cover of My Girl went to number 14 and was
tagged on to a Christmas re-release of our first album.
“The album did okay. Not as well as
everybody hoped;. That should have been a warning to us but we were
all quit naïve.
“Our first TV appearance was for a
Saturday morning kids show. It was filmed on Mitcham Common in South
London. We mimed our debut single inside an inflatable castle, up to
our knees in foam. What we didn't know was that some teenage girls
had gone around the back. They were blowing up condoms like balloons
and writing obscene messages on them with magic marker – 'Fuck me
Sean,' 'Eat me out' and so on. They were pitching them over the walls
while we were performing.
“Fortunately, given that it was a
live broadcast, the wind was blowing the condoms over the top of the
castle before they came into shot. After we finished one of the
presenters made some comment about 'a swarm of balloons.'
“When we all dived into the foam at
the end and started chucking it about, that was the happiest moment
for us as a group. If you were making a film and you wanted it to
have a happy ending you'd have stopped it right there.
~
“We all knew that Sean was gay. It
was ironic because he was always the girls' favourite. He always got
the most fan mail. The incident in the Ipswich hotel was nonsense
(Sean Perry was charged with sexually assaulting two under-age girls
in his hotel room – the charges were later dropped). The problem
for Sean was that he wasn't 'out' and he didn't want to be 'out'. His
parents were very old fashioned and Victorian. He didn't want them to
know about his sexuality. As tragic and ridiculous as it might sound
he was prepared to face the charges rather than tell everyone that he
was gay.
“The second album had ridiculous
title - I want to go to the Fair - I don't know who came up
with that. The cover was a photograph of us swaggering in a row
through a fairground at night with sticks of candy-floss. That wasn't
staged. It was a picture our PR took of us one evening outside
Darlington.
“The record company had given up on
the band and were keeping us at arms length. I think they were hoping
to recoup some of the money they had already invested, but they
weren't prepared to spend much more. We were saddled with a different
team of writers who didn't really care about us as a group. Most of
what we recorded had already been rejected by other artists.
“We were dropped a month before the
album came out. It ended up selling a couple of hundred copies.
Suddenly you find yourself in a situation where nobody from your old
life wants to talk to you any more. You're not quite famous enough to
parlay your celebrity into a career in TV or on stage. You have no
job. You have no money. All your friends from school have careers and
are in the process of settling down...
“Fortunately I managed to get a job
in a bank. I had only been there a few weeks when somebody took a
photo of me working behind the counter. It ran as a story in a couple
of the tabloids. I think that was the last time I was in the papers.
"Sean's sister, Gill, contacted me six
months after the band was dropped. She told me that Sean had been
sleeping rough in London. It shook me up a bit. Here was someone who had received fan mail from
all over the world. Girls had screamed at him and sent him their
underwear. Now some of these same people were probably walking past
him in the street. Later, when I think
she'd decided that she could trust me, Gill confided that Sean had a drug
problem. It shocked me because nobody in the band ever even drank
that much. His family got him into rehab but he walked out after a
couple of weeks.
“I remember getting a call from Gill
in November 1994, asking me if I had had any recent contact with
Sean. She sounded concerned. He was sleeping rough again but nobody
had seen him for a few weeks. None of the people he associated with
seemed to know where he had gone. We reported him missing to the
police but they weren't really interested.
“In November, 2005, Graham Nibbs was
arrested and charged with multiple murders. He had been picking up
homeless men in London, taking them back to his house and strangling
them. I saw the photos of some of his victims on the news one
evening. They were all boyish-looking and blue-eyed. I think then,
deep down I knew what had happened.
“After the police finished searching
the house they moved on to the garden. That's where they found Sean.
“Is it Friday Yet? is a
charitable trust set up by myself and Gillian Perry. It aims to help homeless young people by providing them with the training and skills
that will give them a stable foundation and keep them employed and
off the streets. We also do signposting to charities offering support
for victims of drug addiction and sexual abuse, and mental health
organisations.
“Recently Egg Friday received
an offer from a promoter to take part in a 90s revival show. I don't
think any of us would consider doing it without Sean. Plus I don't
really have the figure for it anymore. I have a pair of teenage
daughters who would both be absolutely mortified at the prospect of
me whipping my shirt off on-stage.”
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