Hypothermia Beckons Part. 2

It will distress you to learn that the thief is still at large.

My jacket has not been returned and there has been no letter of apology or monetary compensation. Somewhere among us lurks a sinister but warm (and trendy, if I may say so!) vagabond.

Londoners will be aware that 10 millimetres of snowfall has brought the city’s entire public transport network to an abrupt halt. It has also brought my blood temperature to below freezing.

I feel like Joseph without his Technicolour Dreamcoat! Yep, an obnoxious, bellowing brat but with pneumonia instead of an Egyptian suntan.

One way to warm yourself up this weekend is to attend Kites’ headline show at CARGO on Saturday. Stage-time: 10pm.

It promises to be a sweaty, sordid affair.

You are all invited to the ceremony!

Hypothermia Beckons!

This is a personal appeal to the common thief whose light fingers chanced upon my overcoat:

Return my jacket or suffer a death so cruel that Eli Roth will be begging to direct a film about it.

Thanks to you I am likely to experience frostbite in every region of my body! Everyone knows that it is impossible to rely on the NHS and I will therefore be forced to undertake a grotesque form of amputation with a backstreet quack. How will a limbless Matthew Phillips hope to play guitar after such an operation? I might still manage a little singing but my energetic live performances will be replaced by a lifeless husk, weeping into a microphone.

The most irritating detail about this tragic (YES, tragic!) episode is that I very much doubt that the hapless criminal intended to steal my property at all. It is my belief that the inebriated half-wit picked up my jacket thinking it was their own. The intelligent reader will stare with incredulity at this assertion – ‘Only a mole would be capable of mistaking someone’s property as their own!?’ – I hear you all exclaim. Well, let me assure you, it is not just blind Talpidae mammals who can’t distinguish Topman from Armani, it’s drunken idiots.

The miserable truth is that I simply cannot afford a new overcoat. Cry for me Argentina! I am undone!

The greasy yuppie who wakes this morning to an Alka Seltzer and an alien garment, will not care one-jot that an innocent soul has been permanently deprived of their winter insulation. They will not think of shivering Matthew rubbing sticks together on the Central Line in a desperate bid to warm his creaking bones.

Ok, so I’m being characteristically indulgent but, for once, I feel I’m being entirely justified.

Let me make a final and belated attempt to woo my persecutor... Please please please give me back my jacket. Kites’ future depends on it.

Kites rehearse new track 'You Are (Dead To Me)' at Bullet Bar