I was a bad younger brother.

The blogs are coming in thick & fast with the sad news of Derek B’s death -- a heart attack at the still tender age of 44 is the saddest part but rather than go into an ill-researched break down of the man’s career i just wanted to share an anecdote with a nod to the bad young brother.

I’m sure I’ve mentioned on the show a fair few times that being the youngest in the family I inevitably wound up being the weird kid in school who was more into my bother’s/sister’s records than the pop of the time but there was a moment back in ‘88 when a young Derek Boland from Bow, flirted with the charts with his single “Bad Young Brother”. Suddenly there was this conflict of misguided adolescent will verses ‘wait a minute, there’s a tough tune on the Capital Chart show’.

Now picture about 30 kids on a musty coach heading out to the Kent countryside for an overnight school sojourn. I hadn’t yet heard the said single but I had come armed with a muffled tape of By All means Necessary and Memory of a Man & His Music. A kid called Michael Smith asked for a listen and passed me his own brick-like walkmen and within seconds I was “finger poppin to the sound of the drum and bass that kicks…”

Sadly what with the temperamental and almost bi-polar behaviour of the average UK Hip Hop fan I don’t think Derek was taken too seriously as an MC once his LP dropped, at least amongst school kids anyway but he’d cemented a love for UK rap with me none the less as the next couple of years were all about Overlord X, Merlin, London Posse etc etc not to mention some of the amazing records released on Music Of Life where Derek was effectively the A&R.

Anyway, back to the coach and we’d ditched the walkmans, I say I wasn’t into pop but there were still those breakthrough moments in the charts like the one which led to a huddle of teenagers tormenting a weary driver with what must have seemed like a never ending rendition of Walk The Dinosaur by Was Not Was. Even now I can imagine the sheer hell of being forced to endure an ill-ventilated bus full of smelly kids chanting “BOOM BOOM ACKALACKALACKA BOOM”, maybe the poor driver still wakes up in a cold sweat with our squeaky voices echoing through his frazzled brain, hands shaking at the thought of even touching a steering wheel again.

So why am I sharing this almost unrelated odyssey? Well…