Bot legs The Breadwinner (Patreon)

I’ve been wondering what my next “blog” post should be about and started a little discussion amongst friends in the pub, when our resident merch girl stated ‘you should do a blog post about me.’ So here it is, the highly anticipated “blog” post about Amy, AKA Bot legs the Breadwinner, AKA the fourth member of ADF.

So first things first, how did we meet our very own merch seller extraordinaire? Many moons ago, Amy and I worked together at an adventure golf course. I actually did Amy’s trial shift and chose her as my new staff pick, and as Amy will tell you, the first thing I said to her after introductions was ‘you’re so weird’ - little did I know she would become my absolute saviour of a human being. (Just as an FYI here, she did introduce herself and then proceeded to show me her armpit.)

Amy used to work pretty much every Saturday evening shift, I’m sure she mainly worked on the bar, but as I hated working on the bar, I did my Saturday shift dealing with birthday parties. I’ve never been the biggest fan of dealing with children every weekend, but I think my organisational skills and timings for food & games meant the birthday party coordinator role was kind of thrust upon me. But when the parties were over, and the screaming, throwing up, covered in juice kids had gone. I would come over to work on the golf till, and Amy would come and join me as we waited for Ande to arrive for his acoustic set.

Yes. Ande kind of worked at the adventure golf course too. Every Saturday night he would have a 1 hour acoustic set that paid him enough for his night out that would inevitably be happening later on that evening. It was during this set that Ande would do his absolute best to replace as many words in the songs with our names. “Hey I just met you, and this is crazy, but here's my number, so call me Amy.” “Is someone getting the Beth, the Beth, the Beth, the Beth of you?” “So Amy, hold me closer in the back seat of your rover.” You get the idea.

It was at one of these shifts that I told Amy I was in ADF and we were playing a show at The Bodega in Nottingham. I knew she liked music so thought she would be interested. *Queue sarcastic sounding Amy inner monologue* you're in a band? That sounds great... but nevertheless she agreed to come along despite her brain telling her it was going to be terrible.

Here we are, Amy’s first ever ADF gig. Let’s zoom in to find a very drunk Amy at said “terrible” gig, ‘I F***ING LOVE THIS BAND’ - and the catchphrase was born. We heard this bellowed over the whole crowd, and saw a little Amy waving her arms in the air and loving life. And right after the show, she had her first experience at selling merch. I say “selling”- selling is a large word for Amy’s first merch encounter. She stormed over to our merch table, and then proceeded to give away tee-shirts for free, slurring that some guy wanted a Large and his girlfriend wanted a signed CD. She then spent the rest of the night throwing up.

The next question is, how did Amy go from giving away our merch to actually becoming our merch seller? We were playing a show in London. It was a bigger venue, and at this point we were still managing literally everything ourselves whilst on tour. Because we had no crew, it was up to us to try and sell merch, which is near impossible when you are on stage performing. After sneaking a Wagamamas into the venue for her, Amy sat behind the merch table to eat, and during our set as fans came to the merch desk, Amy started her role as merch seller extraordinaire. After the show I came over to find Amy piling up each tee-shirt we had in a guy's arms, ‘well for all 4 it’s only £70, so you may as well just get them all.’ And from then on, she was hired / had hired herself on our behalf.

Since then, Amy has genuinely become an inseparable member of our team, and I genuinely don’t think I could cope on a tour without her. She makes sure we’re all okay in our own way, with me - it’s checking I am fed, watered, and have a coat. With Ande, she will yell at him to get in the van so we don’t drive off without him, (you’d be surprised at how often we consider that as an option.) And with Timmy, it’s making sure he gets to stop at a starbucks. And what do we do? We beg her to use all her holiday time from work touring with us, and make her listen to our terrible live set every night. Overall. Amy is the best. I am very thankful she was obsessed enough with adventure golf to come in for that trial shift, and I am very thankful that all that time ago she didn’t think we completely sucked.

I hope that gave you a little insight into ADF, and also let you know how much we love and appreciate our bestie. A nice heart warming post to set you up for the weekend - Keep fabulous people around you folks! Because you never know what role they will end up playing in your life!

But wait, don’t end it there. We still don’t know why she is called Bot legs! Do not fret boys and girls, I will give the answer you seek. You may have heard of a little game called Call Of Duty? Amy, Ande, and a group of others play this game almost every evening. I say “play” - every time I look at the screen Ande is dead, and they just seem to be making odd noises, saying ‘scared on me’ and of course, nicknaming each other. For a long time, Amy didn’t know how to move properly in the game, resulting in the rest of her supportive team consistently calling her a bot, insisting she moved like a robot/computer. And that is where Bot legs came from. Fun fact, Amy now has the name ‘Bot legs’ inscribed on her iPad.

Until next time, peace out mother fluffers!

Bethany.