When he was 17 and fresh out of school, Roger Mairlot rode a Lambretta scooter while wearing a red guardsman’s jacket, or sometimes his parka bedecked with badges. He loved the few gigs he got to. But, as family and work life came to the fore, music all but vanished from his life. Now, at 74, he tries to go to at least one gig every night, and sometimes as many as five a day. Before Covid-19, he notched up 725 nights of gigs in a row. “The idea is to keep going till I drop,” he says.
Mairlot lives in Hampton, south-west London, and, on his nightly travels, says he has got to know his bus drivers. “One said: ‘You must have seen all the bands going!’” Impossible, Mairlot says. “You see one band, they split up, then there’s two bands. The more you see, the more there is to see.”
He had been approaching his 60th birthday when a family day out to the Thames Barrier led to a chance meeting with two fellow visitors – a man, and a friend who was pushing his wheelchair. “They were going to see Joan Baez. I said: ‘I’ve always fancied seeing her.’ They said: ‘Why don’t you come along?’”
He did, and they became “sort of gig buddies”. Mairlot had no idea how to use the internet in the early 2000s, and he “leaned” on the friendship. “At that time, as a lot of people do, I was suffering from depression,” he says. The friendships faltered.
Mairlot, a self-employed car mechanic, was struggling to sleep. “I thought: ‘What the hell, I’m going to get up and do a paper round. It was so easy, I ended up doing three a day. That gave me pocket money for gigs.” He came across the Guardian’s weekly music and film guide, and began to go to gigs alone using his senior pass, which afforded him free travel throughout London.
Later, when someone spotted him at an event with his sheet of foolscap handwritten with gig details, they said: “If you get on the internet, there’s this thing called Myspace. Find out what bands are playing.” Mairlot, who lives with his wife of 43 years, got their son to show him the ropes. “At last I could see a use for the internet.”
His mission to go to a gig every night “gets me out”, he says. “You meet people, on trains, at gigs, waiting for buses. You see a bit of life.”
At 17, Mairlot would have hated to go to gigs alone. But, in his 70s, he has found camaraderie in the regulars he has got to know. In the past few days he has been to concerts by Charlotte Carpenter, Isabel Pless, Ocean LeClair and Currls. Often, he says, “[the artists] are glad to see you, glad that there are regular fans”.
Does he ever feel self-conscious about being alone? “Not really. If you’re feeling nervous, you could say to someone: ‘Have you got any idea when it starts? Have you seen them before?’ People are not unfriendly.”
Mairlot’s home and gigging lives sound pretty separate. “They are,” he admits. “The house is old. I’ve got a car that’s 50 years old and wants repairing. I have neglected one bit to do the other at times. But life’s too short. I’m just going to do what I can until I can’t.”
Unlike most of his grammar school peers, Mairlot left education to start earning. His first job was at the travel firm Thomas Cook. Then, at 23, he completed a City & Guilds in mechanics, but no one wanted to take on an apprentice as old as he then was. “I’ve never had a good job,” he says. “But I’ve had a good laugh doing them.”
It was at an antiques market in Kempton Park, Surrey, that Mairlot saw a bright red guards jacket, not unlike the one he used to wear. The first time Mairlot put it on he slunk out of the house. But “people loved it”. It’s since become his signature look.
“I’ve reinvented myself,” he says. “It was purely accidental.” Back when he owned his first jacket, “Everybody wanted to be in a band. I bought a guitar. Couldn’t play the bloody thing.”
Now, he’s realised: “There’s so many bands around, there’s more a shortage of fans. I’ve found my niche. This is what I’m meant to do.”