Johnny Rockett
“Apart from my mother, the only man I address as "sir".”
“Good lord, that's the last time I order a burger with french fries, yes sirree! Dirty frogs.”
John "Johnny" Rockett (sometimes known as "Rockett Man") is a British physicist who owns and operates a small but lucrative chain of self-named fast food restaurants in the United States. He is widely believed to have invented and popularised the hamburger, which he named after a childhood pet whose taste was similar. Johnny currently resides in his home town of Walsall.
Rockett Man, a Biography[edit]
Education[edit]
Johnny was educated at Joseph Leckie School, a local institution with national acclaim for its progressive methods and minimalistic approach to staffing. Rockett is proud of his alma mater, frequently using it as an excuse for bad grammar and syntax in both written and spoken English, thus:
“Yeah, well, I went to Leckie.”
He read Physics at the University of Manchester, becoming in the process the first Leckie student to attend or be able to spell "university". He received his Bachelor's after three years and twenty six minutes of study. However, the authorities considered this extra half-hour a breach of the competition rules set down for all undergraduates at the start of the course and his degree was downgraded to Molecular Chemistry. Subsequent attempts to resurrect it have met with failure.
The Hamburger Years[edit]
Johnny's childhood dream of managing a multinational corporation was realised shortly after graduation. Career choice for the Molecular Chemistry graduate in the late 1970s was limited to either molecular chemistry or work in the fast food industry, and Johnny opted for the latter. (The author is pleased to note that times have changed and now Molecular Chemistry graduates are prevented by law from any kind of employment.)
Rockett started work in a branch of Burger King, a restaurant which then sold predominantly health foods, on a sunny but deceptively chilly Monday morning in June. By Wednesday afternoon of the same week he had been appointed as manager. By Friday evening, he had effected a coup d'état, changed the branch signage to "Johnny Rockets" (the final "t" of his name and the apostrophe being dropped for religious reasons) and updated the menu to include his new creation, the "hamburger".
Twilight[edit]
Having made his fortune in the fast food market, Rockett resigned as CEO of "Johnny Rockets" and accepted a post at Queen Mary's Grammar School in Walsall as a teacher of physics. At Queen Mary's he joint the likes of Steven Thorpe and Ram Saran.
Rockettisms[edit]
- Your Mom
- ANNNNNNAAAA!
- Let's pick on someone...
- I went to Leckie...
- NEXT!!!
- Mooving on!
- Ooo, actually, now you mention it, I seem to have cracked several ribs.
- Yer, you, "girl"
- Lets pick on the ginger kid
Trivia[edit]
Elton John's song "Rocket Man" was written about Johnny. When played backwards, the song is revealed to be a version of the "Johnny Rockets" menu set to insipid restaurant-style pop music. In an interview in 2002, Sir Elton said:
“I used to live off his hamburgers when I was a little girl. The song seemed a fitting tribute to a great man.”
Rockett once played a well-publicised prank on his colleague Stephen Thorpe, by releasing a hungry otter into his laboratory. Progress in the ongoing experiment was halted for fifteen minutes while the otter was found and removed and Thorpe coaxed down from the hat stand, where he had attempted to disguise himself as an overcoat.