The Ups & Downs Of Decemer 2007. Part 1: The Downs

Firstly let us officially wish you a Happy New Year and all the very best for the next 12 months and thanks again to all of our customers who kept us busy throughout the run up to Christmas. Last month was definately full of mixed emotions for us here at the State Dept Of Fashion Corrections. This first part will detail the down side of December for us and the next part will deal with the upside.

Picture the scene we're busy printing up shirts for customers three weeks before Christmas when we get a call from a lovely young lady from the BBC, (for our American readers that stands for British Broadcastng Corporation), who tells us that she loves our John Smeaton and Proudly Banjoing Terrorists t-shirts. We thank her and she goes on to tell us that she's currently involved with filming a documentary about John Smeaton, (the Glasgow airport baggage handler who helped to fight off two terrorists intent on blowing the place up), for the BBC entitled An Accidental Hero and that it would be really cool if we could supply her with some free t-shirts. So we agree, after all it's not everyday we get a phonecall from the BBC. She explains that the film crew will be followng Smeaton to New York where he'll be presented with a special CNN Everyday Superhero Award and will meet with stars such as Mary J Blige, Glen Close, Kevin Bacon and Billy Connelly and that she and the rest of the crew would love to hand out our t-shirts to the stars. As you can imagine we get a tad excited about the prospect of our t-shirts being handed out to Hollywood celebs so we agree to supply her with a batch of Smeaton and Banjoing Terrorists t-shirts and we post them out to her two days before the crew are due to fly out to New York. She is overjoyed and promises to phone us when the she returns from the Big Apple.

Four days later and true to her word we get the call, but we realise straight away that something is wrong. She tell's us that they all made it to New York only to discover that Heathrow Airport staff had placed the wrong labels on all of their luggage and that they spent the entire three days with no change of clothes, laptops, camera equipment or, more importantly for us, t-shirts. So there you have it folks, what could have been a massive opportunity for the S.D.F.C turned into a non-event, we had visions of watching LL Cool J flexing his man cannons whilst wearing Proudly Banjoing Terrorists t-shirt. Apparently nobody seems to know where the the t-shirts ended up, so if you settle down to watch the news one night and are surprised to see some kids running around Somalia or Kazakhstan with John Smeaton's face plastered over their chests, you know the story behind their t-shirts.