There was not much fatherly advice about issues other than music, however. ‘It was very easy to say things like, “Whatever you want to be – be lucky.” It was all that sort of stuff,’ says Rupert. ‘Easy ticket, isn’t it? But as a dad he did spoil me with Scalextric toys and that sort of thing. To me he was normal, but God knows what that would be to somebody else. I thought he was normal, but nobody else thought he was. He was my dad so he’s gotta be normal, hasn’t he?’ It was a lot for the boy to live up to, though. Not only was his father famous, but from an extremely young age, Rupert always had the unshakable feeling that his father wanted another member of the band to collaborate with, rather than a son to look after: ‘He couldn’t handle a child,’ says Rupert. ‘He needed someone he could bounce off, so I had to grow up bloody quick.’
At 221 East End Road, it was just Vivian, Monica, Rupert and a few dozen assorted fish, reptiles and downright terrifying beasties. Vivian took his interest in wildlife seriously: he was a member of the Zoological Society and attended their meetings. At London Zoo, he used to have discussions about reptiles with some of the keepers and swap locusts with them. But the main subjects of interest were the forbidding tanks cluttering Vivian’s home. ‘I’m trying to become a pisciculturist,’ he told Melody Maker. ‘I’m less interested in fish than I am in turtles, really. I like evil fish of archaeological interest and things that are not strictly fish like axolotls, on the knife-edge of evolution. It’s a cool world in a fish tank. If you get a balanced aquarium, you can watch them eat their children. It’s like life, very cruel, which is why I like it. I often watch in the nude and a rubber mackintosh.’3
Guests at the Stanshall household frequently came face to face with their worst nightmares, when all they were expecting was a cup of tea or glass of beer. They watched Vivian feed the fish and turtles raw meat and those who stayed the night shared a bedroom with large tanks from which emanated creepy gurgles and splashes. Vivian found the expression of alarm on his guests’ faces as they contemplated trying to sleep with monsters of the deep, lurking only inches from the bed, hugely entertaining. As the tanks were often pretty murky, it was difficult to make out what was inside. ‘There’s piranhas in there,’ Vivian would confide in his most doom-laden tones. He maintained his zoological interest even when he was on tour. Given a large turtle by Glen Colson of Charisma Records, he kept it in the sink in his hotel bedroom. Unfortunately, the abandoned turtle was left hungry while the singer was away at the evening’s performance, and when he finally returned to the room to inspect his latest acquisition, the outraged turtle leaped out and bit him.
Roger Wilkes also remembers the illuminated, bubbling Finchley fish tanks. ‘He loved turtles and snakes. He lost one in the house. A big snake. It went under the floorboards. He said one evening: “Just watch out, it may show up.’” This was not uncommon. Many of Vivian’s friends speak of different occasions when he would casually announce that something horrifying and scaly had nipped out of its tank without permission.
‘There was an aquarium in the hallway and when we looked at this fish he said, “Don’t touch it, or you’ll be dead within half an hour,”’ recalls his drummer friend John Halsey. ‘Then he said, “I’ve lost a snake. I had this bloody snake in a box under my bed and it’s gone.” I didn’t know if he was winding us up or not but he said some deadly snake had escaped and was somewhere in the house.’ Mark Stanshall remembers Vivian would take any opportunity to exploit people’s natural anxiety around slithery, scaly things. ‘He used to claim that when he went away he used to let a couple of snakes out,’ says Mark.
Vivian explained the best way of retrieving one of his pets: ‘Black bastards,’ he growled to Mark. ‘You have to get ‘em with a dustbin lid.’ Rupert Stanshall grew up among the would-be escapees and confirms, ‘Yes – a couple of the snakes escaped. I can’t remember if they were pythons or boa constrictors. He lost one by putting it in a rabbit run, with a tortoise…It seemed like a good idea at the time. He put it in the run, and it buggered off. Another one he lost in a small toilet downstairs. I’ve no idea what he was doing. Allegedly, he was trying to help it give birth. He told his dad about that and Vic would never use that lavatory again in case he got snakebite.’
The aquatic specimens got the worst of it. ‘He once had a catfish which got boiled,’ says Rupert. ‘He was – er – not very careful with the fish. The turtles only lasted because they are so hardy.’ Vivian was more encouraging towards Rupert’s naturalist instincts than he had been about music, giving his son membership of the Young Zoological Society. ‘So I began to keep snakes and that sort of stuff too. I ended up with about twenty tanks in the house and Dad had loads more. It had rubbed off on me because he kept turtles, snakes and various fish that didn’t last very long.’ Rupert could soon identify garden spiders by their Latin names and Vivian kept a few of the larger species.
‘The tarantula snuffed it,’ he told an interviewer sadly. ‘We didn’t notice for three days and it had been such a lively little rascal.’ Any space in the house not covered by tanks was used to display examples of his other passions. Upstairs he had arranged his props from the band. In the front room he had rows of African masks and talking drums and on the stair was a zebra’s bottom, mounted on wood, which gave the effect of the zebra having been caught running through the wall. This was, it is safe to assume, the only house with a mounted zebra bottom in the whole of Finchley, the constituency that elected Margaret Thatcher as its MP.
That the Stanshall house was in such a conventional neighbourhood meant unsuspecting sales representatives were regularly lured to East End Road like docile mice to one of Vivian’s snakes. He regularly sent off for items from the classified advert sections in magazines such as Exchange and Mart, which offered everything from concrete coal bunkers to bass saxophones and tropical fish. If something caught his eye, he would order it under an assumed name, his favourite being St John Danvers. Sometimes a company representative called to follow up the response. The woman from Dolphin Showers was one of those who drew the short straw.
Vivian spotted an advert in the paper for a portable power shower that he could assemble at home. He wrote off for a free demonstration, signing his application Mr Penguin. It was not long before the Dolphin representative called. That day, as he related it, Vivian was cleaning out his fish tanks, naturally wearing a full wetsuit with flippers, and was just getting his turtles out on the floor when the front doorbell rang. He flapped down the corridor and opened the door.
‘Yes?’ There was the woman from the shower company. To her credit, she looked the vision up and down and, with great presence of mind, merely asked, ‘Is Mrs Penguin at home?’ With the help of his friend Andy Roberts, Vivian arranged a time for the Dolphin representative to return to meet the lady of the house and discuss the installation of a hot shower. There was a garage by the side of the house with a small window facing the front door. During the following week they set up an 8mm movie camera inside the garage pointing through the window. They dug a grave on the front lawn, piled up the earth and put a crude wooden cross on top.
‘I got in the garage at the appointed time and waited with the camera for the woman from Dolphin Showers to show up and meet Mrs Penguin,’ says Andy. ‘Vivian was going to answer the door in a black suit and tell her in sepulchral tones that he was terribly sorry but Mrs Penguin had been called away. I was standing there poised for hours to film this woman’s reaction.’ It was not to be. For some reason, the rep never returned to East End Road. Another female official, however, this one from National Insurance, experienced the same treatment. She arrived to discuss some contributions that Stanshall had not paid. He invited her inside to talk, in his turtle room where he kept Stinky, the man-eating turtle. Stinky was only two inches in diameter,