#Interview With Beagle 2

Not personal. 

Keeky Delbrannon gets up close but not so personal with Beagle 2.




Unless you've been living on Mars for the last 17 years you may know Beagle 2 as the eccentric, no nonsense Svengali and entrepreneur, responsible for managing innovative bands such as Homosexual Dog, Revolving Heads, Mustard Gas, Imploding Austro Hungarian Assassins' and current signing Mork and Mork. For years he's been dogged by rumours and many urban myths, due to his reclusiveness. He runs his own legal firm, deals in his own currency (the Hound) and is considering going into the energy industry. 'Beagle Energy. Think about it.' What makes all these exploits all the more remarkable is the fact that he is a beagle hound.


His latest venture The Horse and Flipchart that he co-owns with Fox Tavern and Smirnov Kool, is a funky, urbane, retro bar-pub-restaurant-space to breathe located in the Northern Quarter of Manchester. Beagle 2 tells me he wanted to relocate to the Trafford Centre. 'The fucking business traffic in that place? All those Asians with disposable incomes! Fucking loaded!' Unsatisfied with what he describes as an area 'gentrified with Velma's, start up cunts, cultural shitehawks and serial killers' he's along with his business partners come up with the novel idea of packing up and taking the bar on tour.


BEAGLE: It's cheaper and more fun than a franchise. If Depeche Mode or, I don't know, Take That can throw everything into a few vans and piss off round the world for 18 months, why can't we?

KEEKY. Um...tax things, license's...

BEAGLE. Fuck off, don't talk to me about that! I know my way around shit. Fucking pups play, that.

KEEKY. I understand the bands and DJs you manage will be coming along.

BEAGLE. Suppose.

KEEKY. According to this press release, there'll be special guests...Dulux Gloss, Faux Richard Marx Tribute, Fax Machine Gunners, Charli XMA, The Gooches...

BEAGLE. Might be.

KEEKY. According to the locations of these residencies I have before me...odd choices. Murren, Pyongyang, Anchorage...Leigh...

BEAGLE. So?

KEEKY. How did you manage to get permission?

BEAGLE. I ask the questions around here. Got that!? If you don't mind I happen to be thirsty and in that room there, yeah, there's a tap and water will flow from it. Watch me walk...

And yes, folks. He really is a beagle.



The Horse and Flipchart on Tour 2012

March-Murren, Jonkoping, TBA

April-Leigh, Pyongyang, TBA

May-Anchorage, Turin, probably somewhere n Malta

June-November-TBA

Competition time!
Ever fantasised about getting your art work on Tony Hart's gallery on Hartbeat, or wishing you were as great as Patrick Caulfied? Here's your chance. Beagle 2, Fox Tavern and Smirnov Kool want you to design a new logo for The Horse and Flipchart. Yes, that's right! Something simple, iconic and functional that can not only go over the door, be printed on beer mats and t-shirts, stationery but can be used as a cute twitter profile pic. Go on, have a go and you can win a mystery prize. Truth is, we don't have a proper tour poster and our in house artist, Claude Doctor, is having his appendix out.

Rules
1. Anyone can enter. Anyone!
2. Try and not rip it off too much.
3. Closing date next Friday.

Send you entries to www.twitter/smirnovkool
Just to reiterate. The winner selected will win a prize. Really.