Dogs, Devilfish, and Def Leppard

Dave Ulliott, the artist and entrepreneur otherwise known as Devilfish, has had a roller-coaster time of it in recent weeks.

Firstly his autobiography has hit the shops with much pomp and ceremony. Some reviews were excellent, such as the sizeable advertorial it enjoyed in the Guardian newspaper. I’d have killed for a one-line mention in the same publication when my effort was released last year.

However some were not so positive, such as the review which opened: “Dave ‘Devilfish’ Ulliott may have won many things in his life but an award for modesty is never likely to be one!” Clearly both authors know the Fish well.

Negative press matters little as some believe firmly in the maxim ‘there is no such thing as bad publicity’ but surely the request by the publicly-listed company that bears his name, Devilfish Gaming PLC, to suspend shares pending clarification of its financial position will add little to his book sales.

All being well the big DF is in London right now putting all of this behind him and concentrating on the plethora of big tournaments in the English capital during the coming weeks.

I’m told the wedge needed to play all of these events – WSOP Europe, EPT, UKIPT et-al – comes to £109,000 ($170,000). Good luck that’s all I can say! You might find me at the Ladbrokespoker.com Killarney Festival at the turn of the month. At €550 ($720) it fits my current financial circumstances far better.

Unquestionably events with entry fees substantially lower than what we had become accustomed are becoming increasingly popular. Although not playing last weekend to find proof I did pop into Dublin for the second Irish leg of the UKIPT and witnessed 590 people willing to put a €560 entry fee on the line.

It could have been 591 had the Ladbrokes.com Irish Greyhound Derby meeting not taken up a few vital hours of my Saturday night. Regardless I was still roped in, dragging and screaming, to do an interview for Talk-Sport Radio from the poker festival where I made a move akin to throwing an unexposed nut flush into the muck when a dwelling player still had cards.

2pm was the slot allotted to me but on arrival at the temporary booth which housed the outside broadcast I found some kind of hippie sound technician was in the seat assigned for guests. He was probably doing a sound check or equipment test.

I waited around impassively before being summoned by a floor manager to prepare to take my seat and be interviewed about poker, gambling, greyhounds and whatever t-shirt they had prepared for me to wear.

As the cans were taken from the hippie and placed over my ears I heard the lead DJ announce: “So that was Joe Elliott lead singer of Def Leppard and now let’s talk about poker and…”

What? I was sitting in a seat made warm by a living legend, a lead singer of a band which has sold 20 million copies …of one album alone?

For a music fiend like me it was a sorely missed opportunity and, as the prospect of making friends with (and hanging out with) one of the best front-men in rock music disappeared beyond the cash tables and out the door, trancelike I managed to deliver a truly forgettable monologue about mind numbing things such as tournament dynamics and the average age of the modern day poker player with the passion and finesse of a BP spokesman.