The Story of the Condiment Kings

I know I want my taste of fiction on this site... but this is a true story from last summer!!

Saturday, August 28. My mate, Tim and I had finished rocking out to the Offspring just before the Darkness were to take the Main Stage when we decided to go down closer to the stage because we reckoned that the Darkness would be quite the laugh. I’m sure after the number of pints we had all day, anything would really be a laugh. We wriggled our way through the crowd and made it to about 6 rows from the stage and we settled in amongst the large crowd.

Behind us in the crowd was Justin Hawkin’s (the lead singer of the Darkness) cousin and in front of us, Tim was making friends with a Mom and her young son. When the Darkness finally took the stage the crowd went mad. There were a lot of tall people in the crowd, so I was left to look at the massive screen for the bulk of the first few minutes and Tim lifted the little boy up on his shoulders so he could get a picture or two on his disposable camera. The little boy was kind of afraid of heights, so his Mom helped him down off of Tim’s shoulders and we continued to watch the show.

When the second song started, the crowd all of a sudden collapsed like dominoes and mass panic ensued. We were all standing quite uncomfortably and then in less than a second we’d all had fallen down. There were some girls behind us in a major panic, yelling and screaming away, and the little boy who was in front of us was lucky to be short enough that his legs didn’t get caught too badly with anyone falling on top of him.

When everyone finally had gotten themselves up, Tim and I looked at each other and said let’s get the hell out of here. So we did. The Darkness weren’t that special of a band for us to stay and risk another fall, so we wriggled ourselves out of the giant crowd. When we finally made it out of the crowd, Tim looked in his pocket and said that he had enough change to get one more beer. I on the other hand was not so lucky, but we split the beer anyways.

We picked up a beer, flirted with the barmaid at the beer stand and headed off back to camp.

We were camping in Green Section A, which was at least a half hour to forty minutes away from the main stage and that’s with the crowd that was about, let alone the one we would have had after the Darkness had finished. We started back through the main arena and as we were passing by a burger van, Tim turns to me and tells me to go nick a ketchup bottle off of the van. Did I nick that bottle? Of course I did. I just walked by, picked it up and kept on walking. ‘I’ve got ketchup!’ I screamed. We kept walking down the path back to camp and we were both screaming that we had ketchup. That didn’t last long though. Tim thought before we were out of the main arena, he’d grab a bottle of mustard. ‘I’ve got mustard!’ he then began to scream. All the way back to camp we’d scream out what condiment we had in our hand and along the way, people with chips or burgers would come up to us and ask if we’d give them some of our sauce. Talk about loving a little bit of popularity. It probably wasn’t too long before we were chanting in sequence either:

“I’ve got mustard,” Tim started.

“I’ve got ketchup,” I replied and we started from there. Somewhere along the line, we thought we could do better than that. There was almost a psychic connection between the two of us, because we looked at each other at the same time and shared a brain wave saying that we needed a little bit more.

“And we are the Condiment Kings, oi!”

That was it. We concluded our song. We were so pleased while we walked back. A few people had a chuckle at our expense, because we probably did look like a couple drunken fools carrying ketchup and mustard and chanting and singing. That was good enough for us.
Being so drunk, the walk had ended sooner than we had both believed. We sat down back at camp and had such a laugh about the walk back. It was still before eleven at night, because I think we could still hear the Darkness from the main stage and we were still full of energy. We looked around our campsite and saw that one behind us was crawling with a few people, so we decided to walk over and give a show. People were enjoying it on the way back to camp, so why not kill some time with having a laugh with it.

The two guys in the first camp we hit had a good laugh and then in the second camp, we played to about four people. We did our song and they loved it as well. One girl even gave hugs as payment. That was alright. I even got more hugs for when I mentioned that I was Canadian. That was also a big hit.

After those two camps, we decided to head back to camp, because we had our laugh. On the short walk back, next to a gazebo, Tim found a cowboy hat and picked that up. We sat at camp and had another drink or two and loved it. We were having a great time. Back at camp, we had to tell all who was there of our excursion before we headed off for a Green Section A tour. We each finished another drink and headed off for our first real tour as a group.

