I’VE ALWAYS LIKED poetry, both reading it and writing it. As a child I often, in my mind, put words to what I thought were sympathetic tunes. Somewhere around the age of ten I discovered a book of handwritten poems by my mother. I had no idea that she’d written poetry, but it was atmospheric stuff and unlike my less than fair hand, at least it was decipherable. It wasn’t quite the immaculate copper-plate effected by my maternal grandmother, with her bank of Swan pens, but it trounced mine by a country mile.
When I started to set John Betjeman’s poetry to music, there was no plan. No rumbling strategy that had been brewing like an approaching storm. No Archimedes moment. I had a book of Betjeman’s poems and had been rolling ‘A Subaltern’s Love-Song’, also known as ‘Joan Hunter Dunn’, around in my head. A tune appeared and I liked it. It seemed natural and had a flow to it. A day later it was complete and I seamlessly moved on to another Betjeman poem, ‘Harrow-on-the-Hill’, closely followed by ‘The Fete Champetre’ and ‘Newest Bath Guide’. I was on a mission without knowing why I was doing it or where I was heading, at a time when I was up to my ears in TV, radio and personal appearances with hardly a spare moment.
Within a short space of time I had half a dozen songs with my music and Betjeman’s words but had no idea what to do with them. Step forward Charisma Records CEO Tony Stratton-Smith. Ever ready to promote Englishness and quirkiness through his label, Strat loved the whole idea and was up for putting out a six-track CD/LP. Thank goodness for inspirational characters like him in the industry. There are too few now, if any. When asked about a producer I decided to aim for the top and called George Martin. Our initial meeting was marvellous: we got on well and George visualised it immediately. He did some initial orchestrations and arrangements and we began putting down tracks at Air London, with George producing alongside Rod Edwards. After we’d done most of the tracks it became obvious that I wasn’t going to stop writing and that a full-length album was in the offing. George had to head off abroad to produce an album for Kenny Rogers and left Rod in charge of production. It worked very well. I kept writing, Rod and I kept producing, and we frequently hired the Rolling Stones’ mobile studio, which we parked in my drive at home. Afternoon tea, a little croquet, another song: it was an equable way of making an album.
On top of all that I was pitching songs from the album to various singers. Justin Hayward, who had once heard Betjeman reading at his local youth club, recorded ‘Tregardock’, Steve Harley sang ‘Harrow-on-the-Hill’, Annie Haslam did ‘Hunter Trials’ and Captain Sensible recorded ‘Parliament Hill Fields’. All those were done at my home, The Aldermoor, in Holmbury St Mary. I had to collect the Captain from Crawley railway station as he’d come by train from Sussex, where he pursued his love of rabbits, Jimi Hendrix and cricket. It was rush hour and I was a little late, but unconcerned, he was sitting in his trademark white shorts, shirt and red beret on the ground, with the crowds pouring round him, eating curry from an assortment of tin foil dishes spread around him. The rest of the album, mixing, production and vocals, was done at Mickie Most’s RAK studios in St John’s Wood. Mike Nocito (on the brink of finding fame with Johnny Hates Jazz) engineered, while Mickie popped in now and again to make a salient point or sagacious observation. He was also the chap that went for the fish and chips! I think he’d really done it all. With dozens of classic hit singles and albums over the previous twenty years or more, he’d got the badge, the T-shirt, the mug and the hundreds of gold discs. He was now happy to take the lunch order, get on his motorbike and whizz off for half an hour, or watch Chelsea play at home.
I ended up singing two of the songs by default, backed vocally by Cantabile, as no ideal artist sprang to mind. Cantabile (now the London quartet) had been on both Saturday Superstore and Radio One many times, so I was acutely aware of their harmonies and humour. One of the songs in which they sang backing vocals, ‘A Subaltern’s Love Song’, was parodied with appalling scansion by Tatler, which imagined me changing Betjeman’s words to squeeze in lines like ‘super-hot-shot powerplay’. I suppose I was fair game.
Ralph Allwood, Precentor and Director of Music at Eton College, was enthusiastic about the Eton College Chapel choir recording ‘May Day Song for North Oxford’, but practicalities meant recording it at the school, which proved an onerous task in many ways. Setting the microphones for the right balance was an intricate and elaborate process and by the time that had been executed it was lunchtime. The organist had obviously enjoyed a cracking lunch and had a wee bit of a post-prandial struggle getting to grips with the mighty instrument. That was solvable with time and a strong coffee, but the Heathrow flight path was slightly beyond my control. There seemed to be a plane every five minutes or so. Even if we couldn’t hear it, the sound man’s semi-permanent wince gave away the problem. This is what sound men do, they wince. A passing bluebottle 100 yards distant … wince. A lorry reversing 2 miles away in Slough … wince. The Queen turning the sound up on the TV across the road for the 2.30 at Newmarket … wince. I’m not convinced these coves are that sensitive. I believe it’s a power game. ‘You may be the producer, mate, but I’ll tell you when you can record. I hold all the cards.’ With fortitude, determination, strength of mind and sheer luck, we got the track ‘in the can’ as we music biz types say and it was a corker. Earlier in the decade we might have had David Cameron and Boris Johnson in the ranks of the choir on that track. A few years later the Princes William and Harry might have been giving forth on it.
