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[Iconoclast]

Stopping short every time could appear to be a survival instinct kicking in, but could also point to him knowing nothing and therefore being unable to prove anything.

Stopping short and coming up short are just two rather glaring alerts to the keen mind that it is hearing Billy Bullshit not the glorious truth.

Barrett was drunk at the Cloak & Dagger Club in April 1999, but in wine is truth and the truth will out [thank you, Dostoyevsky] and the truth was out that evening because the drunkard on the cramped stage was unable to convince anyone of anything on the night and led the intrepid Lord Orsam many years later to twist and turn a thousand times to make his (Barrett's) tale fit for the fabrication which was to follow.

A fabrication which was helped by paying unreasonably close attention to the fool crying in the corner, singing his plaintive songs, but only hearing the ones Orsam really wanted to hear and becoming rather plaintiff himself as a hopeless consequence ...

Dean Martin knew Mike Barrett better than even Dean Martin himself could ever have known:

I'm praying for rain in California
So the grapes can grow and they can make more wine
And I'm sitting in a honky in Whitechapel
Broken-hearted with a woman on my mind

That's the thing about women, RJ - we can't live with them [long pause] ... [thank you Norm, best ever line in Cheers].

The best of them just drive us to drink, mate [thank you whoever invented ambiguity].