Friends in a band in Oxford persuaded me to be their support dj at a gig at the Novotel Hammersmith in London right in the middle of Euro 96. My mistake was that I didn’t do my research of what kind of crowd it was. When I got there I found out it was a party and dinner for a convention of estate agents. The band played, they did well, but the already pissed up crowd was looking for something else. Those days I wouldn’t play just anything, I was quite particular and my speciality was soul, reggae and African. I brought along a couple of boxes of records and singles and only had record decks. Within minutes of starting I had several fairly inebriated women demanding songs, mostly Abba if I remember right. I happened to have one Abba single with me that night. That didn’t last long. I had about six singles which worked, but I couldn’t just repeat them. Then the blokes waded in and were demanding Oasis, again I failed to deliver. You can’t play what you haven’t got. It got worse and worse as the crowd became more and more inebriated. I felt a feeling of blind panic wash over me. I couldn’t escape, there was nowhere to go and I had about another 90 minutes to fill. England had beaten Spain that night so that was another factor. Again I failed to have the right music. I thought I was about to be hauled out of my space and beaten to a pulp. (Pulp would have been good.) The crowd of baying men and women were getting quite threatening and annoyed with me. The band had long since scarpered, I was completely on my own. Salvation came in the form of a guy who took pity on me and offered to help, he said he’d go home and pick up a portable CD player and some cds, which he did. The rest of the evening slowly improved, he was very helpful. To this day I don’t know what would have happened if he hadn’t turned up. Eventually this torturous night ended, I was a wreck and vowed to never let this happen again, always to check out in advance what was likely to work – or just bring everything. On the long drive home I was flagged down by a man whose car had broken down and I managed to tow him and his car several miles back to his house somewhere in south west London. What a night!