With Ian McNabb from the Icicle Works, Alvin Stardust, Simon Bowman and Cantabile also on the album, the only unknown act was an outfit called the Students of Architecture. These guys had previously gone under the names England and the Rose and they were seriously talented. We recorded their track at Abbey Road and went through the usual routine when anybody records in what was the Beatles’ studio: ‘Do you think Lennon stood here? He must have done … Oh yes, this is definitely where Ringo’s drums were … Can you feel the magic?’ and so on. I thought there might be an outside chance that Paul McCartney would sing ‘Archibald’, the poem about Betjeman’s much-loved bear. I had a conversation about it with Paul outside RAK Studios and he made one or two suggestions that might help the structure. It sounded promising, but Alan Crowder at Paul’s office came back to say, ‘Regretfully he can’t get involved in this project due to the enormous amount of things he has going on himself, but wishes you every success with the musical.’ Pity.
CBS looked to be the main contenders for the album. We discussed the marketing, the sleeve design, the overall strategy and the possible first release. The most likely candidate for a single was David Essex singing ‘Myfanwy’. This track almost didn’t make the album. Rod Edwards was convinced that we already had enough songs and really didn’t need another one and he was probably right, but you can’t stop a chap when he’s on a roll. I pleaded the case for a song I’d just finished writing over breakfast at the kitchen table. I have to say, it wasn’t looking good until he heard it. He reasoned that if he was convinced by my live version on one guitar, then it was worth considering. Chris Rea had originally recorded it and even performed it at the Royal Albert Hall, but the Magnet Records boss, Michael Levy, not yet elevated to the peerage, refused to let him release someone else’s song.
We felt that it was a possible hit single, but were adrift until Dave Dee suggested David Essex. He was on the money. David was absolutely perfect for it. His version of ‘Myfanwy’ was given the thumbs-up by CBS and we looked set fair. Set fair, that is, until one of their promotion guys heard it. His comments went something along the lines of ‘You’re joking, aren’t you? It’s a bloody waltz with an orchestra, how the hell can I get Radio One to play that?’ They thought again, and that effectively ended the potential single and album deal with CBS. Luckily Arista, headed up by Peter Jamieson, picked up the single and ran with it. The launch was at Kettners in Romilly Street, opened in 1867 and a favourite haunt over the years of Oscar Wilde, Edward VII, Lillie Langtry and Agatha Christie. Bing Crosby once sang from a balcony to keep hundreds of cheering fans happy. The invitation was ‘To have morning tea with Mike Read and David Essex.’ We were joined by Arista Records boss Peter Jamieson, Betjeman’s publisher, John Murray, and some of the artists on the album, including Justin Hayward, Captain Sensible, Steve Harley and Annie Haslam. Justin kindly dropped me a note saying, ‘Lovely to see you this morning, the mix of “Tregardock” sounds great. The best of luck with the whole project.’ We all have doubts, but sometimes a few well-chosen and sincere words keep us flying the flag.
I put together the story-board for a video and persuaded the good master of Magdalen College, Oxford to let us shoot around the building and grounds. Not only was it Betjeman’s alma mater, but we were also able to use his rooms for a tea party scene and those of visiting dons as David Essex/Betjeman’s study. Mr Strutt, the head porter, gave his staff instructions to co-operate fully, including ideal, and sometimes very precise, camera positions, one anticipating a shot ‘from New Building’s Staircase 3, Room 7 bathroom’! David was the consummate professional, insisting on discussing the shoot at length, working at the correct dynamics between him and Rachel Roberts, the wonderful young actress who portrayed the role of Myfanwy Piper, and even cutting his hair to give it that ’20s look. He commented at the time, ‘I’ve always had a soft spot for Betjeman. I liked the poem and I thought the music that Mike had written for it was terrific.’ The lovely Gordon Elsbury from Top of the Pops directed the video, which we completed in just one day and which included some wonderful shots of the Oxford skyline and the town. Now, unfortunately, I can’t find a copy of it. I keep hoping it’s going to turn up on YouTube.
Radio One actually seemed happy to play the song. It was promoted for Arista by my old pal and first publisher, Dave Most, and slowly began to climb the chart. Week by week another ten places and another, until we were convinced by the sales pattern that it was going to be a top ten hit. When it hit number fifty-six, it was sandwiched between Percy Sledge and Ben E. King on one side and Tina Turner and Smokey Robinson on the other. I was happy to dwell in that holy place.
