For a while, the members of the Boomtown Rats would adopt silly stage names, such as Max Volume, Cup O'Tea, Ray Di Ator, Max Headroom, etc.

Only two stuck. Pete Briquette's name is a joke on Peat Bricks, the staple form of burning fuel in Ireland at the time. The reason was his real name Paddy Cusack, was seen as too Irish for English audiences - so they made it less Irish by making it more Irish! No, I don't know what they were drinking that night when they came to that conclusion either - but everyone's called him Pete ever since anyway.

The famous one was when they went to the Netherlands for the first time, and in an attempt to make themselves bond better with the audience ("if Frankie Miller can make it here Fatchna, this should be a piece of cake!"), tried to introduce two members of the band as having Dutch backgrounds, calling them the Van Rental brothers, Hertz and Avis. The Dutch audience, having a far better grasp of English than the Rats appreciated, promptly fell about laughing. That was the end of that idea!

As for the business at the Music Machine, there had been a lot of trouble that night thanks mainly to a band called Tumbling Dice, whose violent supporters were attacking fans of other groups appearing that night. The event was being filmed for US TV, which didn't help.

The leader of Tumbling Dice, Ian Stuart, ranted on during their set about how awful the Rats were & what a sellout they were (for the "crime" of, wait for it, appearing on "Top Of The Pops", amongst other things!). The idea was that they would be too scared to go on stage from all the furore whipped up. The Rats did appear, and when it became apparant that their very entergetic aggressive style were winning over the audience, Stuart ran back on stage to hit Geldof, twice.

Ian Stuart was better known in later years as Ian Stuart Donaldson, when Tumbling Dice became the avowedly Nazi band Skrewdriver and the proprietor of the Blood & Honour neo-nazi organisation, and almost destroyed the "Oi!" scene when he, along with Joe Pearce & Nick Griffin of the National Front (the latter is now leader of the British National Party), tried to hijack it & co-opt the bands into Blood & Honour...not a clever idea when most of the bands that did have politics, such as GBH or Angelic Upstarts, were very left wing, or like the Toy Dolls, Splodgenessabounds & Peter & The Test Tube Babies were officially "anti-political" (because of the behaviour of crooked councillors & MPs from their own localities, NF/SWP instigated local battles at soccer grounds or marches, etc.).

Donaldson died in a car crash a few years ago - it is believed the steering wheel of his car was tampered with by London gangsters he'd fallen foul of, regarding "protection" racket "rights" (yes, that sort of **** still goes on I'm afraid). Most punks & Oi! fans went to the nearest bar to celebrate the news - he was not sorely missed by any means (except for his bigot pals & Gerry Gable at Searchlight - without Donaldson's antics he was then left struggling somewhat for British news to put in).