The Labrador Retriever - part three - Fearsome Bob
Over the years we, together and individually, have had a special relationship with a series of four legged companions, but the Lab tops the lot…
This is part three in the series about our beloved hairy beasts. If you have missed our previous hound-related articles, click the red button below to read. If you want to follow the story in chronological order, best to read parts one and two first.
La Vie en France
When Simon and I first got together, we left the Isle of Man seeking adventure and a new chapter. We had Hummock, our black Labrador, but decided she needed a sister for hairy beast company and other shenanigans.
If you want to find out about the backstory to Bobby, you can also read the article, Puppy Love, before moving on.
Meeting Bobby and Lola, Hummock and Bobby’s Mum
So there we were, on our way with Hummock to pick up Bobby from the depths of Cumbria in England. We stopped off at a local pub and went for a walk before we drove up to the farm at High House Labradors, where Dom and Jan Atkinson also bred horses.
All these thoughts rushed through my mind, the biggest angst being that we were about to take a puppy away from her mother. It really bothered me. However, I knew Bobby would be united with her half-sister, and we would endeavour to give her the best love-filled life ever.
Memories came flooding back of when, as a young child, my father, Rolie, had driven the whole family down to pick up Jenny, our new Springer Spaniel pup. When we got home, Dawn, Martin, Lorna (siblings), and I sat on the sofa. Jenny comedically plonked her way across the undulating terrain of our legs as if she was playing the piano; each ploddy paw and slip produced a giggled note of joy.
We arrived at High House in good time, and Jan let us into the living room, where we proceeded to sit on the floor—the best way to meet a puppy for the first time, maintaining eye contact. And then, in she bounced! Woohoo!! Dashing and bouncing and kissing and playing…
Then in came Lola, Bobby and Hummock’s mum. It was the first time Hummock had seen her since she had left home - a beautiful double-bubble moment.
We didn’t take any photos, obviously.
Bobby was everything and more that we could have dreamed of!
Highhouse Roche Moutonnée (Bobby’s official name, a combination of the breeder’s name plus a rock formation created by the passing of a glacier) was a bit of a mouthful, and we couldn’t envisage how we could use the name, so we decided to stick with Bob.
The pub
When the time was right, we left with Bobby cradled in my arms and made our way to the mighty Tempest Arms, where we would be staying overnight. It was our favourite place to stay in the area as it was homely, served great quality food and a mighty pint of Timothy Taylor’s Landlord bitter.
Trust us to put Bob’s lead around the table leg - she got excited, tried to run, pulled the table and simultaneously tipped over Simon’s pint, resulting in being bathed in a shower of the world’s best bitter! It did wonders for her fur coat, and of course, she licked up the residue. That’s my girl!
Recording an album and an EP at the Chairworks
After a delicious meal and a good night’s sleep, the next day we made our way to The Chairworks studio in Castleford, with our two hairy beasts.
We set up Bobby’s cage in the kitchen, and while Simon was working, I took her out numerous times every day for a jiggle in the park and a run up and down. It was such a happy and special moment in time; not only were we working in a recording studio (one of life’s ultimate experiences), but we also had a new puppy! Win! Win!
Yes, her barking pierced through acoustically treated doors just when we were trying to record guitars or vocals sensitively, yes – when over-excited, she left puddles of delight on the floor, yes, she looked so cute that it was hard to leave her in the next room and focus on our work…
The producer on Simon’s second solo album, The Knife, was Andy Seward (Martin Simpson / Kate Rusby), and he took the whole shebang well in his ubiquitous Yorkshire stride. Drummer Keith Angel (the Angel Brothers) was just like his name and a joy with the girls.
When Christian Madden (Oasis, Liam Gallagher, The Earlies) rocked up for his session, he was both comedic and gentle with the ‘Fearsome Bob: fart of a Lion.’
Then we all went out for our traditional curry at Castleford’s finest, the excellent Red Chilli!
During this period at the Chairworks, we also recorded our Electrolite EP with our great friend and analogue synthesiser guru Mark Cleator: electronica and Americana in the same session!
Or alternativly…
Spain #1 | Music at Calle Laurel, Montesano
We had just moved to a town close to Valencia. Spain, when we picked up Bobby. It was a new start in a new house in a new town in a new country for all of us.
