<- Make Sure You Check Out Part-1 First Whilst the boys and I were, without question, #LadsLadsLads, we were not the kind of lads who go to strip clubs and ogle at the female body. Most of the Lads were in loving relationships and those of us legends who weren’t (i.e. me) were more interested in spending time with the boys than flushing money down the toilet. That being said, we did, very early on in the stag, get into a disagreement about the laws in Edinburgh regarding strip club opening hours because those are the kind of lads I roll with. Settling the debate with a quick Google (incognito tab obvs) I encountered an experience even greater than going to an actual strip club: reading google reviews of them. I can’t possibly begin to imagine what kind of gentleman feels the need to record his experience of adult entertainment for the world to see, but they are the kind of men who feel the need to point out the excessive drug use of the ladies and the fact that the drinks are more expensive than anywhere else (clearly these gents have never been to the Edinburgh Fringe). Needless to say, I judged the men writing the reviews more than the establishments they were reviewing. One particular passage caught my attention which became something of a recurring joke on the stag: “At one point an elderly gentleman fell over and the dancers created a bully circle laughing and pointing whilst he sprawled around like a lame turtle stuck on his back.” I am someone who is, at best, an amateur writer, but I do envy the writer of this review who created such a beautiful and vivid image of what he'd witnessed - and with so few words. Back to Andy’s stag do... Saturday found us with something of a hangover which we managed to expel with a mixture of bowling and very tall burgers; then it was the next activity of the week. The most laddy activity you can think of: a recording studio. As you might guess, Andy is not a natural singer, none of us were, but we had booked into an incredible studio called Offbeat, which catered to stags and hens. We were allowed to bring our own booze and Ian and his wife Kirsty (who ran it) seemed to enjoy the merciless Andy-bullying as much as us. We had two songs to record and not a lot of time so we pushed Andy in the booth for his first and only solo number, Rocket Man by Elton John (which we'd given him the chance to practice the previous evening, if you recall). I’ll be honest it was a rocky start, with Andy being unable to quite meet his cues (sometimes by several seconds) and Ian stopping him to give him another go. After a quick chat with Ian, I managed to get him to just let Andy do it in one take and see what happened.. This left us with a fantastic moment which made it into the final edit, where Andy stopped - mid-chorus (as he was two bars ahead of the backing track) - and said “No, I definitely haven’t got that!”, before being forced back into the rest of the song. Andy, of course, wanted to go back and do it again but we assured him it was perfect and no one would notice (an obvious lie). Annoyingly, after that small blunder, Andy was almost pitch perfect for the rest of the song. Shit. Well, we weren’t going to let that slide for the second song. We went for the classic, #LadsLadsLads song, Barcelona by Freddie Mercury, but as an added twist, we changed the word “Barcelona” to “Edinburgh” (having to mispronounce it a little bit so that it fit in time with the song). I should point out that Andy didn’t know this song very well, or in fact AT ALL, despite me playing it several times in the car on the drive and shouting “Barcelona” at his face through the chorus. Freddie is a tough act to imitate, though. One of the hardest. Possibly only second to the woman who does all the operatic bits in the song (which the rest of us had to do). What came out was what can only be described as a hot mess. You can find it on YouTube here with the photographs that Kirsty took of us too. The highlight for me was when Andy was discussing the second song with Ian the music man (there's probably a more professional term). “The problem is that I don’t know the song Barcelona, but I know Rocket Man really well,” Andy told him. Ian came back with the most cutting remark I’ve ever heard. With a sly smile, a raised eyebrow and with his thick Scottish accent, he said “The facts don’t bear that out.” Before our evening activities, we engaged in my favourite activity of the entire stag: nap time. I can hear all the haters and those who think they are experts on Lad Culture crying out that napping in the middle of a stag do is cheating and that we should be ashamed of ourselves for a 90 minute sleep when we could have been drinking. Well, when I was a young boy, my father said to me the same thing I am going to say to those people right now: Shut up. We’re a bunch of lads in our 30s, many of whom are married and some of whom have children and nap time is a crucial part of tactical stagging. Admittedly I didn’t have all of those excuses but I was recovering from quite a debilitating parkour injury (I fell over, broke my wrist and cracked a rib, but I shouted “Parkour!” before I fell which technically makes it a parkour injury). Part three of this travelogue will be detailing the events of the evening which, in true laaaaads style, involved us dressing up as characters from Star Trek and playing an overly-elaborate drinking game. But to give you a sense of foreshadowing to convince you to come and read part three I shall now use a literary technique called a “flash-forward,” taking you to the very end of the evening. The hour is early, the sun is starting to come up. I am dressed in the original Star Trek uniform: a red shirt - and I am sprawled out on the floor, like a lame turtle, stuck on his back and a bully circle is starting to form around me.
