Seize the Day (6 page)

Bizarrely I ended up hosting
Top of the Pops
before presenting a Radio One show, but it was only a short while before I was standing in on various daytime shows, eventually landing the Monday-to-Friday mid-evening slot before John Peel at 10. I loved that programme: bringing artists in for sessions, championing new singles and new groups as well as getting heavily involved with the music. I soon discovered that Radio One wasn’t simply about playing music and that some of us were cast in an ambassadorial role. One of my
first forays to represent the station saw me heading off on a train to the north-east. It was a little like school. I was told to wear my BBC jacket, which rather embarrassingly had my name on it, so wear it I did along with trainers, jeans and a T-shirt. They told me it was casual and all I’d be doing was handing over the keys to a new Variety Club coach, the money having been raised by a recent Radio One football match at Roker Park. Easy. I’d joined a month or two after the charity match, so I wasn’t conversant with how it all worked, but nevertheless the trip didn’t appear to present much of a challenge.

Within minutes of arriving it was clear that this was more than a cursory shake-of-the-hand, nod-of-the-head, back-on-the-train operation. It was a formal luncheon. The number of local mayors almost reached double figures and between them carried more chains than Jacob Marley. The ladies were dressed as if they were to be presented at court. I half-expected to see a fashionable Chihuahua or two pop out of the odd handbag. It was patently obvious that they’d expected a Noel Edmonds or a Tony Blackburn, and I was clearly an enormous disappointment. I was the new boy that nobody knew – I hadn’t actually done any Radio One shows yet. I hid my jeans under the gleaming white tablecloth as I took my place on the top table in the middle of a row of sharply creased trousers, but there was nowhere to hide my lack of celebrity. Initial embarrassment over, I’d tuck in, shut up, keep my head down and within an hour or two I’d be set free. My positivity was short lived. The speeches began. Even worse, one of them was mine. I had no idea until I heard my name. Well, that’s not strictly true, the mayor in question had totally forgotten my name, if indeed he was ever informed of it.

‘I’d like to call upon, er … er … the, er … Radio One representative … to, er, say a few words.’

I wasn’t even a broadcaster, I was a ‘representative’ and had no name. I heard the introduction but initially failed to comprehend the fact that the entire room had fallen silent and were waiting for someone to say something. Cripes! It was me and they expected beguiling
words of wit and wisdom. I was vaguely aware of getting to my feet and hearing myself speak. I hadn’t been at the fund-raising match, didn’t really know any of the other guys, hadn’t done any programme, had no funny Radio One stories and had only been announced as a ‘representative’. Hardly the stuff of which epoch-shattering speeches are made. I cannot recount a single word I said. I faintly recall an etymological whirligig spinning like a John Emburey off-break in my head, but whether the words came out in order I have no idea. Of the 400 or so overdressed and disappointed souls, at least one or two clapped as I fell back into my chair. For that, at least, I was grateful.

As Eddie Floyd once sang, ‘Things Get Better’, and he was right. Thank goodness for Eddie. Actually, come I think of it, I sang backing vocals with him for Paul Young’s Q-Tips at Bristol University. There was a period where I broadcast my show from a different university each week. The idea behind those shows was that I did my radio show, followed by a live set from such artists as the Tourists, the Photos, the Lambrettas and Nine Below Zero. The Bristol night was memorable for not only sharing a mic with the man who sang ‘Knock on Wood’, but also the terrible news that Led Zeppelin’s drummer, John Bonham, had died. The seasonal show featured Slade and was storming along at a rate of Wolverhampton (or whatever the Uni was called at the time) knots towards the inevitable Christmas finale when Noddy Holder announced a special guest that was going to sing ‘Merry Xmas Everybody’ with them. I’m not quite sure who I was expecting, but I wasn’t expecting it to be me. Well, this would be a moment, then. Sadly not. A chord was struck, the power went and the place was in darkness. My small but heartfelt groan of disappointment was drowned by the vocal lament of hundreds of equally disappointed West Midlands students, probably scarred for life by this musical
coitus interruptus
. How could the god of music, ‘Mr Apollo’, of whom the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band once sang, be so cruel? Would the chance ever come again? For those folk, like Dave Hill and Don Powell, only reading this book for the Slade bits, fast forward
to 1991 and then again to 2013, when at last I got to join the band on stage to sing one of the country’s favourite Christmas songs.

