Tom Clarke: I am not a Hobbit

Time Out appears to have called Tom Clarke out The Enemy a Hobbit.

Tom - known for his outspoken barbs himself - giggled a little and said 'you know what? I wish I had one-tenth of Martin Freeman's charisma'.

Oh, sorry, I'll just read that again. He didn't do that.

Instead he did this:

@Leonbradley7 @theenemyband @TimeOutLondon I like how they stooped to playground insults rather than anything insightful. Poor journalism.

— Tom Clarke (@tomclarke_enemy) September 9, 2014

If I had a pound for everytime a journalist called me a hobbit I could buy enough bullets to round them up and disfigure the lot of them.

— Tom Clarke (@tomclarke_enemy) September 9, 2014

Absolute fucking children. What they fail to appreciate is that I've achieved more than they ever will despite being a fucking hobbit.

— Tom Clarke (@tomclarke_enemy) September 9, 2014

Morons. Jealous, juvenile, inept, generically conformist morons. With your little pens. Do me a favour and get yourself a life transplant.

— Tom Clarke (@tomclarke_enemy) September 9, 2014

It's 2014 and we're still obsessed with what people look like instead of who they are or what they do. Society needs to grow the fuck up.

— Tom Clarke (@tomclarke_enemy) September 9, 2014

Tom, Tom, Tom. They don't use little pens any more. Actually, little pens was people in bookies or Argos; most journalists used normal sized pens. They use keyboards. Although maybe you misspelled penis.

We perhaps shouldn't be surprised that Tom is threatening to shoot people in the face for a mild comment - he also uses his Twitter feed to bang on at some length about his broadband problems.

And there's this:

Twitter raped.....got to respect that ☺️

— Tom Clarke (@tomclarke_enemy) August 12, 2014

I have no idea what Tom is referring to. But I'm pretty certain he hasn't, actually, been raped.

Time Out did make a mistake in calling Tom Clarke a Hobbit. It's easy to get confused, but the cave-dwelling fictional creature they were really going for was a Teletubby.

Darkness at 3AM: Who is the enemy?

This is actually from yesterday's 3AM column, the latest one available online. The Enemy have been planting trees as part of a volunteer initiative - which is admirable. We had our eye caught by Tom Clarke's quote, though:

"Giving up a bit of our time opened our eyes to the difference volunteers can make to ordinary people's lives."

How nice that - despite hitting 41 with their latest single - Clarke can still find some time to help out the ordinary people. It's expected he'll also help the poor folks and the little guys in other initiatives later this year.

Just a side note, though: hats off to whoever added the words "The band have never heard any records by The Jam" to the Enemy's Wikipedia entry. Twice.

Darkness at 3AM: 3ANME

Perhaps Gordon was too busy honing his Pete Doherty thunk-piece, as he seems to missed a lot of the detail his rivals at 3AM have picked up - he mentions Alexa Chung being sick, but the Mirror spotted her hurling over Alex Turner; and while Gordon tells us what he thinks about Doherty's prize, the 3AMies report that some of the crowd booed as he was getting his prize, and that The Enemy weren't happy with his win:

The Enemy's Tom Clarke was unimpressed, telling us: "Doherty doesn't deserve to win anything. He isn't in the music industry any more, he's in the drugs trade."

Which is both pithier than Smart's tirade, and from a more wounding quarter.

Enemy beg 'don't hate us'

The Enemy's Tom Clarke has apologised for pulling their European tour:

“Please accept my apologies for having to again cancel the recent shows in Europe. I’ve come down with a bacterial throat infection that’s made it impossible to sing and forced us to come home. It’s the last thing we wanted to happen, but under doctors orders I am back home resting.”

“We got one blinding show into the tour in Holland, I wake up the following day and can't sing! We cancelled one show and tried to wait it out but I just got worse.

“I’m gutted about this, we were really up for coming over there giving it 10 and blowing you lot away, especially after having to cancel last time too! Please bear with us, we’re dying to get back out there, but the doc says no. Hopefully I’ll get the all clear soon and back out on the road.”

One night in the Netherlands and you've picked up a bacterial infection, have you, Tom? We had a mate who that happened to. Yoghurt and bedrest sorted him out.

Guerrilla gigs? What is this, 2005?

Okay, it wasn't quite a guerrilla gig, as it had been arranged a competition prize, but The Enemy at Loughborough Station does have the smack of that time when you couldn't pop out for a pound of potatoes without discovering a band throwing a secret gig outside the greengrocers.

It was an under-strength band, too: Andy Hopkins was laid up with grotty tonsils:

"We're really sorry Andy can't be here, but he's laid up in bed," Tom Clarke told the crowd.
[...]
"It's [tonsillitis] been going round all tour, I think I might even be coming down with it," he explained. "But fingers crossed we both should be well enough to play the two final dates. We don't want to let anybody down."

My Dad always used to insist that bands needed their adenoids removed. It turns out he wasn't wrong.

Making enemies

Alex Zane and The Enemy have fallen out, apparently after the band took offence at his interview approach. Zane, for some reason, failed to treat them like they were the most astonishing band ever; the countered with a letter that claimed he'd slept his way to the top. (We know, the 'top' being Xfm and the declining Popworld strand in this case.) Oh, and they appear to have scattered some cheap homophobia over the top, too.

The two sides then met at the Vodafone awards:

"He came up to me saying thanks for the letter and I said that was alright mate because I genuinely do think you're a shitt presenter. I then said I'd find it humorous if, upon leaving the building, he'd get hit by a bus."

Clearly, The Enemy are as funny as they are musically talented.

Zane has had enough:

"I think if someone can be that rude, offensive and nasty, no matter how good his music is and how nice his bandmates are, I'm done with them."

Words which would send a chill through the marrow of all right-thinking people, were Zane in a position to damage their careers in some way.

The Enemy's enemy is a straw man

The Enemy are quite self-assured for a band whose profile depends as much on one of them being linked to Peaches Geldof as any music they might have made, aren't they?

Today, they give Paul Potts a kicking for, erm, selling more records than them:

"I've just heard that we are about to be knocked off Number One by that fat bloke from Britain's Got Talent," Tom told [Zoe Showbiz]. "It's a fucking disgrace.

"Nobody will know who this bloke is this time next year. If he thinks he is going be making music in a year's time then he has another think coming.

"People who win talent shows have a habit of disappearing. They make one hit album, do a wave of promotion - and then it's on to the next big thing."

Yes, that's true, Tom. He might be a bit of national joke. But he is still selling more records than you, isn't he? And while people who win talent shows do have a bit of habit of getting some attention and then disappearing... you could say the same about bands-mainly-famous-for-hanging-out-with-Peaches-Geldof.