It just so happened that the very same weekend of Sam's visit, Hep's sister (Putney) and brother-in-law came down from London for a peaceful weekend in the country. As they were being housed in a newly refurbished guest cottage, Putney kindly offered to cook a 'house warming' meal. Despite Alan's pleas of "take it easy" and "pace yourself", by 5pm both Hep and her sister were well on the way to oblivion, propelled by a combination of gloss paint fumes and Moscow Mules. The promise of an extreme evening was further fuelled by the 'phone call from a friend with a rather Byronesque reputation ('mad, bad and dangerous to know') who announced that he was in the area and intended to drop by. The visitor in question was none other than Doug McCarthy, whose ability to sniff out a drinking session from Herculean distances is well known in the Wilder household. There is a very specific formula to these approximately twice yearly get-togethers with Doug, invariably involving the same component - alcohol- leading to the same results - extreme drunkenness and general lewd behaviour. Just for good measure, you should also throw in some kind of vehicular damage, not to mention a swift dawn disappearance when the booze runs out or the washing up beckons. No sooner had Douglas arrived, than he was off and running with his usual tales of hilarious but nevertheless hair-curling rock 'n' roll depravity. Sorry, but obviously this really isn't the forum for the awful truth about what people get up to on rock and roll tours, suffice it to say that Doug's repertoire of 'on the road with the Mode' stories is without compare and puts him in line for a nice little earner if he ever decides to pen his memoires.....let alone take up a career as a blackmailer. By the time Alan allowed PK and Samantha a dinner break, the knees up in the cottage was in full flow and they found themselves having to play 'catch up'. When the meal was over, Alan, feeling guilty at taking time off (or more realistically knowing full well Sam's level of inebriation), ordered the workers back to the studio for another hour. It was during this brief session that a sloshed and slurring Samantha delivered her excellent vocals for 'Last Call For Liquid Courage' - a cynical diatribe on the excesses of alcoholic consumption. They eventually returned to see the evening off and witness Douglas, who, not content with crashing a quiet weekend in the country, reducing everyone to tears with aching sides and consuming enough vodka to anaesthetise a horse, also managed to crash his own car while trying to relocate its position at 4 o'clock in the morning. Noone is quite certain how Hep, Alan, Douglas and Samantha made it back to the main house in one piece, although village elders of the future will no doubt frighten small children by recounting the legend of how a Renault 19 belonging to the father of the great orator and patron saint of depravity, 'St. Douglas the Dirty', was attacked in the dead of night by a marauding tree stump, it's back bumper ripped from it's body and discarded somewhere near the potting sheds. The following morning, at an unearthly hour, Douglas was to be found retrieving the missing bumper from it's resting place amongst the laurel bushes and eliciting the help of a still-fragile Alan to attach it by whatever means possible (gaffer-tape) back onto the car. And then, as if by magic, he was gone.......never to be heard of again.......well, not until the next time he's upwind from us and catches a whiff of a party somewhere on the breeze Sam concludes:  "It was a great experience to work and spend time in such a gorgeous home. Hep was very sweet and Paris is adorable. The main things I'll remember are learning to build a proper fire in the guest room, Alan teasing me about everything I wanted to eat, helping PK find a lost love, mixing margaritas with Hep and beginning to learn to use the means of production. Without seeming like too much of a suck up, it was really fun and I didn't even mind the chair and whip."