In complete contrast to the first debacle representing the country’s number one station, hosting
The Year of the Child
was a pretty smooth ride. The UN had proclaimed 1979 the International Year of the Child and this show formed part of the celebrations. It was organised by Major Michael Parker, now Major Sir Michael Parker, although I can’t remotely lay claim to the fact that my hosting the event helped steer a knighthood in his direction. With many military tattoos and the Silver Jubilee under his belt and Charles and Diana’s wedding yet to come, he was at the helm of this great occasion, which included some 10,000 young people from around the world, in a torchlight procession down The Mall. Hundreds more, technically known as ‘the Choir’, were squashed into the forecourt of Buckingham Palace, flaming torches in one hand and words in the other. I was hosting the event from a specially erected platform on Sir Aston Webb’s 1911 Victoria Memorial in front of Buckingham Palace, the façade of which he’d also redesigned in 1913. Do not for one moment imagine that this is mere architectural posturing. There is a point to it. Admiralty Arch was his too, incidentally. For many years I would go out with his great-niece, Alison Jenkins, and later become godfather to her delightful boys, Milo and Rawdon. The great news for architectural historians is that Aston Webb will re-appear, albeit briefly, a little later on. Anyway, on The Mall I kept the crowds entertained and abreast of the order of events, before announcing HM The Queen and HRH Prince Charles as they appeared on the balcony through the pall of smoke rising from hundreds of flaming torches. I introduced Cliff Richard, who was down to sing a few carols and whip the crowd into a seasonal frenzy. After a few songs he graciously invited me to come and join him at the microphone. I wondered how many artists, in that situation, being filmed, with footage going around the world and in the presence of the Queen and the Prince of Wales, would be happy to share the moment.
We were invited into the Palace after the event and waited for HM to arrive. Cliff whispered, ‘I’ll bet she brings the corgis.’ Was he a seer and clairvoyant as well as the purveyor of hit songs? Clearly. In came the Welsh canine vanguard right on cue. We talked with HM about the magnitude of the event and the children losing time during the singing.

‘Oh,’ said Her Majesty, rather abashed, ‘I’m afraid that was my fault. I was wafting the smoke away and all the children thought I was keeping time and followed me rather than the band.’

As well as Cliff, there was a liberal helping of rock royalty in my own corner of Surrey. I’d grown up in Walton-on-Thames and Weybridge so it was home territory and I bought a house there. An increasing number of rock stars and the like began to move into the area. I’d known Kenwood, John Lennon’s house in Weybridge, through my early teenage years as there were often parties there before it became the home of a Beatle. The big mock-Tudor mansion had been owned by Ken Wood, the founder of the eponymous food mixer company, and his kids had parties there. With Lennon in residence it seemed ideal to try for an article for our Brooklands College rag magazine, the establishment where I’d attempted to balance studying English Literature, Art and British Constitution with guitar, girlfriends, parties and tennis. The crest on the door read
Lennon Hibernia
, which appeared friendly enough, but he had a rather tetchy Welsh chauffeur who was pretty scary and very security conscious. John very kindly gave me a large Chelsea boot which had been sitting in his garden. Very decent, I thought, although it was probably a major obstacle for anyone mowing the lawn. The 7-foot-high boot had been used as a prop in
A Hard Day’s Night
, in the scene where Paul McCartney shrank, to make him look small. We hired a lorry and towed it around the town a few times before it came to rest near the old wall of death at Brooklands race track and eventually fell apart. Nobody seemed too bothered, but these days we’d have been looking at selling it to a Japanese collector for £100,000. I still have a photograph of it.

Lennon eventually sold the house to a local car dealer, Billy Atkins. When we were kids Billy could be seen on his second-hand car lot complete with camel-hair coat, flogging old motors. How he came to buy Kenwood and several other houses in St George’s Hill, heaven knows, best not to ask, but he was more than generous in throwing open his doors to the regulars of the Flint Gate pub and letting the locals hang out at the house where many classic Beatle hits had been written. ‘Bring your guitar,’ he’d say to me, ‘and go and sit in the Blue Room, you’ll get some inspiration there for your songwriting.’