You can tell she likes her beer ;)
Hummock and Bobby got on famously from the start…
The Mediterranean
At the top of our list was getting Bobby into the water as soon as possible so she wouldn’t be frightened. It’s such a joyful moment watching a young pup experience the beach for the first time. She loved it and proceeded to roll around in the sand and ended up wearing half the beach on her face, now known as sand snout.
Bobby being introduced to the Mediterranean…
Spain #2 | Supertone, a residential recording studio
After a year, we decided to make a big move and open a residential recording studio in the mountain village of Estivella, about 30 minutes northwest of Valencia. We had collected all this amazing analogue gear (music is our passion), and we loved recording. Simon had been a producer for Island Records in the past, and besides our own musical experimentation and output, we also wanted to work with other musicians.
The trees of shame
The girls had a lot of space to run around, and loved hanging out in the studio welcoming our visitors; they were very much a part of the whole ‘Laurel Canyon’ vibe at our new project.
However, following a spate of food thefts, I had to make a poster to alert our clients to the potential hazards of leaving food within their snouty reach.
An American musician brought a cool box full of cheese, beer and sausages with him and left it innocently in the living room. Unbeknown to us, when we were upstairs recording, the girls were ‘up to no good’. They knocked over the cool box, stole all the food and disappeared into the garden, hiding under the cover of the trees where they proceeded to devour their stolen bounty. Hence, we renamed the area The Trees of Shame.
Another time, a client swore he’d packed a special panini for his lunch but could not find it in his bag. The next day, I discovered remnants of silver foil pieces underneath The Trees of Shame.
Then there was the incident of the massive pizza that disappeared off the side in the kitchen whilst recording a cool Spanish band; all that was left was the empty wrapper wafting around on the kitchen floor.
Don’t let them fool you with their adorable eyes: you have been warned!
Sessions at Supertone
Chris Cheek
We were really excited as uber-talented New York saxophonist Chris Cheek was flying in to record his new album Saturday Songs at the studio. Our good friend Jorge Rossy was playing drums, vibes & marimba, David Soler on pedal steel, Steve Cardenas on guitar and Jaume Llombard on bass. I lent Jaume my Gretsch Thunder Jet shortscale bass for the recording. Simon engineered the session. Take a listen to the album here:
The lump
Everything went fantastically well, and it was a fabulous experience except things took a bad turn for Bobby.
Berit, Jorgy’s partner, had found Bob choking on something in the garden and had taken something out of her mouth. There was blood, and it didn’t look good.
Simon was in the middle of the session, so he couldn’t do anything. I called Mercedes, our vet and within minutes drove Bobby over in the Van of Rock to get her checked out.
When we arrived, they immediately put an oxygen mask on her - I’d never seen such a long probing snout version before. I made sure I kept calm so that Bobby would not panic. When checking her over, they discovered a big lump hidden away in the pit of her front right leg. I didn’t understand it - we are always tactile with our girls and had never felt that before.
Mercedes decided to keep her in overnight and took some blood for testing.
There was nothing I could do, and drove back to the studio where, of course, I had to keep it professional and look after our guests.
The lump turned out to be cancerous, and they operated. We weren’t sure if she was going to make it, as they didn’t know if the cancer had spread. Mercedes said that she had done a thorough job, and all we could do was wait and see how she got on.
Happy to say Bobby survived and is still with us twelve years later - HUGE RELIEF!!!!
Moon Panda
Simon engineered a recording session at Supertone for ace Danish and American band Moon Panda, who were Master’s students at Berklee College of Music at their Valencia Campus. Bobby knows exactly the right place to be ;)
Hounds and the market in Estivella
We love shopping locally, especially with fresh produce at the market. It became a weekly ritual of ours, so much so that we even bought a cool lime green ‘grandma’ shopping trolley. I tell you now, they are a lifesaver when you’ve got a few pounds of potatoes, onions, carrots and all the veg for your weekly shop to carry! So think about it before you mock - it makes perfect sense.
We always took the girls with us to the market - after all, it was part of our family day out, and secured them next to our favourite veg stall where they would inevitably be given treats of fresh carrots to munch on!
