“Tinky Winky snorted white heroin in The Gay Traitor bar, and we had to run him to hospital in a pink wheelbarrow,”
The Tellytubby’s early incarnation was inspired by bands such as Joy Division.
A close friend of the Tellytubbys during their ‘Madchester’ years has written a tell-all book, which details their voracious appetite for drugs and rave music during their surreal TV show years.
It was the long hot summer of 1996, when the whole world smelled of cigarettes and rock n roll. This is the untold story of the four biggest party animals in Manchester, and how their debauchery nearly destroyed the whole scene – and themselves.
Author Andrew Wood (not his real name) said:
“They were animals. I can’t believe they’re all still alive. Sean Ryder was terrified of them. Tink was definitely the worst, although I once found Po off her face in a grit bin at the back of the Hacienda, cradling a dead hedgehog, and asking it to lend her a tenner for a packet of smokes and a mint Cornetto. I tried to pull her out because it was snowing, and she kicked me in the face and knocked me out, because she thought I was an alien,”
Noel Gallagher was interviewed for the book’s introduction, and he describes how much influence the Tellytubbys had during the latter part of the ‘Hacienda Years’.
“Everybody knew who they were, and you just didn’t f*** with the Tellytubbys. Dipsy was OK, but the rest of them were dicks. They were just really up themselves, pretending all this babytalk stuff and magic hoovers was all surreal and arty and just for kids. It was all about drugs. That hoover in the show – that was a running joke about Tinky Winky’s coke habit. What was it called? Noo-Noo? That’s the noise Tink makes when he wakes up and the hooker from last night has run off with his stash,”
The book also describes Dipsy’s battle with heroin, during which his management had to lock him in a room and force-feed him Nutella through a tube, because he was losing so much weight.
The Tellytubby’s management have unsuccessfully applied for a gagging order on the book, which is said to contain ‘explosive’ material, set to blow the lid off the mythos surrounding the infamous club of the 1990’s.
“If you’ve never seen Kermit from Black Grape chasing La-La around the streets of Manchester with a baseball bat at 4 in the morning, then you weren’t really there,”
‘Tellytubbies – The Hacienda Years’ is available to pre-order on Amazon.
The Beezly Street Gazette 