Peter Asher Around The World!

Peter Asher, that wild and groovy guy, has been out sightseeing. Recently, he has been photographed everywhere from the Taj Mahal to North Dakota (yes, I know many of you thought that North Dakota was just a myth, but I'm here to tell you that it is real). We've been following Peter around as he has toured the universe over the past 35 years (even at one point, managing to find a way to travel through time and space), stopping to take pictures with the grooviest of the grooviest, the fabest of the fab, the gearest of the gear...well, you get the idea.

Here's Peter as he appeared in a remarkable (and now missing) early episode of the British sci fi show, Dr. Who. In this 7 part serial, he played Marco Polo, but his part was recast after the first episode (which was entitled "The Redhead Of The World") when it became clear that he was just too fab for the girls in the cast of the show, as they could simply not control their screaming, and kept drooling on William Hartnell, so amazing was the experience of being in the same room with the "P" of "P&G". The only remaining photo of Peter in this role was used in the Scottish edition of Radio Times in February 1964. The rarity of the picture well makes up for the quality of the scan. The story was subsequently scrapped by the Beeb, partially because they have absolutely no taste, but mainly because they were desperate to conceal the "drooling" episode of Dr. Who (yes, it was a big conspiracy). Besides, nobody watches black and white TV anymore..

 

 

 

After this TV appearance, Peter went on to guest with several other music groups. When John Lennon got too dazed out on tea (which, by mid 1966 was causing a raging epidemic of addiction amongst the "in set") to walk into the door to the photo studio, Peter even sat in on a Beatles photo session with Robert Whitaker. The results were the famous "butcher pictures", though Lennon (after a crash tea addiction rehabilitation treatment at the Lipton Centre in Northhampton) was later airbrushed into the photos (poorly, I might add, which expalins the lack of clarity in the original butcher cover "Yesterday And Today" LP slicks). Some Canadian copies ran the photo untouched, creating perhaps the rarest P&G rarity of all, which can be seen (for the first time ever) sealed, below. No stereo copies of this disc are known to exist.

At some point, Peter seems to have mastered the ability to travel through time. As he has done this, the Gods of Time, whom we call the Teletubbies, have tracked him through all of the Fourth Dimension (which is time, duh!). Here is an image of one of these supernatural creatures, as it glories in it's luck in tuning in just in time for Peter to do a silly walk (a la John Cleese) on an episode of "Monty Python". These Gods of Time seem rather infantile to us, but surely we are just not intelligent enough to understand why Dipsy runs this scene over and over on his teletummy and screams "Again! Again!".

Peter seems to have managed to stay young during his travels, a truly remarkable occurence. While contemporaries, such as Peter Noone, have shriveled up and become over thirty (leading to a counterculture crisis, as everyone knows that you can't trust anyone over thirty, thus one morning you wake up and can't trust yourself!), while Peter has remained remarkably young. Perhaps it is the rejuvenating effects of his travels through time, or, much more simply, the Peter that travels through time must be a young Peter. This paragraph is mainly here to take up space due to the odd size of the picture that is oh-so-prettily sitting right next to where I'm writing.

Peter seems to have particularly enjoyed the Dr. Who television show (perhaps due to its time travel aspect, which was now an everyday part of life for Peter), even after the show's production team decided to recast the old fart Doctor in 1966. Initially, the plan was that the new Doctor would still be an old fart, but would be a hip old fart. However, the other traits were that he would have a Beatle haircut, and be much more musical. They decided that they could sacrifice the old fart aspect of the character, if they could get a groovy ratings booster. So, once again, guess who (no pun intended) ended up in an episode of Dr. Who? That's right, the groovy guy himself - Peter Asher! Here is one of the only existing photos, taken by a six year old, pointing a camera into his toilet bowl, reflecting the tv through an extremely elaborate set of circumstances,and thus accidentally preserving a fleeting moment of schlock television. These pictures of the show are called "toile-snaps", and are all we have left of classic adventures. Peter would, again, have a short stay on the Dr. Who program, this time because several perfectly healthy female viewers had to be hospitalized after seeing old fart William Hartnell regenerate into the Amazing Asher right before their eyes. Thus, Peter's stuntman, some guy named Patrick Troughton, became the Doctor, and the Beeb threw these out, again, partially to annoy 1990s fanboys, and partially to cover up their casting change after the first episode of "The Power Of The Daleks". In this picture, you can even see stand-in Troughton, as he holds the mirror that reflects Peter's image. It is said that Anneke Wills had to be propped up against a wall during the whole of this episode, as she had fainted. Existing audio recordings lend credence to this story, as all of her dialogue is spoken by a fat Welshman.

