The Belfast frontman had to cancel a US festival, and lost his valuables in the process.
“The day of the big scare we were supposed to be flying out to Seattle for this really cool radio festival with Mars Volta, Eagles Of Death Metal and the Red Hot Chili Peppers,” Gary rues. “Tom and Nathan, who were flying from UK airports, made it over fine but the rest of us were stranded in fucking Norway. Sorry Norway, I love your country but it wasn’t where we wanted to be at the time!
“When we eventually managed to leave for Heathrow, they made me put my phone, my laptop and my iPod into the hold, which is the last I saw of them. We had seven pieces of luggage go missing in all, which is a bummer ‘cause when you’re touring your bag becomes your home.”
There were more Lightbodyian temper tantrums when another airline managed to mislay the flight-cases containing all their amps.
“Yes, thank you for reminding me,” he says warming to the theme. “Rather than cancel which we’ve done too much of recently, we played acoustically to 2, 000 people in Oslo with Ken Stringfellow accompanying us on piano, and to 10,000 in Belgium with just me and Nathan who reckons it’s the most nervous he’s been in his entire life.
“While appreciating the need for security, there must be a way of arranging things so that it doesn’t take five hours to switch terminals at Heathrow.”