Eamon Nacarrow, the author of a ‘’side-splitting” new book is offering a 100% money-back guarantee – to readers who don’t laugh. He has promised to refund anyone who fails to see the funny side of his autobiography, ‘Holywood Star: the life and time of a rock and roll misadventurer’.

Those who keep a straight face and don’t chuckle ”at least once” will receive a cheque for the book’s £9.99 cover price. He will also send ”miserable critics” a handwritten letter as an apology.

According to experts, the offer is a publishing first and could prompt hundreds of other authors to follow suit.
But despite the guarantee, Mr Nancarrow insists only ”one-in-a-million” readers will ask for their money back.

The book, which went on sale this week, tells the story of his failed attempts to make it as a rock star during the 80s. It has already attracted a string of rave reviews since its official release.

Amazing Radio, which is serialising the book on air from January, described it as ”brilliant” and ”hilarious”.

The station’s founder, Paul Campbell, said: ”We try to reflect the realities of life for musicians, and help them overcome some of the difficulties of writing, recording and gigging.

”Eamon’s taken that simple idea and made it hilarious. We’re delighted to be able to broadcast extracts from his brilliant book on Amazing Radio. We’re certain it will raise lots of rueful smiles from listening musos, as well as tons of laughs.”

Billed as a ”crazy rock n’ roll tour of calamity”, Holywood Star tells of the author’s futile attempts to secure a record deal. Having grown up on a rough council estate in Holywood, a village near Belfast, Northern Ireland, he dreams of performing with his band on the world’s biggest stages.

But his grand aspirations fall flat time after time, and his plan to reach the ‘’sleazy heights” of super-stardom repeatedly fail. Mr Nancarrow, who lives in Belfast, penned Holywood Star – his first book – in less than 24 months.

Following a number of ‘’superb” reviews, he is now offering a money-back guarantee to those who fail to find the memoirs funny. The father-of-two will contact and question critics individually in a bid to prevent the offer being exploited.

Refunds will only be made to those he is convinced are telling the truth.

Mr Nancarrow, 44, who still performs with his band Strictly No Ballroom, said: ”The offer might sound a little crazy, but I think it’s fair. ”The book is billed as a ’side-splitting’ autobiography, so if people don’t find it funny then I’ve not done what I set out to do. As a result, I’ll contact and question anyone who claims not to have laughed at least once and, if they can prove that they’ve read the book from cover to cover without doing so, I’ll return their money.”

Miles Bailey has run The Choir Press, an independent publishers based in Gloucester, since 1982. He said the offer could be the first of its kind in the publishing world.  ”This is the first time that I’ve heard about an author offering a money-back guarantee,” he said.

”Depending on its success, the offer has the potential of being copied by other authors in a number of genres.” But he added: ”I can’t imagine that the offer will be taken up by many people, though. I’ve read the book and haven’t laughed so much in years.”

Holywood Star is available in paperback priced £9.99 (Showcase UK) from Amazon, WH Smith and www.showcaseuk.tv

Manchester has ‘Elbow’, Sheffield ‘Pulp’ and Southampton has its own band who’ve stuck at it for many years before getting a deal: ‘The Family’ (picture by Stephanie Ross)

Formed over ten years ago they’ve slowly morphed from a psychedelic band to, as guitarist Ash told me, “a blues band with pedal steel guitar as lead.”

It is the strength of friendship that keeps this band together and ‘The Family’ are back on the circuit following a six month enforced lay-off and looking for a deal.

Its not that they aren’t handy with all the marketing tools available in this ‘MySpace age’, they just: “Want a deal!” bass player Aiden told me, and his reason: “The people in the company know what they are doing.”

Sharing music and influences is what ‘The Family’ love best and they would rather spend their time making and performing their excellent music instead of dealing with the promoting and managing that band’s are expected to deal with these days.

However they have never been short of a good descriptive quote from a journalist and my favourite has to be: “swaggering, bourbon-drenched, cosmic country”

But someone will have to come up with a new tag line for ‘The Family’ as they are shifting their sound towards the British blues of the 60’s which the Stones and The Who are famous for.

Add a manager and the band could be quickly back to their habit of selling out The Joiners and Soul Cellar and filling 52 seat coaches to London.

Hear The Family here: www.myspace.com/thefamilyonline

Congratulations to Matt and Jon from SoCo on Monday’s victory in the People’s Millions competition.

The win is a massive boost for the Southampton music scene and in a few years time we’ll no doubt be listening a brand new group of musicians inspired by SoCo’s project.

By then we might also know what ‘making it’ actually means in this internet age of MySpace/YouTube/Spotify

As Paul Campbell, the founder of Amazing Radio, pointed out in a recent blog, “The musical world has shifted on its axis, and the shockwaves have destroyed the traditional music industry.” (Bringing Home The Bacon)

This ’shift’ has left the old companies focusing on their back catalogue while new bands, with all the music making and marketing tools at their finger tips, struggle to shift their creative mind to a business head.

But within this conundrum Northern Irish singer Eamon Nancarrow has highlighted a different side to ‘making it’.

Now I must confess a personal interest in this next part as I am the publisher of his autobiography

‘Holywood Star: The life and times of a rock and roll misadventurer’. It’s a very funny book about his attempts to make it during the 1980’s.

However, during an interview with Maurice Boland on ‘Talk Radio Europe’, Eamon gave us another reason for being in a band: “The music was the passion but deep down it was all the friendships that we made, and the relationships that we had, which far far exceeded any success we had with the music.”

Links

SoCo
Amazing Radio
Eamon Nancarrow