We found an unlikely ally when Princess Alexandra helped the single to chart with the copy she bought in Durham. The press reported that she was on an official visit to the city when she spotted a Virgin record shop, had the barriers removed where the police had cordoned off the road and proceeded ask the bewildered manager for a song she’d heard on the radio at five o’clock that morning called ‘Myfanwy’. She told him that she’d been so taken with it that she ‘simply had to buy a copy’. The embarrassed manager explained that he’d just sold the last copy, but, good businessman that he was, he called Virgin MD Andy Warrell in London and before the princess arrived back home at Richmond Park, a copy had been delivered by motorcycle messenger. Even Tim Rice sang the song’s praises in Punch: ‘The tune is bewitchingly simple and marvellously arranged.’ He was very gracious in his comments: ‘The real eye-opener is the music. Mike Read, the composer, is a totally unknown quantity, but those who might have dismissed him as a mere jock or children’s TV host will have to think again.’ Two things stopped it from carving its way through the forty. First, the folk that compile the chart would often ‘downweight’ a single if they thought that sales weren’t evenly spread. The thought was that someone could be deliberately buying copies to give the track a false chart position. This of course was nonsense. If a group were from Manchester, where the core of their fan base was, it was likely that there would be more sales in that area. They noticed what they considered an unnatural peak in Wales for ‘Myfanwy’ and downweighted it. Well, who’d have thought it – a song titled with an archetypal Welsh girls’ name popular in Wales? But we could still bounce back as we’d been offered Sunday Night at the London Palladium, the last of the series. That’d catapult the song into the upper stratosphere, surely? Ah, but life isn’t that easy, and this is where we encountered our second stumbling block. David’s manager, Mel Bush, would only let his boy do it if he topped the bill. Dave Most protested that although David was indeed a major star, Diana Ross was on the same show and took precedence due to her longevity and level of success. Pleas, entreaties and whatever else fell on deaf ears. Either David topped the bill or he didn’t do it. He didn’t do it and the single stalled at number forty-one. We would have made the forty had it not been for Zodiac Mindwarp’s ‘Prime Mover’ appearing out of nowhere and sneaking into the position above us. Frustratingly, ‘Myfanwy’ stayed at number forty-one for two or three weeks. Was there any consolation in being higher than the new releases from Go West, the Fall, UB40 and the Housemartins? Not really. It’s a terrific testimony to the track, though, that it still spent over two months on the chart and was very popular in Australia. The weird and frustrating postscript is that when Sunday Night at the London Palladium began its next series, David sang ‘Myfanwy’, but it was too late, even though the single leapt back into chart on just that one play. Seemingly still popular, it’s now notched up well over 100,000 hits on YouTube and was selected by Tim Rice as one of his Desert Island Discs, alongside the Everly Brothers, Elvis Presley, the Rolling Stones and ‘Once in royal David’s city’. Not bad company.
What did Myfanwy Piper, the subject of the poem, think about the song? I was invited for lunch a couple of times to the Pipers’ house at Fawley Bottom, near Henley-on-Thames. Her husband John Piper, one of the great British artists of the twentieth century and not too well by that time, was nevertheless very welcoming, even showing me dozens of his of paintings that he had stashed away, presumably as yet unseen. The ladies from Myfanwy’s era seemed to retain their acuity and perception. Over lunch she encouraged me to talk about my songwriting and writing in general, while she listened and gave little away. Was she interested in the written word or not? I wouldn’t have known. It was only when we went into the kitchen to make tea that I noticed a well-worn poster on the wall, crudely stuck up with ancient and yellowing Sellotape. The poster proclaimed her to have been a librettist for Benjamin Britten. That generation sure knew how to deal an ace without moving their hands. She was quite kind when talking to the press: ‘I wasn’t mad about previous musical treatments of his poems. I’d rather they were left as they are. But I know many people get pleasure from them so I’m glad. And I’m sure he would have liked it.’
Of course I had wanted Lady Betjeman to approve and, as invited, drove down for lunch in my old MGA to the home of her daughter Candida Lycett-Green in Calne, Wiltshire. I headed off from Radio One in torrential rain and made slow progress on the M4, getting completely drenched as the car had no hood. Normally if it came on to rain, I’d pull over and shelter until it stopped. But I knew Penelope Betjeman was a stickler for punctuality so I simply carried on, got there some ten minutes after the appointed time and appeared on the doorstep looking like the proverbial drowned rat. Ignoring my condition, she informed me in no uncertain terms that I was late and stomped off into the house, leaving me dripping and having to find my own way to the table. The Betjemans’ daughter, Candida, and assorted grandchildren were there and things soon eased. I think they’d all had a telling-off about something. I gradually dried off, ate a hearty lunch and played the demos. They seemed to get a seal of approval. One of the demos was of ‘Hunter Trials’, and Penelope told me that John had gone along to a gymkhana in which their son, Paul, was riding and was inspired to write the poem. As she pointed out, they weren’t hunter trials at all and he completely misused and deliberately muddled the equine terms used in the poem.