If we saw a small BBQ fire or hear a group of people, we headed in their direction to perform. I can’t honestly tell you how many shows we did, but somewhere along the line, we learned to add to our song.

On the first night of touring, we made up three different remixes for our shows: the Goldie Lookin’ Chain (GLC, a white Welsh rap group) remix, the 5.6.7.8’s remix (on the tune of Woo Hoo) and the Dizzee Rascal remix, each with their own touches to make the song unique. Once we had the GLC mix on, it was what finished the song for the rest of the night. On the GLC mix, we would break into some dancing, I would dance to the side and Tim would try break dancing the windmill. How funny was that? It was really funny. I would have to say that the GLC mix was what really clinched our act.

Through the tour of Green Section A, we received a lot of applause, some beers, a smoke or two for Tim and even a cookie. Well, what we didn’t know at the time that these were SPECIAL cookies and they were laced with something fun. It seemed rather odd in texture, but who were we to say no, right?

Also through our travels, we had a couple suggestions that we should have more sauces than just ketchup and mustard. One campsite would not have us perform until we had another sauce in hand. So, the resourceful pair that we are went to the next campsite and asked if we could borrow another sauce that wasn’t ketchup or mustard and they were nice enough to give us mayonnaise. With the mayo, we went back to the last campsite and we laughed in their face. ‘We’ve got mayo!’ So, we went ahead and did a show for them and they admitted that we didn’t suck as much they thought we were gonna, which was a good compliment, I suppose. Then right afterwards, not accepting too much gratitude from that site, we went back to return the mayo and do a show for them. The performances just snowballed from there.

We were probably on tour for a good 45 minutes or maybe even an hour. We went around and had ourselves a blast meeting people throughout the camp and thought to ourselves, we might have to do more. But first, we needed two things… another drink and then a piss. So back to camp we went to open up another can of beer and then we’d take care of our aching bladders.

Coming back from the toilets, we passed by the burger van in the Green Section and Tim looked at me and said that we needed another sauce. He referred to that campsite that wouldn’t have us perform until we had another sauce. I agreed and walked over to the van. There was a good queue of people standing for something to eat, but I went right up to the counter, moved the brown sauce bottle right over in front of me and then five seconds later, grabbed it and legged it all the way back to camp. Tim said he’d never seen anyone run that quickly for brown sauce ever before in his life. Oh did we laugh when we were back at the camp.

Now we had a third sauce and since we had become serious performers, we had to rehearse our new show. This was what we came up with and went with for the rest of the night:

Tim starts with, “I’ve got mustard!”

I reply with, “I’ve got ketchup!”

Together, “We’ve got brown sauce!” We sing that twice and then…

Tim yells, “GLC remix in the motherfuckin’ house! (Both of us start dancing and providing ourselves with a freestyle beat, Tim finishes his windmill and then kicks into) Safe as fuck, I’ve got ketchup!”

I again reply with, “Safe as fuck, ‘cuz I’ve got ketchup!”

“Safe as fuck, we’ve got brown sauce! We are the Condiment Kings! Oi!” sung together and we add a little kick afterwards and that was the show. How excellent is that? It was certainly a sight to see.

With the act in full swing, I convinced Tim to take our act on the road. The excitement had gripped me completely and I think the small bit of celebrity that we had gained had gone to Tim’s head, so it was easy to get him out to the main path way to start the tour. We walked from our campsite down the ‘Green Section A’ pathway down to the crossway where we started.
It was at that first show on the path where there were these two girls who wanted to follow us along. Tim and I tried to convince them to be groupies, but I think they were more content with trying to break into the band. From what I recall, they did follow us for quite a ways that night as well. On the main pathway, we played to anywhere from six to twenty people at any one time. We were followed by a few people for a while including someone wearing a Bo Selecta mask and I had a ride with someone pushing a wheelbarrow.

A lot of the time, we couldn’t make it too many steps up the path without performing again and again.

I do recall running into a group of about four or five guys and one of them was carrying a guitar with them. They were doing something similar to what we were doing, but I don’t think they were anywhere near as organized or as flashy as the two of us were. I think we challenged them to a show off, but after we did our little number, it wasn’t long before they conceded with their tails between their legs. The small crowd that we had with us were quite supportive of our show and kind of booed the other guys away, which was quite funny.