The room had no furniture, so I had to sit on the floor, and it was empty except for a pair of old leather sandals that had escaped the famous division of property between John and Cynthia. Maybe I tried too hard, maybe I was expecting too much, but I only wrote one complete song there. All the same, while it might not have been as good as Lennon’s songs that came out of that room, I still have the demo I made of ‘London Town’ and it stands up pretty well. I also worked there on a song called ‘Cinema Saint’, which I felt was perfect for David Bowie. Of course he never heard it, but I was writing highly diverse material with very out-of-the-ordinary lyrics. No trite ‘I love her, she loves me’ lines from this lad. The demo is probably where it belongs, on an old cassette in a box somewhere, and I think I can say without fear of contradiction that ‘London Town’ was the least successful song to escape from that room.

Billy was a bit of a villain, there was no doubt of that. There was something of the underworld about him. Everybody knew him around Weybridge, where he’d commandeer a desk in somebody’s office or shop, use the phone and order tea, and nobody would dare ask him to leave. He was rather Fagin-esque, sending boys to the shops on petty pilfering raids. He was probably the love-child of Fagin and Walter Mitty. He could be hellishly embarrassing. If you were in a restaurant with friends and Billy came in he’d shout ‘Don’t pretend that you don’t know me’ in a loud voice that silenced the place. The premise locally was ‘Keep on the right side of him’.

The embarrassment was multiplied to the power of ten when he turned up at Radio One after my show one morning in December 1980. ‘Come with me,’ he insisted. He was a dab hand at ‘insisting’.

Rather than make a scene, I followed him down Regent Street, asking several times what he wanted. My blood ran slightly cold. It was rumoured that he knew some, shall we say, shady characters.

‘Here we are … down here.’

I cautiously walked behind him down a flight of rubbish-strewn steps. He knocked on a door, shouted his name and was admitted. Unfortunately so was I. So this was where the ‘shady characters’ hung out. The place froze as I walked in. Everybody stopped whatever they’d been doing and turned to statues … all staring in my direction.

‘It’s all right, he’s with me.’

For the first time I was pleased I was.

‘Drink?’

I shook my head.

The conversation was wide of anything I might have been expecting, not that I’m sure what that might have been. ‘I’ve sold Kenwood and I want you to have the door.’

Everyone had to pass through the door to get to the house. I knew it well; the names of all four Beatles and many other interesting people were carved on it. ‘Why?’

‘Because you’re a music history aficionado, you’ve spent time at the house and I know you have more respect than to flog it to make some easy money.’ He was right and I was grateful, but there seemed an unnatural sense of urgency about his pressing this extraordinary gift on me. ‘It’s sitting in the Reardons’ garage next door. Go round tomorrow morning and pick it up. Promise me now. Tomorrow morning. Don’t leave it any later.’

I promised him, thanked him and scuttled back into the overworld.

I lay in bed the next morning and reflected on the strange encounter and his absolute insistence that I should collect the door first thing. ‘Waste no time,’ he’d said. It’d be fun to have Lennon’s door.
Maybe I could make a coffee table out of it or hang it on a wall. I switched on the radio. John Lennon was dead. Shot. I barely heard the details. But if I didn’t collect that door immediately I knew that I never would. Then my father happened to call round about something. I don’t think he’d ever seen me cry. He did that morning but had no idea what to do, or what to say to me. Not his fault, of course, but he stood there looking very uncomfortable.

What’s more, that night I had to put together and present a Radio One special programme about John Lennon. It was a tough one. Emotions were running high across the country. There were a few personal stories I was able to tell, both about Kenwood and Tittenhurst Park, John’s house in Ascot, having gone to the latter the same year that the ‘Imagine’ video was filmed there, 1971. As well as the grand piano featured in the video, there was an upright piano at the house with a small plaque fixed to it listing five or six songs that had been written on it. I may be wrong, but I seem to remember ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’ and ‘For the Benefit of Mr Kite’ being two of them.

The coincidence, Billy’s insistence, the sudden and furtive meeting and the timing have made me think about it many times. Did he know something? Was there any involvement? He was, after all, obsessed with Lennon, bought his house, and the word ‘imagine’ ran through his conversation like lettering through a stick of rock.