Prior to the release of ‘Myfanwy’, the Mail on Sunday was keen to do a piece about my collaborating with the late Poet Laureate and asked Lady Betjeman if she minded doing a photograph. It transpired that she didn’t mind, so off we trooped to her fairly remote house at Cusop in the Black Mountains. There was deep snow that day, so the newspaper hired a 4x4 to get to the property. It was a long hike and we struggled through some pretty deep drifts to get there. She opened the door, looked at the photographer and pointed to the camera. ‘I don’t know what you think you’re going to do with that thing,’ she said and did her stomping off thing. The photographer and journalist were crestfallen, but I was used to the stomping and reassured them. We were all dreaming of a hot meal after the long and arduous journey. We got bread and jam. It did come with tea, though, from an enormous enamel pot that would have served all the Women’s Institute meetings in a 10-mile radius. The photographer was seriously concerned that he wasn’t going to get his picture and on top of that, he was keen to shoot outside. He skirted round it a little, knowing that the temperature was below freezing and Penelope Betjeman was well into her seventies. She became impatient with his equivocating and let him have both barrels. She may not have actually pinned him against the wall, but she did so verbally. He was informed, in no uncertain terms, that she’d been up since seven, had saddled her horse, and ridden out some 14 miles in heavy snow and 14 miles back. She wasn’t to be trifled with. The photographer ceased trifling and we trooped outside, sat on a log pile and did a few bracing snaps. In a full-page spread in the Mail on Sunday Penelope rather decently commented, ‘I think it all sounds marvellous, marvellous. It should be very good. Great fun.’ Exactly. The paper was equally generous in calling me ‘an authority on Betjeman’s life’ (hardly, compared to many of the folk in the Betjeman Society who keep the flame alive) and talking up the variety of genres: ‘Latin through rock & roll to Irish Folk.’ The large photo of us sitting on the snowy pile of logs was wackily captioned, ‘Ode Couple … Read and Lady Betjeman’.
Penelope and I corresponded over the next few months, she sending me little notes and copies of odd poems that John had written, including one about the King Alfred tea rooms at Wantage, which she ran at one time. The last communication I received was just before she set off for her beloved Himalayas (or Him-ar-lee-ers as she pronounced them). Her father had been Commander-in-Chief in India, hence her love of the region. She sent a note asking me to join her and Osbert Lancaster for lunch on her return. She never returned, and so we lost another great character from a disappearing generation. At the twenty-fifth AGM of the Betjeman Society I was surprised and intrigued by a comment in the speech of Betjeman’s biographer Bevis Hillier. He made mention of the fact that Lady Betjeman had been ‘rather in love with me’. Life is full of surprises.
Another formidable lady with whom I had to deal in connection with John Betjeman was Lady Elizabeth Cavendish, sister of the Duke of Devonshire and a very close friend of JB’s. I was initially introduced to her at a meeting with Betjeman’s literary executors, which also included Henry Anglesey, who was the godson of George V, and the architectural historian Mark Girouard. The four of us sat around discussing the possible release of an album and even a stage musical. They gave no quarter; it felt like a courtroom and I came away feeling that their response was going to be negative. While I thought Henry Anglesey encouraging and charming, Mark Girouard appeared inflexible and defensive of Betjeman’s works. I was certain that one shouldn’t attempt to canonise a man who was essentially a poet of the people, but who was I to know? All three literary executors had been personal friends and were acting in the manner they considered in the best interests of the estate. They needed clarity on my intended musical and to that end I was invited to Elizabeth Cavendish’s house to explain my intentions. We drank a glass of wine or two and chatted amiably, although my eyes kept being drawn to Betjeman’s battered old bear, Archibald Ormsby-Gore, who was scrutinising me from his perch on the window sill. Either I didn’t explain myself too well, Lady Cavendish failed to grasp my intentions or Archie was distracting us, but she asked me to come back again the following week.
This time she had a friend with her who was introduced to me simply as Peter. Asked to explain how one goes about writing a musical, I proceeded with great aplomb. Apart from juvenile attempts and the heavily plagiaristic comic opera at college, in truth this was my first real crack at a real stage musical. Being a polite and well-brought-up chap, I didn’t simply direct my explanation of how to write a musical to Elizabeth, but also to her friend Peter. I even read the opening pages of the script, which began with Betjeman going through customs at the Pearly Gates. ‘Anything to declare?’ asked St Peter. I used an actual line of Betjeman’s as the response, which he’d spoken during his last interview. On being asked if he had any regrets, he responded that he hadn’t had enough sex. A great line, I thought, so I used it as his reply to St Peter … and, crassly, read it out loud to Elizabeth, not thinking about the close friendship between herself and Betjeman. I still squirm when I think of it… After talking about the art of writing a musical play for an hour I sat back, feeling that I’d acquitted myself rather well. Not smug, but satisfied. Not for long, though. Elizabeth Cavendish turned to her friend and asked demurely, ‘Was it like that, Peter, when you wrote Amadeus?’ I’d spent an hour telling one of our greatest playwrights, Peter Schaffer, how to write. I had the grace to blush.
The executors were not keen on the proposed title for the musical, Teddy Bear to the Nation. Elizabeth Cavendish wrote to me, ‘It is only fair to you to say that in no way will the Literary Executors of John Betjeman allow the suggested title, so by the time we meet can you have thought of a different and more suitable one. This is not something we will be persuaded about.’ Eventually, but only after much deliberation on the part of the executors, I had an agreement. This was good news. The downside was that the musical looked like a ‘no go’ area. I wonder why? The album would eventually be released on various small labels, but has seemed to have found a comfortable home with Angel Air. In the view of everybody involved, it still hasn’t realised its full potential.
