One…. Step…. Beyond!
How I want to be that guy in front of the red British Phone booths! How I want to be in Madness – no – how I could be in Madness! It seems like there were more members of Madness then there were instruments in the band. Cool! A band where you could be a member without having to play an instrument – all you had to do was be able to dance around like an idiot who had eaten too many smarties!

Let me share a story about this song… this goes back to my university days. I was traveling back home after visting Jenny in Sheffield – I had no car, but I didn’t need one, public transport is still widely available and, with the right amound of patience, you can get from anywhere to just about anywhere else in the country. Boarding the train at Sheffield I found myself on the small branch-line train that would take me to my destination. It was late evening, and I was expecting the majority of the two-carriage train would be empty, as it usually was. It was – until one minute before departure time when a hoard of overly-drunk football (soccer) hooligans from Huddersfield ambushed the train.

And for the next 30 minutes, these hooligans proceeded to shout and dance up and down the train to this song, in true Madness style. It must have been the only song that their peanut-sized brains could remember the lyrics to, and you, know, it felt oddly out of place – why were these drunken louts so in love with a song two-decade old? I had to feel for the ticket inspector, but he did make sure that every last one of those hooligans bought a ticket – I was half expecting the inspector to end up through a window at any second. And so, stepping off on to a deserted platfform, off into the night the train went, chugging along to the rockinest, rock-steady beat of Madness…

One… Step… Beyond!