A lot of the times that we performed were quite a blur. It was just this blinding time that the both of us really enjoyed. The booze was certainly getting the better of us by then and we were up for pretty much anything. We mixed up our routine with our other remixes if we were asked to and we just laughed all the way down to the Fun Fair.

It was getting close to the early hours of the morning by the time we made our way down there starting from our campsite (which is in the top left of the photo), but there was still loads of people up and partying. Hell, that’s what the whole thing is all about, right?

When we reached the end of the Fun Fair, before heading up the hill towards the Main Arena, we had a large circle of people of anywhere from 30 to 50 people surrounding the two of us. We did one show for them and someone shouted that we needed yet another sauce. Now how can I say no to such a reasonable request? So from the large crowd, I ran back to a burger van around the Fun Fair and reached the table looking for BBQ sauce or just about anything of the sauce variety. When I arrived at the table, there wasn’t anything but ketchup and a bottle of vinegar, so I grabbed the vinegar and started to run back to the group.

With the group in sight and me in full stride, a large open hand stopped me on the chest and a voice says, “Excuse me, son… do you want to stay in this festival tonight?” I think my heart actually stopped beating there for a moment. I looked to my right and there was this fairly large, bald security guard standing next to me with a grimacing look on his face.

“Yes, sir,” I replied to him. I still hadn’t seen the White Stripes by that point, so it was imperative that I keep my ass in that festival, because the Stripes were the most important part of my schedule.

“Whose sauces are those and who are you guys?” he asks us.

“Um… they’re our sauces, well, except for this (holding up the vinegar) and we’re just a couple of guys here for the festival,” I said without trying to show that I am crapping myself.

“Well, you’re gonna put that back and quit what you’re doing because you’re inciting crowds.”

“Okay then.” I didn’t want to put up any trouble, because of the Stripes on the Sunday, so I ran back to the burger van, dropped off the vinegar and ran back to the group to get Tim. I ran right up to him, told him we were going because we were about to be kicked out and he didn’t put up much of a fight. And like a shot, we left everyone behind, even those who were following us to walk back through the Fun Fair and get right away from the security guards.
Tim and I walked back up the hill with our bottles in hand and laughed a little to ourselves. When we made it close to the top of the hill, people recognized us and stopped us to do another show. I looked around to see how far away we were from the security guards and realized that it would be alright to do another. But one turned into several and we were on our ‘Return to Camp Tour.’ I can’t even say how many times we played our act on the way back either, but it was a lot. We got pulled in to different campsites all the way back. We did our first ‘indoor gig’ at a campsite with a gazebo set-up in the middle. We hid amongst some trees to do a show for another campsite. Everyone who saw us before were telling other people around and that’s how we were noticed most of the walk back. I think we also played a couple more times when we were closer to our campsite, but I think Tim was really glad to finish our shows once we were back at camp.

I could still go for hours; I was just so excited with all of what happened. The excitement was probably a combination of adrenaline, alcohol and special cookies, because when Tim finally crashed out, I picked up another beer and went for a walk by myself. I was intent on seeing if I could find those groupies again.

This is where the story gets a little fuzzy for me, because well all those excitement factors were playing with my head. When I went back out for the walk, I was still wearing my bright orange Hawaiian shirt that I was wearing for all the shows, so I was easily spotted. And sure enough, it didn’t take long before I was on the walk out. I did manage to meet some guy on the path way and he was just wanted someone to chat with, because he walked with me as we chatted back to the Fun Fair. I think there were a few cheers and jeers all the way down there, but I was without the other half of the show and I didn’t have any of the bottles, so a solo show was completely out of order.

Finally, this guy and I made it all the way back down to the Fun Fair. At the park of the Fun Fair, all the rides (all 3 of them) are set on a big clearing and then opposite of that are the pathway and a hill where a lot of tents were set-up. On a clear space on the hill, there was a large gathering of people passing up an inflatable boat until someone jumped on it and went tumbling down the hill. It didn’t look like the smartest of games, but all of these people were pretty wrecked. It was a pretty large crowd playing this game and there was quite the crowd starting to watch it, so just like the Condiment Kings crowd, security came and started to break everything up. But when they pulled up in the van, they pulled up right behind me and this bloke that I was standing with. There was a slight tingle of fear pulsing through my body, because I wasn’t the hardest person to spot and/or remember. But I told the guy I was standing with that I was just going to stand still and not do anything.