Meetings with Betjeman’s publisher, John (Jock) Murray, were always fascinating as the Murray family, from 1768 on, had published such luminaries as Jane Austen, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Charles Darwin and Lord Byron. Sherry and cheese biscuits were always on the agenda and of course another glimpse of Byron’s shirt, which was on display. Signed to John Murray (each generation bore the same name), Byron had an instant bestseller when Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage was published. In true pop star fashion, he announced, ‘I awoke one morning and found myself famous.’ We discussed Andrew Lloyd Webber’s interest in staging my intended musical at his Sydmonton Festival, but even with Andrew’s enthusiasm it didn’t happen, for some reason now lost in a hundred historic conversations. The tabloids made much of a completely untrue story (nothing new there) that Andrew had been secretly teaching me how to become a ‘superstar composer’. Risible. I can just imagine him peering at me over a glass of 1997 Romanée-Conti in his kitchen and shyly asking, ‘I say, would you like to become a superstar composer?’ The headline was ‘Mike’s Phantom Aide’. The press appeared to be moving me from Lord Reith to Lord Wraith.
In another genre, I was asked to play guitar on a song that the Duke of Kent’s daughter, Lady Helen Taylor, was recording, called ‘Single Girl’, which led to us being erroneously linked by some of the gossip columns. Lady Olga Maitland’s column majored on it at one point. With a marginally folksy feel in the style of Marianne Faithfull as I recall, it was recorded at a studio in Great Marlborough Street, a yard or two from the one-time London abode of Percy Bysshe Shelley. In the end there were questions asked about the release of a single by a member of the royal family and the producer did the decent thing and handed over the tapes. Something must have escaped, though, somewhere along the line, as in 2000 it emerged as one of Ibiza’s ‘hottest tracks of the season’, according to The Times. The track was much changed from the original (essential, I’d say) but the newspaper admitted, ‘Lady Helen’s clipped tones are quite audible on the new version, which is the work of producers, Royal I.’
I did put a musical on stage in 1988, but it wasn’t Betjeman related. I had also been working on a Rupert Brooke musical, over whose title I was still dithering. The papers got wind of it and one of them fired a not unexpected opening salvo. ‘Read fancies himself as a poet, although his literary output has thus far been confined to The Guinness Book of British Hit Singles, a work not known for its lyrical and aesthetic qualities.’ I considered drawing their attention to my two poetry books, The Aldermoor Poems and Elizabethan Dragonflies, and the various poems in the Poets England series, but why bother?
My neighbours in Holmbury St Mary, Richard and Linda Jackson, who ran Hurtwood House School, offered their wonderful theatre space for a week, so with Hugh Wooldridge directing, we were away. Having assembled a fine cast from the school, headed by imported actor Michael Dore, we were rolling. Well, sort of. The school wasn’t draconian, but it did not achieve its fantastic results by standing any nonsense or rule-breaking. It was ‘one strike and you’re out’. So on a couple of occasions we found a cast member no longer a member of the cast … or the school. I must point out that expulsion by the headmaster isn’t the norm in musical theatre. With regard to the audience, we operated on a ‘pay what you like at the end of the show’ basis and despite that got a sackful of money, which I dumped on the desk of the very grateful and completely surprised PHAB centre in the village. After the final show we had a farewell bash, where I got ceremoniously thrown in the swimming pool fully clothed. Indecent behaviour, you’ll agree. I had been particularly attached to that green pullover with its country motif. The following morning it would have been a tight fit on an Mbuti pygmy, or indeed any pygmy.
Within a year, producer extraordinaire Bill Kenwright picked up the show and decided to stage it at the Thorndike Theatre in Leatherhead, although he wasn’t especially keen on the title we’d used at Hurtwood, The Most Beautiful Man in England. It’s a hell of a thing to live up to if you’re playing the lead, out there each night, gingerly treading the boards dreading some wag shouting, ‘I’ve seen more beautiful men in gurning contests.’ I was on the phone to Bill from the end of a platform at Kings Cross station when we finally agreed on calling the show Young Apollo, thus creating a vague link, in case it should ever come up in some obscure quiz, between Queen Boadicea (or Boudicca as they now call her), allegedly buried under one of the platforms, Harry Potter and Rupert Brooke. Hugh Wooldridge directed again and organised a superb set that drew applause in its own right.
Alex Hanson played Brooke, and stayed with me at The Aldermoor for some of the run. Over a glass of something with a fancy label one evening, he suddenly looked quizzical. ‘Wasn’t Brooke blond? I’m very dark, won’t that look odd?’
I smiled. That slow, knowing smile that I fancied would look good on the silver screen. It probably just looked ridiculous, but I smiled it nevertheless. ‘You’re dark at the moment, but it won’t last.’
Realisation dawned. ‘Oh no,’ I believe were the actual words that came from his mouth. I nodded slowly. Again very filmic, I thought. Within two days he was blond, his head shining like the Eddystone lighthouse on a foggy night, and full of disbelief that he’d been well and truly bleached.
