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Originally Posted by Frankie Teardrop  'Barbarella's still a really cool movie.
With all this Manilow talk you've reminded me of a disturbing childhood memory, also involving someone's mother. Mother in question belonged to my eight year old friend. She (mom) was a Barry Manilow obsessive. She was also known around our small town for being a bit... erm... 'histrionic'. One day friend and I were in his kitchen playing some weird game involving melting an action man's face when his mother burst through the door in complete hysterics, screaming that Barry Manilow had just been assassinated! We basically had to comfort her for two hours as she sat in a chair, head buried in hands, gibbering about how America had lost its one true hope for salvation to the Argentinians! (this was around the time of the Falklands war). She then made my friend stand on the window ledge whilst she hid behind a sofa, explaining that she wasn't ready to be interviewed by the journalists who were on their way to the house to ask her about what had happened to her mate Barry. "Son, could you please keep an eye out for them and send them packing? I'm too distraught to even contemplate receiving them." When my own mother came to collect me she dropped everything and acted completely normally. I'm not spinning an anecdote at the expense of someone's mental illness, as I don't think she was unwell in any 'classic' sense... she was very unpredictable but deliberate about what she did on this and other occasions, and was generally quite manipulative anyway. |
That is bizarre. An old boyfriend told me about an essay he had read to do with fandom, Manilow fans are apparently among the most bizarre. One of mums Barry friends (they've actually stopped communicating with her due to her behaviour) was way too obsessed with Barry to the point that her husband left her. I really can't imagine how she reacted to the news that he's married his manager Garry. Speaking of the Falklands, my mother stocked up on tinned corned beef, I found boxes of out of date corned beef in the wardrobe years later - at the time it didn't click.
My mum is on the obsessive side. She was in the fan club, there was a convention each year that she would attend before the UK fan club closed down. One year there was a fancy dress costume, she made a costume - it was a sheet of music.....I am in possession of this costume. When he was on tour in the UK she would got to London, Manchester, Sheffield, Cardiff I think, he was usually on two or three nights and she would go to them all, it wasn't a cheap hobby. One year she was sat in front of the Nolans.
Incidentally she went to one of his concerts when she was 8 months pregnant with me. I came out early.....there's certainly a connection.
Having said that I do love an odd Barry tune and unlike my mother I can actually remember the lyrics which unbelievably she can't!