Why I never made it as a Goth.

I think all today’s newspapers carried the story about the post grad student at Sussex University who has been awarded a PhD for a thesis on the Goth sub-culture. It really is remarkable what constitutes an appropriate subject area for a PhD these days, but I won’t go into that as it is a suitable subject for a lengthy rant at some later date.

I would never have cut is a Goth as I have blonde hair and invisible eyebrows. I would have looked a right twat with black eyeliner and lipstick. It would have been a different matter if I was a proper albino with pink eyes: then I would have taken considerable pleasure in scaring the hell out of infants.

The student reached the unremarkable conclusion that Goths tend to be arty middle class types who don’t do drugs and aren’t keen to get into fights. Talk about stating the bleedin’ obvious. There was a Goth girl in my year at University who was more likely to be found at Glastonbury of a weekend hunting for ley lines than knocking back snakebites in the Students Union. She draped the ceiling of her bedroom with black bin liners, and had a penchant for crushed velvet, but apart from that she was as boringly normal as they come.

It’s the aging Goths that frighten me. Anyone who has witnessed the Cures Robert Smith’s physical deterioration of late will take a dim view of anyone wearing the Goth uniform in later life. He resembles a fat Elvis in a fright wig with pancake make up and drooping jowls.

In truth, I never wanted to be a Goth. I hated Bauhaus, and the Sisters of Mercy were purveyors of melodramatic bollocks. They exist in their own little cul de sac, and are welcome to it.

I’m off to listen to ‘Bela Lugosi’s Dead'.