Rick Parfitt: Last News

Status Quo’s Francis Rossi has indicated that he does not think the band will play together again after the end of their current tour.The band, who formed in 1962 and are among the most prolific touring acts of all time, are scheduled to play in Europe and the UK over the coming months, with the final announced show set to be in Vivary Park in Taunton, Somerset on August 23.And now, Rossi has told the Mirror that he expects that to be it for the band.“I don’t think we will go again,” he said. “And as far as the rest of the band are concerned it’s the last tour too.

“I remember once somebody said ‘I saw a child crying on their show’, well yeah go to a kids party, kids cry you know, they fall over and stuff.He added: “We had this famous incident where, I decided we would have a celebrity cage, instead of normal members of the public we pelted with rubbish, let’s get celebrities in there.“We had Status Quo, a rock band from America called Goldie and the Gingerbreads, Lemmy from Motorhead and the late splendid John Peel, the cage was rammed.“We pelted them with whatever and then I’m doing a sketch with Lenny and I suddenly thought that’s marijuana, I, a producer of a children’s show and somebody is smoking a spliff.”When asked “Did you find out who it was?”, Chris said: ”Yes, basically Lenny and I were doing the sketch, he was dressed up as a waiter and Lenny was like ‘where are you going’ and I said forget it and just pelted the cage with water and the offending item was put out.“I can’t tell you who it was… Rick Parfitt.”Tiswas, which stood for Today Is Saturday: Watch And Smile, ran between 1974 and 1982 with Chris at the helm for seven of those years.Featuring a stitch-together of competitions, film clips, pop promos and comedy sketches, the show left kids howling with laughter across eight series.Chris was joined by co-host Sally James as well as a young Sir Lenny Henry and occasional appearances from comedians such as Jim Davidson.Chris believes censors would pour cold water all over Tiswas today because of how some of the guests were treated.A popular segment on the show was “The Cage”, where, usually, a child in the audience who had applied, would be locked up and periodically doused in water.It became so popular that the 100th show featured several hundred fans lining the