BOOKS
TheeMedway polymath: BillyChildishin hisstudio,May Road,Rochester, early ‘80s
© EUGENE DOYEN
IN Ted Kessler’s To Ease My Troubled Mind, the reader has their work cut out keeping up with the shifting identities of Wild Billy Childish. It is not the real name of the garage-punk pioneer of the Medway sound, nor that of the outsider artist who became an overnight success after 40 years when one of his paintings sold for £163,800. Childish is a punk rock moniker, given to him by his friend “Button Nose” Steve Simmons. If he hadn’t become Childish, Billy might have been stuck with the rather less exciting pseudonym Gus Claudius, though he can also be found at various times and in particular circumstances representing himself as Jack Ketch, Sir Quentin Gaydish, Gus Honeybum, “Danger” Bill Henderson or Corporal Kunt. Childish’s building society account is held under the name Kurt Schwitters. His passport says William Charlie Hamper, which at least gets the surname right. His actual name, if there can still be such a thing, is Steven.