Now when I was doing amateur dramatics, the prompt stood to the side of the stage and if you forgot your lines, you’d sidle as unobtrusively as possible towards them, hoping they’d spot your dilemma and whisper the words audibly enough for you to pick up. It was a covert operation. Not so with the Alex Hansons of this world. On the dress run, with full audience, when he dried, he screamed ‘LINE!’ like an elephant protecting her young from a pride of lions. I jumped. I’m sure several in the front row were thrown into the second row with the force of it. It was all over in a flash and the musical moved on. No whispering, no edging towards the side, Alex took it full on. ‘Crikey,’ I thought at the time. ‘Bravo,’ I thought afterwards. Another incident wasn’t quite so well received. We’re still with the dress run and a full house, but Clive, our musical director, was desperate not to miss England v. Poland and took it upon himself to listen to the match on headphones, while playing keyboards and directing the music. No one would know, so where’s the harm? There was no harm at all … until Gary Lineker found the net after twenty-four minutes. During a quiet and particularly moving moment in an early scene, Clive’s voice (and we all shout louder with headphones on) rang around the auditorium, ‘England have scored!’ I don’t recall any of the cast or the audience yelling back ‘Oh, jolly good’ or anything similar. Maybe some in the back rows went away thinking it was a particularly avant-garde moment in the show and I was the new theatrical Messiah. Actually there were messianic writers already present in the shape of Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber, who both turned up to give their support. Andrew even brought a bunch of flowers. Bill Kenwright’s plan to move it to the Mermaid never materialised, even though I was convinced by his tears during one performance. ‘That’s it,’ I thought, ‘he’s visibly moved … the West End (well close enough for me) beckons.’ I later learned that Bill is always emotional at his musicals. The West End actually wouldn’t beckon until the new millennium, and without Young Apollo. While I laid down most of the demo tracks for the musical, the duet ‘Too Young for Love’ was beautifully demoed by Michael Ball and the young actress who had played Myfanwy in the David Essex video, Rachel Roberts.
Speaking of Myfanwy, we debated which of the Betjeman songs would be a suitable follow-up for the autumn on 1987. I was keen on Captain Sensible’s ‘Parliament Hill Fields’, or Justin Hayward’s ‘Tregardock’, but in the end we decided to go for David Grant’s ‘Conversion’, with the Eton College Choir on the B-side. We used Mickie’s RAK label for this release, but David’s manager thought it was rather a distraction as he was pushing him in other areas so it wasn’t really promoted heavily and consequently failed to chart. In 1989 the two Alvin Stardust tracks, ‘Christmas’ and ‘Executive’, were released on the Honeybee label, but we were thwarted by a total lack of distribution. Undaunted we pressed on, thwarts and all. Despite several TV appearances, a lot of hard work by the lovely Alvin and a jolly seasonal video shot at my house and the church at Holmbury St Mary, and involving a terrific new scheme of colouring in each frame by hand to achieve a truly unique effect, it failed to trouble the scorers. The only bonus was having a fully decorated Christmas tree in my drawing room in September. In our defence, it did make the top ten of several Christmas listings. ‘Myfanwy’ re-emerged on my Silhouette label in 1990 and was also on the Poetry in Motion album, which came out in the same year. I decided to release the album on my own label as everyone felt that it had legs, but no one had had the opportunity to buy it. In 1991, ‘Myfanwy’ escaped for a fifth time on David Essex’s The Christmas EP, along with ‘A Winter’s Tale’, and, for a sixth time, on the His Greatest Hits album, which climbed to number one and spent thirteen weeks in the chart.
In the end there was no Betjeman musical as such, but I re-wrote it as a vehicle for a charity evening, with interlinking dialogue for a JB-style character. It got its first airing as Poetry in Motion in the spring of 1992 at the Richmond Theatre, in aid of the Royal Marsden Hospital. Jeremy Irons and John Wells undertook the narration, while the impressive list of artists included Donovan, David Grant, Tim Rice, Peter Sarstedt, Carl Wayne, Cantabile and Alvin Stardust. Christopher G. Sandford directed proceedings, with the Wren Orchestra lending their weight to it, Rod Edwards supervising the music and Tony Rivers leading the backing vocal team. It sold out and was well received by the audience and the press.
I staged Poetry in Motion a second time in 1998, at the Criterion Theatre in the West End for the Children with Leukaemia Trust, run by the tireless Karen Sugarman, now of Shooting Star Chase Hospices. This time, Tim Rice, his daughter Eva, Cliff Richard, Leo Sayer, Tony Hadley, Colin Blunstone, Carl Wayne and Dean Sullivan took part, with the wonderful Bernard Cribbins taking the role of Betjeman. We raised more than £10,000 on the night, so bless all those who give their time again and again for good causes.
We released another track from the Poetry in Motion album as a single in 1992, Donovan’s ‘Newest Bath Guide’. We hit upon the novel idea of shooting the video in Bath, utilising the weir, the architecture and the Roman baths with Don looking suitably moody. Driving from the hotel very early in the morning, I noticed a rather pungent smell in the car. ‘What’s that, Don, have we just passed an Indian restaurant? It smells like somebody’s day-old takeaway.’
