agree with that sentiment.....and happen to be listening to the Smiths as I type this. coincidence?

There's a degenerate confidence trickster, fraudster, ex-h addict and coke fiend, who to my eternal shame and embarrassment I once considered my friend and as it happens was also my boss at work. Little did I know, I was just another sucker to his flattery and scheming sociopathic disorder. And by the time I found out all his credentials were infact bogus and he was just another Bengal Lancer who had spent his "career" screwing lady boys on Pattaya beach, I was already snorting copious amounts of coke with the baffoon. But as Obi Won once said, who's the bigger fool, the fool or the fool that follows the fool?

One of the stories who use to regale all who would listen, is that he was nearly the bass player in The Smiths. He said he was working in a restaurant with Johnny Marr and they decided to steal a Lowry that was hung on the wall. According to him, they stole the Lowry, were caught and went to jail for a few short weeks and Johnny Marr blamed him and threw him out of the band. Now, I never believed this story, but I read an interview with Johnny Marr a couple of weeks ago and he relates that he got into trouble for receiving a stolen Lowry. In the interview, Johnny Marr  said he didn't go to jail. So who's telling the truth? Did the confidence fraudster get the story from NME in the 1980's and make it his own?

He also said that everyone in the band considered Morrissey a prick and they once went round to his Morrissey's mum's to find him sitting in the front room pretending to be weird by ignoring the confidence fraudster's and Johnny Marr knocking at the front door. They promptly posted the lyrics they had been working on through the front door and shouted "Morrissey you're a 'effing wanker."  And then sodded off to go and eat some magic mushrooms.

I can attest to one thing, the con artist certainly couldn't play the guitar, or tamborine to that matter as his attempts to play along to Sunday Morning by the Velvets when he was coked up could attest to.