Watch the video below - everyone loved the girls…
The girls loved the walks in our local area, through miles of orange groves and giant aloe vera plants that looked like aliens had invaded. Looking at the footage we took from these times brings back so many memories. Here is a short video showing the dried-up river bed that was suddenly full of water after a shed load of rain…
Blueberry Pie
Before Simon and I dramatically fell big-style in love, we had separate artistic and musical careers; we both wrote songs, played instruments and had our own bands.
After a year together, we decided it was time to unite musically and form the Starlite Campbell Band. For a creative challenge, we gave ourselves a time limit of writing an album in ten days. The girls were always around, inspiring us.
We called the album Blueberry Pie after a song we wrote about how much the world had changed, but not your Grandma’s home cooking. We featured a photo I took on a film camera for a school project on the front cover - it was my Nana Betty flickin’ the V sign.
Watch the official album promo video using footage from the launch gig - I think it captures the atmosphere of our time in Spain—look out for Bobby and Hummock :)
The crossroads
The album was very successful all over the world, and we had to make a choice.
It may not have been a ‘Robert Johnson’ Crossroads moment, but we were so inspired and loved our life as musicians that we seriously had to decide what to do: did we want to stay in Spain running the studio or hit the road and be free to tour and go on new adventures?
Knowing us, it was a no-brainer, and we took the latter option, waved goodbye to Spain and headed off with Bobby and Hummock to the Isle of Man, where Simon and I had first met.
We needed time to do some reconnaissance on the ground and work out which country or area would be the best for our music and creative lifestyle.
The Isle of Man
We love the island, and so do the girls. We rented a small cottage in the southern town of Castletown and quickly made ourselves at home. Our studio gear went into temporary storage with our great friend Mark Cleator, who runs Red Lyon Studios on the island, whilst we started booking tours and gigs.
I love this photo of Simon with the girls in Mark’s live room. That’s Max on the right by the way - I rescued him from a closing down shop in Manchester years ago, and he’s been my companion ever since.
There’s one thing that keeps you active, especially in the winter months, and that’s the fact that you have to go on lots of walks as hounds need the exercise and stimulation, and Bobby and Hummock were no exception. They loved running through fields and fetching sticks from the sea; they’ve probably extended our lives by years.
Just to show you how magnificent the island is, here is some stick-throwing action in winter. Spot the seal…
TT gigs
It would be remiss of me not to include a little glimpse into our epic Isle of Man TT gig marathon, where we headlined the Hooded Ram Marquee Tent on the Promenade in Douglas three times, and played everywhere across the island from campsites to pubs, clocking up a mighty 17 gigs in 16 days!! Rock ‘n’ Roll baby!!
Germany and lockdown
We decided our next move would be to Germany, which would serve as a great base for touring Northern Europe. We relocated all our studio to the village of Thören, about an hour south of Hamburg and started writing our next album, The Language of Curiosity, when Covid and the subsequent lockdown stopped the world.
The thing we didn’t know before we moved is that outside of the cities, there is not really a pub or bar culture where you can hang out and meet people. In the nearest town of Winsen-Aller, if you wanted to go out for a glass of wine or a beer, then your only option was to go to a restaurant. It felt a little lonely as we love to take the girls out and have a beer and a chat.
The only place in the village that offered a regular opportunity for a social gathering was a five-minute walk to the local Schützenhaus (shooting club), where you could get a beer between 7 and 9 pm.
UK tour
We had a short tour booked in the UK, which included concerts at The Met in Bury and The Half Moon in Putney. Early on, we met our next-door neighbours, the family Fricke: grandma, grandpa, son and daughter all lived next to each other and were adjacent to our place. They were cool, loved animals, and when we were on tour left the girls in the capable hands of Julia.
Within a week of us returning to Germany, the whole world stopped: Covid 19 was here.
I don’t want to revisit that time here, as so many experienced loss and trauma. These are some beautiful memories from our time in the village.
We made some wonderful friends, some of whom we are still in contact with to this day.
Hounds on tour
We hate leaving the girls in kennels, and whenever we can, we take them with us. They have travelled to the UK, the Isle of Man, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, Poland, France and Spain - we just bang their cage in the back, load up the gear and off we go :)
The highlight for us was when we played a theatre in the Czech Republic and the girls were in their baskets backstage. When we were taking our bow at the end of the concert, I rushed back and brought them on stage to say hello to everyone - the whole room erupted with joy and laughter!! Brilliant!!