‘Very perceptive,’ said the minstrel. ‘It’s the remains of my Indian takeaway from last night. I thought I’d have it for breakfast.’
I pulled into a garage, deposited the ‘Remains of the Takeaway’ (as another Old Wokingian, Kazuo Ishiguro, almost wrote) in the litter bin and re-started the car. We drove to our destination in silence. Not a good start to the day. But, ever the professional, an Indian-free Don rose to the occasion. Having breakfasted on something far more appropriate, we got a spiffing and historically weighty video in the can. Don sang the song live on Pebble Mill, but maybe the single was too whimsical, folksy and literary to take on Gabrielle, Queen, UB40 and Shaggy for a chart placing.
In between all this musical activity, radio, TV and social stuff, there were gigs. What fun to get up and play live music. Well, fun for us, if not the audience. I discovered a shot from one such event, in Hampstead, lurking on the front page of the Hampstead & Highgate Express, fondly known as the Ham & High. This isn’t unusual in itself, but it remains the only photograph of me with a full beard, which in tandem with a suntan and long locks made me look, as Alison, my girlfriend at the time, commented, ‘like a terrorist’. The Sun reported that I looked ‘like a cross between Dustin Hoffman in the film Papillon and George Best on a bad night’. A little harsh.
In 1991, just before I moved from Radio One to Capital, my musical on Oscar Wilde was staged for the first time. It was billed as a world premiere, which although technically true, sounds a trifle pretentious. But who cares? It was a world premiere, so let’s run with it. My friend Martin Miller (of the Miller’s Antiques Guides) and his then wife Judith, today one of the experts on Antiques Roadshow, owned the beautiful Chilston Park in Kent. At night the house was lit entirely by candles: very romantic – or very sinister, depending on your mood. Either way, it offered the ideal setting for a musical play, so together we hatched a plan and it came to fruition. A cast, a couple of weeks, a hundred and something people a night, black tie, champagne and canapés before and dinner afterwards, the cast joining the audience as they were all staying at the house. Oscar would surely have approved.
His grandson certainly did. A year or two earlier, after writing the first draught, I’d sent it to Merlin Holland, who approved of it to such an extent that he became involved. He felt that it was the most balanced piece he’d seen on the subject. We also became good friends, and I even helped save his son Lucien’s life.
I was round for dinner and drinks one evening at their house in Wandsworth and after a few hours of bonhomie felt I should be beetling off. ‘Have a tea or something before you go,’ insisted Merlin. I refused, then relented. ‘Well, if I do I should really pop to the loo while you put the kettle on.’ At the top of the stairs I smelled smoke. It was coming through the gap at the bottom of the door to his son Lucien’s bedroom. I yelled to Merlin, who came pounding wild eyed up the stairs. We opened the door and billows of dense fumes poured out. Keeping a clear head, Merlin dashed to the bathroom, wet a flannel, put it over his face and dragged an unwilling Lucien from the room. Within twenty minutes electric blue flashes were rebounding off the walls and two fire engines stood at the gates. It seemed Lucien had nodded off and a bedside lamp had fallen onto the pillow. The smouldering had continued for some while, until the whole room was filled with smoke. A very lucky escape. I was pleased I had agreed to that cup of tea.
Before every performance, Merlin did a superb preamble about his grandfather, setting the scene and bringing a sense of history to the occasion. He made allusion to the fact that had Oscar lived to find success again, he would have written about the tragic part of his life. ‘This is the tragedy that Oscar lived, but didn’t live to write about it. Mike Read has written it.’ What a lovely testimony. Merlin was clearly so good in his role that one lady, sitting next to him at dinner, assumed he was an actor and asked him how he got the part. ‘You’d better ask my mother,’ came the quick riposte, which went over the lady’s head.
‘Why, was she in the acting profession too?’
‘No, I am Oscar’s grandson.’
‘Oh, go on … you can stop acting now.’
The talented Don Gallagher played Oscar, and Alvin Stardust surprised everyone (I knew he would) with a powerful performance as the Marquess of Queensberry. After one show, a guy sidled up to me, told me he’d enjoyed it and then declared himself to be a ‘serious’ clairvoyant. As opposed to a jokey one that’s just teasing you, I supposed. Anyway, he first told me in no uncertain terms that I had a very strong spirit guide called Emily. I stared. ‘She’s a very old member of your family.’ There were no Emilys in my family that I knew of, but the sage insisted. ‘Ask your grandmother.’ I did, the following day, and waited for the gales of derisive laughter. No laughter. ‘Oh gosh, that’s a long time ago. That would be my great-aunt Emily. She was a devout spiritualist and used to take me to meetings when I was a little girl.’ Well, I wasn’t expecting that. I now think of my disapproving ancestor looking over my shoulder and silently chiding me when I wander off piste. Is she helping me write this? It’s a thought. Maybe Great-Great-Great-Aunt Emily could knock out a few thousand words of this book each night when I’m in bed. Meanwhile the clairvoyant had more to offer. ‘This musical will one day be known across the world,’ he announced with a smile. ‘It will be talked about globally.’ Did his smile betray the fact that he also knew why it would attract such attention?