While technically not a picture of Peter Asher's travels far and wide, I think that this image fits in very nicely here. This is the rare picture sleeve for the original followup to the "Woman" single, designed especially for collectors. (As per usual, note the then year-old pic on the sleeve.) You see, Capitol figured that there were enough record collectors to buy up this sleeve, with no record in it, but with a coupon for a free "Three Musketeers" candy bar. This could have been fine and dandy, but Capitol slapped a $89.99 retail price on the sleeve, thus killing any chance it had to climb the charts. Not only did they hope to catch the collectors with this gimick, but also the not-quite legally blind, who might confuse it with the track "There's No Living Without Your Loving". Capitol's sleeve only marketing scheme was not far off, just long ahead of its time. It would take another 15 or 20 years before there would be enough daft gits in the world for someone to make a profit on a recordless picture sleeve!

Next up in out little photologue is the first piece of conclusive proof we have that Peter has mastered the ability to do what most of us only dream of - to travel through time. Peter arrives at one of the most tragic moments in the appeasement of Adolph Hitler in the 1930s. It is 1938, in the immediate aftermath of the "Munich Crisis", and Chamberlain has just succeeded in delaying the war, by (along with a few other European powers) unilaterally giving up one-third of Czechoslovakia, which Hitler stated was his last "territorial claim in Europe". Chamberlain arrived back in Britain, and declared that Hitler's signing of the Munich agreement would bring us "peace in our time". Peter, with more than 20 years hindsight, and one semester of undergraduate philosophy under his belt, is obviously skeptical.

For a time, Peter settled down to his own time, and it was a good thing, too, as trouble was brewing. Here you see a controverisal photo if ever there was one. This photo was mocked up by Chad Stuart's press agent, (it is actually slender, sleek Jeremy Clyde playing dress up), to create the false impression that Peter was part of a transexual right wing conspiracy in the late 1950s. Tensions between the two superpowers became so strained, that it was clear that some solution had to be reached, before there was rioting in the streets of Burbank over who was the better duo...

The solution was simple. The two parties had to sit down in a neutral location, and work out a suitable peace. Here is a rare picture of Peter toasting to Jeremy (in his Che Guevara cap, and little red suit) after a settlement was reached. These talks were held in West Germany, and while there, P&G recorded two rare tracks in the German language, released only in Germany. These songs, "Liebe, Belch And Bleue Cheese" and "Eins, Zwei, Drei, Vier", are amongst the most sought after Peter & Gordon tracks today. While Chad And Jeremy were at the conference in West Germany, they made balloon elephants.

In fact, the negotiations almost broke down when West German officials threatened to deport Jeremy Clyde for running down the halls of a hotel with "a balloon animal of a design unsuitable for children". However, the talks did not break down, and an agreement was finally reached on July 18, 1966. These Strategic Imitations Limitation Talks (SILT) produced an agreement whereby Jeremy was only allowed to dress up like a nun if it particularly suited his mood, and not in an attempt to connect Peter Asher with Strom Thurmond (then, and still, a US Senator from South Carolina), and that Peter and Gordon would not release "Homeward Bound" as a single, since C&J were offered it first. Furthermore, it was generally agreed that Gordon Waller was seriously fab, and it was very difficult to get him to leave Germany after the talks ended, as he had come down with a serious case of "fraeulein addiction". That, however, is a totally different story...

Peter then returned to galavanting around time, somehow ending up president of the United States in the early 1970s. Here he is, meeting one of his idols, Elvis Presley, and awarding him with a special "Peter Rocks" secret decoder ring, which could otherwise only be gotten if one cut off the box tops to 100 boxes of "Asher O's" breakfast cereal, a difficult feat for El, as he was purely a "'nana sandwich" and bacon and eggs kind of guy.

Sadly, Peter was forced to resign in 1974 when it was revealed that he wasn't actually Richard Nixon at all...

Finally, (for now at least), we bring you a special exclusive. In May, the first new Star Wars movie in 16 years will be released, and guess who is in it? That's right, our guy has a super secret role in the new movie, meant to be a special surprise to both of his fans. Here is an ultra rare piccie, taken on the set of "The Phantom Menace"!

Just in case you're wondering, yes, this whole page is a big joke. Peter cannot really travel in time, he has never appeared in Dr. Who, and he ain't in Star Wars either. If you're still having problems distinguishing reality from fantasy, go outside, take a deep breath, and stand in traffic. That should help... :)

LOOK FOR MORE PETER ASHER AROUND THE WORLD! IN THE COMING WEEKS AND MONTHS!