Rehearsals
Our ultimate European move, Portugal
We didn’t want to stay in Germany long-term. After Covid and the live music industry in tatters, we had to make a final destination choice thanks to Brexit.
It’s hard to differentiate between what you need and what you want, so we made two different lists and discussed it at length.
After living in different countries for the past twelve years, we knew we missed the Iberian way of living and definitely the climate (who wouldn’t). So after much deliberation, we decided to give Portugal a go.
On paper, there were many things we had in common. Simon had visited many years ago, and I had never been!
The house found us
Out of the whole of Portugal, there was only one house for rent that had enough space for us to relocate the studio located in the town of Samora Correia in the Ribatejo district, about half an hour north of Lisbon. We weren’t able to travel to recce the house at that point, so a video tour had to suffice. The house wasn’t great, but we were extremely limited in choice. We decided that it could serve as a good start to the next chapter; to have a base we could then start exploring the country to find out where we wanted to be if it didn’t work out.
Bobby and Hummock were used to moving and touring, so as long as we were together, that’s all they really cared about.
Mid-November, in between the two lockdowns, there was a window of opportunity, and we managed to move all the Supertone studio gear in an articulated lorry from Germany down to Portugal five weeks before Brexit. It was close…
No bones in the studio!
We don’t have many rules for the hounds, but one is ‘no bones in the studio’.
Music video shoot
We were contacted by artist and videographer Amanada Naughton, who was really interested in working with us on some video projects.
Amanda was great to work with, and she had complete artistic freedom regarding the storyboarding, filming and editing of the music video for our single release Gaslight from our second studio album The Language of Curiosity.
Bob really wanted to be in the video. We had a scene where an orange was rolled down a skateboard, and she was there, every take, doing a great job as a retriever!
Watch the outtake here and then spot Bob in the official video below.
The squeakers
At this point, we decided that we needed some new puppies in the family to keep Hummock and Bobby youthful, so they could pass on their wisdom.
Read part four to find out about our road trip to Paris to meet our new puppies, Françoise and Edith.
Foz do Arelho, Portugal
After four years in Samora Corriea we wanted to move to a creative city, and our wonderful friends David Mourato and Jo Correia invited us to Caldas da Rainha, a UNESCO City of Culture about an hour north of Lisboa on the Silver Coast.
That morning, we thought we’d visit a house for rent, and then the guys gave us a guided tour of the city. We knew within an hour this was the place we wanted to be.
After incredibly difficult and extremely stressful negotiations, we finally moved to the coastal village of Foz do Arelho in November 2024.
Supertone SonicLab
It’s never easy moving as we have so much gear, but we managed it in record time and after a few setbacks with the house, we were finally able to start setting up the studio a few months after we moved in. Read more in our recent article.
Our hairy beasts love it here, especially our trips to the Òbidos lagoon, where they love going for a swim. It’s a little taste of paradise.
It was only then that we realised Bob was going blind. We would throw a very large log-like stick into the water for her to retrieve, and she couldn’t see it, even when it was within inches of her nose. It’s even worse if the sun is bright and she’s even tried to retrieve Hummock on the odd occasion, mistaking her tail for a stick! She also transforms into bombastic Bob and runs off halfway down the beach with her prize and rolls in the sand with much gusto.
Bobby is a very happy girl and has really blossomed this last year as she bonds with the puppies, and now they are always hanging out together, sleeping with their heads on each other’s backs. It’s heart-melting!
Daily rituals
In the mornings when we let the girls out for their morning ablutions, there’s only one hound that has a high-pitched bark that can pierce through a multitude of walls and doors - yes, you guessed it - Fearsome Bob!! It’s excrutiating and you simply can’t ignore her!
Bob loves her bed and is always sneaking off.
She has the final lick of the yoghurt pot and is such a gentle, gorgeous girl.
As she approaches her thirteenth birthday, she has finally found ‘second gear ‘when out on walks. She has never been able to pace herself to walk alongside you when she is off the lead, having to circle back to try and level up. As soon as she does, a few paces more and she’s off again - Simon and I say she is always in third gear!
So there you are, I hope you’ve enjoyed sharing in the adventures of Fearsome Bob.
Here’s to more love, cuddles, fetching sticks, eating great food and having fun…
Bobby Starlite-Campbell 2026
