Slept On-Carl Wilson

July 03, 2009 @ 12:44 PM

To set the scene it’s about 9pm and Carl Wilson, Mark Munson and Adam Howe have just finished up a days skating around Essex and have sat down in the Harvester in Benfleet, unfortunately we have missed the salad cart by what could be more than half an hour and the kitchen doesn’t look like it’s open for business for the remainder of the evening, so we decided to take a seat nonetheless.
For those of you who aren’t familiar with Carl’s skateboarding he’s a gnarly transition skater but can pretty much skate anything and is one of the people’s favourites here in the UK. Also known as Potter and raised in the Essex seaside town of Brightlingsea, he gives us the skinny on how he put the –sex in Essex, be it old men, plastic knockers, the lot.

Tell us about Essex: you are an Essex boy?
Carl- It’s full of chavs, it is well known for that and apparently the women are quite loose which is always good.
Adam- And fat.
Carl- They are not fat- well, some of them.
Munson- Fat and orange.
Carl- they’ve got really bad tans, all the men wear vests until the sun comes out and they take their shirts off.

So do you have your boy racer car as well?
Carl- Ah yeah, I have got my Ford Mondeo, haven’t washed it since I bought it. Its a beauty; it’s got no hub caps just steelies mate, and cracked bumpers- its a treat.

What apart from the cars and chav’s would you say about the place?
Carl- It’s a nice place there’s nice country pubs and a nice zoo in Colchester, it’s a beauty. Good golf courses… its rad, I try and play when I have a bit of spare time. I enjoy it, I do the old Happy Gilmore- just run at the ball and hit it as hard as possible and try not to hit anyone.

Who’s better out of you two?
Carl- Ah! Adam… he’s the national champ, seriously- Adam Howe was the national champ and I want that in capital letters with things around it. National champ at 13, he’s too modest to even mention it.
Adam- Don’t put that in.

No problem- what’s your job, Carl?
Carl- It would be carer or support worker, it’s a varied thing. I look after people with Huntingdon’s disease, and old people as well. I have looked after some young people and nearly got stabbed, that was fun. It was for the homeless kids, from around Essex.

Is that nights?
Carl- Yeah I just do nights, I work from 8pm until 8am usually.

Do you get to sleep?
Carl- not really, occasionally, it all depends whether the place is pretty relaxed or not. 

Do you just go skating the next day or do you go to sleep first then skate?
Carl- Sometimes, but if we are going away I will just have to stay awake really, because you are not allowed to sleep in the car, its Munson’s rule: no sleeping.

Tell us about the grannies then mate?
Carl –They are mad, they are literally mental, you have surreal conversations all the time just about anything and every thing, about their life, and then you get the real bad one’s who throw poo everywhere.

Have you ever had anything mad happen to you whilst doing you job?
Carl- I was washing this old dude once and he got a bit excited and I will just say that it wasn’t good.

Describe where you live.
Carl- It’s a little hunchback (old people) seaside town with one road in and out, everyone’s got webbed toes apart from me obviously, there’s some crooked wonkey eye syndrome going on I reckon, it’s just a quaint little old town really. 

So you are the playboy of the town?
Carl- Yeah mate I’m the player, I have my big hat and everything.
Munson- Only because you haven’t got married to your sister yet.
Carl- It’s a lovely little place not much trouble or anything, a nice beach, good chip shop.

What does the player do in his playboy town then of an evening?
Carl– Don’t go out! Because it’s full of chavs pretty much, or I will go to Colchester, it’s a bit of a squaddie (Army) town but it’s good. We just go and get pissed really until silly o’clock, they’ve got the Hippodrome, well it’s not called that anymore, it used to be known as the Slapperdrome! But it’s now Liquid and Envy.

So you haven’t got any secret car aspiration’s being from Essex?
Carl- I have had ten cars already, if you even it out I have had a car a year since I have been driving. I have had two blow up in Ipswich, my car was a MK1 Golf and the engine just blew up in the middle of the Toys’ R’ Us roundabout, I was just stuck in the middle of the roundabout, bad times.

Creature- are you on direct?
Carl- Kind of, I don’t really know what’s going on yet, I will probably go back over there again in August and try and sort something out hopefully, just chill, skate, drink beer and play golf.

Munson- Ask about his drunken debut with the Fuel girls.
Carl-Eh? Oh- I don’t know… I got drunk and swapped underwear with her.
Munson- … on stage in front of two thousand people.
Carl- It was amazing, it was at a proper chav show for cars, we had to go and skate this mini ramp there. It was hilarious, there were birds with plastic tits everywhere parading around, well funny. They were just choosing people to go on stage, and I said ‘yeah I will come up’ silly as I was and drunk. And she was like let’s swap underwear, I was like yeah great idea and then ended up with this little thong on.

What’s going on with Indy?
Carl- I just get them through Shiner, which is handy, I went on a trip at the end of last year. It was amazing to see Grosso skate, seeing him do inverts right in front of you was the best thing ever, you are like ‘that’s how that tricks meant to be done then’ and the way I do it is rubbish compared to that, real man’s way.

Do you do any of the contest circuits?
Carl- Yeah we went to Bowlriders last year, it was good, but I got too drunk I think the night before, Raemers did pretty well.
Munson- You got robbed in the pool with the best trick, he waited too long to do the front blunt, the money was gone. 
Carl- There were some funny antics happened on that trip, there were these big concrete blocks that took four men to carry, we had to drag some random stranger in to help us to put it in the river. We were walking back hammered, we thought it was an amazing idea, Munson was shouting at the dude ‘If you don’t come and help us I’m chucking you in the river’.
Munson- It was like an eight foot jersey barrier it took four of us to lift.

So where have you travelled to?
I have been to quite a few places, I have been all around Holland with Duffs, in India I went and skated Skate Goa that was really good it was an amazing trip, the drunken moped riding was a bit silly but fun. I have been to Israel as well that was really good, the Wailing Wall was pretty immense. Been up and down the west coat of America two or three times too, which is really good.

What about plans to go anywhere?
Carl- I would love to go to Japan, Asia, that sort of area- I really want to go there. I wouldn’t mind going back to Israel as well, there’s so many spots to skate it is unreal.
I would love to go to Australia as well. Most of Europe too really, I’d quite like to go to Italy haven’t been there yet.

Do you ever go down to the promenade and the arcades?
Carl- yeah they are quite funny, they are pikey but funny, the old 2p machines are quite good and the horse racing you bet on the horse with 10p bets they are fun, you hardly ever win. but it’s good.

Do you make a regular trip down there?
Carl- Not really, every now and then, maybe about twice a year when you get really bored and decide lets just go to the arcades and dick about for an hour, not as much as we should really I think.