Now this is the real fuzzy part and as much as I would like it to be true, it may not be… but I am going to tell it anyways, just to add to this great story. As I was standing in front of the security van watching the party get broken up on the hill, I thought I could hear someone say condiments in the crowd. Slowly, the crowd started to pick up on it and there was a little bit of a buzz. Probably just the people who had seen us before could see me in the light of the van behind me and were trying to point me out. Well, I certainly wasn’t going to do anything of the sort since I still wanted to see the show on the Sunday. I waited a couple minutes and just listened to the crowd and I am sure I pointed out what I could hear to the guy next to me. I could easily have been hearing things, but I was getting a little bit more of buzz from it all. I waited a little too long though, because I could hear some booing and jeering from the crowd and that was enough for me. I told buddy that I was going to go and we both walked away from the van. But as I walked away, the crowd started to cheer. It confused me at the time and I didn’t look back to see what it was or anything, so I could only speculate. How fun was that though?
I walked all the way back to camp and crashed out right away. There wasn’t too much more I could remember, because my memory certainly decided to give up about that time.

Sunday, August 29. It was another early morning, because there was nothing but early mornings for me while camping. Man, did I hurt! My throat was so sore and my voice was just about gone. I could generally make decent conversation, but it wasn’t easy. An hour or two later, Tim finally poked his head out of his tent and was he ever hurting. His voice was gone. He looked in pretty rough shape when he went to the toilet and then he disappeared back into his tent and I didn’t see him all day.

I went over and sat with a few girls that I met earlier from Liverpool and they had said to me that they had seen Tim and me at some point along the path the night before. They really enjoyed the show and wished to see it again. Neither Tim nor I were in any shape to do one there, since Tim was already back in bed and I was hurting as well. I didn’t make any promises, but I did say to look for us later on in the night. Just in case, ya know? That was about the only notice that I took for the day, which was nice. I didn’t wear anything orange or really noticeable, so I wasn’t easily pointed out during the day, which was good. I don’t think I wanted to really know anything else that we had gotten up to anyways.

The day was a pretty dry one when it came to alcohol. I had already blown most of the £100 cash that I brought with me and the queues for the cash machines were exceptionally long, so I didn’t want to miss any of the music just to get some cash out. So, I was pretty sober through the day. You weren’t allowed to bring any of your alcohol into the main arena, which was a shame, because I still had quite a bit left over there, so I could have really got myself really drunk.

I camped out for the gist of the day at the Main Stage. I didn’t see Tim again until the Libertines came on in the middle of the afternoon. He came just in time to jeer Morrissey, like most of the crowd did, but I again lost him when the White Stripes came on. I got to see everything and everyone that I wanted to see that day and being thrown out of the festival would have been REALLY disappointing, so I’m glad I pulled us away when we were told to.

I walked back from the Main Arena by myself and when I got back to camp, there Tim, his missus, Lars & Nelly and one more was back at the camp. Tim’s voice was still pretty much gone and I tried to egg him on with stories that we told about the night before, but he wasn’t having too much of it. Lars and Nelly seemed to have a sense of disbelief of our story, but we tried to tell the story as best as possible. It was looking like it was going to be a quiet Sunday night after a blinding festival, but we just sat there drinking as the rest of the crew were slowly making their way back to camp. A lot of them were crashing right away and being really boring, but a few came and sat out there with us.

We were really trying to finish a lot of the beer that we had in the camp, because there was a lot still sitting around amongst our empty beer cans on the ground. Sunday was also the night that the security was quite relaxed about having fires as well. So, we spent a good part of the night making a fire and downing all sorts of beers. But as the beers went down, Tim’s voice got better and better and soon enough, he was egging me on to get our act back together and it didn’t really take too long for me to get my head into it. I didn’t think I was drunk enough at the time, but sure enough, I was. We grabbed the bottles and got up out of our chairs. Lars and Nelly, in their disbelief, decided that they would come along and see for themselves what we did the night before.

