On April 14th he released The Laughing Gnome. Who had been held prisoner in his bedside drawer for the last five months.
That same day he released a single called 'The Laughing Gnome' which infuriated gnomes worldwide for it's steriotypical portrail of gnomes as happy funny creatures. The b-side was 'The Gospel According To Tony Day', a cynical and depressing account of the values and aspirations of a number of mythical friends. Any party atmosphere fostered by side A, was quickly dampened to near suicidal depression by side B.
In May David recieved his advance money for the Deram album, and spent it all on a bag of chips and second hand rollerskates.
In June it finally came out. He visited a doctor who was quick to push it back in and give him an ointment.
Also in June, his first debut album, 'Love You Till Tuesday' hit the record stores. Mike Vernon, the producer, described David as 'One of the brightest talents I have ever recorded' in between fits of giggling. He was never seen again.
The album was not well recieved. It soon appeared in the bargain bins, then the gutters, the sewers, and finally the Earth's core.
Hot on the heals of his debut came the single 'Love You Till Tuesday' (Tuesday being the day most producers and managers finally got to hear David in the studio). It debuted in the charts at Number : OUT and quickly tumbled from there. It mattered little to David, who had scored a neat pair of skates for his trouble.
Ken Pitt and David decided it was time to branch into films, while the iron was still room temperature. In September he began work on his first film, an arty type one, called 'The Image'. It was about an artist and a boy who get up to all sorts of funny mischief, whereby the artist stabs the boy repeatedly and has a nervous breakdown. It was less successful than had been hoped for initially. Still, David scored 30 pounds and a straw hat.
Then came a chance meeting that wasn't really going to change the course of David's life all that much, but maybe it did, nobody is quite sure.
Lindsey Kemp was one of the only people to buy David's debut album. (He actually pinched it, but this was close enough for David). Kemp - "I thought it was Cat Stevens, I must of grabbed the wrong one by mistake, I cursed all the way home"
Flattered apon hearing that someone actually had one of his albums, David payed Kemp a visit. He became David's teacher in mime and other mimey arty things. Kemp once studied under Marcel Marceau, but the weight became too much and he decided to study under a blanket.
David - 'He did all these fantastic arty things, he would wave his hands about and jump up and down, he would put one leg in the air and make popping noises while holding a flower, it was just so....so arty'
David appeared as a mime for the first time with Kemp in 'Pierrot In Turquoise' at the Oxford New Theatre on December 28th, 1967, just making it into this chapter. 'It was my view at the time that mime was much more profitable and lucrative than music or business, mime was the way of the future, everybody loves mime.'