George Harrison, Son of Rambo...not

December 15^th – As a mega-star, if I was gonna go down at the hands of crazed maniacs, or suffer a very narrow escape, then in either case I’d like to think my ending was epic, the fallout for the perpetrators catastrophic or the resultant story full of gory details concerning the brutal pedigree and abilities of the blood-thirsty crew who came to punt me off to heaven.

One would have thought that, as a member of pop’s cognoscenti and blessed with so much time on one’s hands, our pop hero would have had time and space to learn several of the more brutal forms of self defence. You know, the quart of blood technique or being able to turn an innocuous household article into a deadly weapon; a pudding spoon so’s the assailants could get their just desserts or a boiled-egg hole-puncher into their eye, say, or, failing all creative sensibilities, a fucking huge carving knife. OK, let’s surmise that a gig and a double-helping of chemical support had left them drained and fully asleep so unable to hear the approaching foot-pad of a murderous crew. You’d be quite at liberty to think he/she should’ve been able to rely on the help of a couple of dogs the size of Shetland pony’s capable of swallowing a man’s head in one go. And after? After all the blood-letting and mayhem? Whatever the outcome  one would suppose that, at the very slightest, one could look forward to a high-profile trial and significantly high sentence for any who had the temerity to attack our hero.

Well, even though death was not the outcome (obviously) when an intruder broke into George Harrison’s home on this day in 2001 and stabbed him, what was not expected was that Mr. Harrison would run at him (brave) and miss...(?) and then be rescued from the situation by  a lamp-swinging mother-in-law...Jeeezzee, can it get any worse? Well, when the guilty party, Michael Abram, was found not guilty for reasons of insanity and let go...? That sort of deflates the situation, heroics and ego somewhat,  that only a madman would figure on killing you (ask John Lennon…oh, hang on, you can’t…well you know what I mean) and not, say, a professor of music or some other member of the intelligentsia or a gang of music counterfeiters paid and controlled by the Devil who’d got the neck-collar on the bootleg trade and wanted you to;

Sign the contract, Sonny

so’s they could carry on their nefarious trade of releasing more inane, mop-top tunes but with Alvin and the Chipmunks doing the vocal honours. Would seem that even mega-stardom won’t get you a memorable death then.