We got out of our campsite and onto the pathway and Tim said to me that we need mayo. I wasn’t going to stop him at all, plus I think he just wanted to show off anyways. So, we all walked back up to the burger van where we got the brown sauce and Tim dumped all the bottles on me, he ran up and just walked away with a full bottle of mayo. On the walk back to the main pathway, he wanted to discuss how we’d use mayo in the show. And I’ll copy & paste a little bit to show you what we came up with…

Tim starts with, “I’ve got mustard!”

I reply with, “I’ve got ketchup!”

Together, “We’ve got brown sauce!” We sing that twice and then…

Tim yells, “GLC remix in the motherfuckin’ house! (Both of us start dancing and providing ourselves with a freestyle beat, Tim finishes his windmill and then kicks into) Safe as fuck, I’ve got ketchup!”

I again reply with, “Safe as fuck, ‘cuz I’ve got ketchup!”

“Safe as fuck, we’ve got brown sauce!” (Now that was what I copied… but instead of ‘We are the Condiment Kings, oi!’)

Tim finishes by holding up the mayo bottle and yelling, “And you know it, ‘cuz we got motherfuckin’ mayonnaise!”

That was it. That was the new part of the act for the last night on tour. We started the shows back around Green Section A again and headed to all the tents that had people, most of which we had gone to the night before. Everyone was really cool and was more than happy to have us back to do one more show for them. It may have been the lack of inebriation, but it seemed to me that there were a few more people in the camps as well, which was really good. There were some camps that had some people saying, ‘we saw these guys last night, and they’re really funny.’ We’d then proceed to give our beers to Lars and Nelly (our roadies) and did our show. What a laugh we had. As we were winding through the tents, Nelly slipped each of us half a pill and I think that was it for Tim and me. We were off our rockers and we just kept on going. We dragged Lars and Nelly up to a campsite that I had a mini bouncy castle set-up in the camp. That was excellent! The people in that camp saw our show the night before and wanted us to perform on the castle and that was the main stage and probably our best gig to date at that point. The people there went nuts and we had such a great laugh with them.

We played a few more shows after that in Green Section A and then we decided to go back on the main pathway tour again. We didn’t play the same amount of shows, but when we were doing our thing, we had a few more people come up to us and say that they’d seen us the night before and wanted to see us again. And like good entertainers, we obliged. I remember one person coming up to me and saying that they heard about us the night before and wasn’t able to see us. That was quite funny to hear. There was a little bit of a buzz around the Condiment Kings. Excellent!

During the walk up, Tim was going a little mad with the mustard. He was painting the ground with happy faces and I think he also drew a happy face on the side of a tent on the way up. He was going a little off his head, but we laughed and continued on.

We got back up to the top of the hill before the Fun Fair and we found the gazebo that we played the night before in. It may have been another gazebo, because I don’t think that was the one for our first indoor gig. But they had a great group of people there on inflatable sofas and chairs with a big fire as well. Some had seen our show and a lot of them hadn’t and they were afraid that our show involved spraying everyone with our condiments. We assured them that it didn’t involve that at all. We did each one of our mixes in a pretty big show, but that wasn’t enough for them. Some of them were disappointed that our show didn’t involve any spraying, but they did prod Tim to paint the burger van across the way with brown sauce. I shook my head and laughed a little, but that was enough for me. I didn’t want to head down the road to the Fun Fair again, especially with evidence of where we’d been and I’m sure Lars & Nelly were not in any mood to get into any more trouble. After the show, we thanked the audience and made a move back to the camp.

We played a few more times down the path way, but the crowds were thinning out as a lot of the tents and people had been packed up and left by that time. We got back to our camp, Lars & Nelly had enough, so they went back to their tents and we looked around. We decided the best way to go out was to play the bouncy castle again. We weaved our way back to that campsite and they were so happy to see us again. We told them that we’d do our last gig on their castle and they were so stoned or drunk, that they felt so incredibly honoured to have us play again. We called over to another camp that had a few more people for those who wanted to see our last gig and a few more people came over.Our last show was great. We played everything we had and the crowd went mental. That was it; that was our last show! We had a little after-party at that campsite and I chatted with everyone around there and that was really fantastic! That was certainly the highlight of the weekend… after the music, of course!