Oscar got some very encouraging reviews, one magazine commenting that after ‘You Always Want the One Who Doesn’t Really Want You’, there wasn’t a dry eye in the house. Must have been the champagne. It has a tendency to make some folk maudlin. Attendees were also mentioned. ‘Mr Cliff Richard enjoyed the show and stayed for dinner, as did Mr Tim Rice. Mr Rice believed there were at least three hit songs in the show.’ What taste, what perception! The article also gave honourable mention to ‘His Excellency Dasho Lhendhrup Dorje, who had come all the way from the small, exotic Buddhist kingdom of Bhutan in the Himalayas.’ That’s one heck of a bus ride.
One night I got chatting to a guy called Mike Eilers, who liked the show so much he offered to put up some money if it was produced again. Top man. Thanks largely to his generosity the show appeared at the Old Fire Station, Oxford the following year. Cliff also helped out towards the production costs, as well as lending me his main man who looks after him on tour, Roger Bruce. Well grounded in musicals, Roger had worked on Time in the West End among other stage shows. He even took the cast’s shirts home to wash. You couldn’t have asked for more. Well, maybe if the collars and cuffs had been starched…! At Oxford, the one-time-blond Rupert Brooke, Alex Hanson, was now dark enough again to take on the lead role.
Again it got some great reviews. Baz Bamigboye in the Daily Mail said, ‘Having heard the score, I think Mr Read can safely give up his day job.’ I loved Baz for that and instantly forgave him any previous reporting on my love life. I loved The Stage too, for writing, ‘The whole piece may be described as the thinking man’s musical. Scholarly libretto … the music is mature … he [Read] is clearly no Wilde popularist but a scholar too.’ The theatre publishers Samuel French added, ‘The libretto is extremely literate with some amusing use of language and a general air of sophistication.’
Oscar’s next outing (insert your own third-form jokes here) was at the King’s Head Theatre in Islington, with Nigel Williams in the title role, and was again well received, by and large. Nigel was a brilliant Oscar, despite The Times’ review: ‘His Wilde with his toothy grin and arresting yet vacuous eyes, looks suspiciously like Tony Blackburn in a cravat.’ Unfair to Nigel, Oscar and Tony, I’d say. I didn’t escape, of course. ‘If you like several tablespoons of sugar on your tragedies this show might make you happy.’ I was happy with ‘sugar’. Thank heavens it wasn’t ‘saccharine’. The Guardian couldn’t resist the inevitable radio link either despite it not being remotely relevant to the piece: ‘Listen up mates! Deep beneath that bouffant hairdo that is DJ Mike Read a creative literary talent is fighting to get out.’ Bouffant? The Daily Express claimed in a full page, ‘Mike Read would rather have guaranteed press than a fair press.’ Is there a choice? Nick Curtis of the Evening Standard was the only one to completely tear it to shreds, dredging the hacks’ dictionary for useful words such as ‘gauche’, ‘bathos’, ‘stereotypes’, ‘trivial’, ‘doggerel’ and a few other choice barbs to help me sleep at night. Was this the same Evening Standard that had recently written, ‘Mike Read is a man of untapped intellect’? Other reviewers who were adjacent later told me that Nick had quite liked the piece, but that any hint of admiration wasn’t likely to appear in print. We’ve since had a laugh about it. Well, I bought him a drink and he laughed all over again. The critics are, after all, only a handful of people trying to make a name for themselves. The real critics are the public and I continue to hear great comments from paying customers who were baffled as whether the reviewers had watched the same show.
It was the fourth outing that brought disaster. I’d had so much positive feedback from Oscar that it was mooted, by several enthusiastic mooters, that I should re-stage it as a commemorative piece for the 150th anniversary of Wilde’s birth in 2004. It certainly proved memorable. In casting around for a theatre, I was told that the Shaw in Euston Road was intending to re-open. It had stood dark for some while and on inspection proved to be more suitable for conferences than performances, but they promised that they’d wave a magic wand. The spend on re-marketing and re-launching was said to be in excess of £250,000, and Oscar was the very first show. I was told that very little could go wrong. In retrospect a hell of a lot went wrong. All right, everything went wrong.
In 2004 the banks were still encouraging entrepreneurs to borrow wads of cash to fund, well, almost anything. They kept throwing it at me, so I kept taking it, while the whisperers were telling me that this show was so good that it was going to be the making of my script-writing career. But I broke several rules.
Despite this, we had a great cast, terrific musicians and a script that had already worked three times, so all was looking good – until, that is, we came to the theatre itself. The Shaw had no website, nor was it in any telephone listings. Those people who did, against all odds, manage to get the number never had their calls answered and the phone rang off the hook all the time we were rehearsing. There was no re-launch money and we had zero co-operation. Furthermore, the theatre was in such a terrible state backstage that we had to clean it from top to bottom before we could even get in. By now money was leaking through my pocket, I was juggling directing with producing and doing publicity and became general gopher. My team were exemplary, but they had the burden of Sisyphus.
When the media wolves later descended on the fold, they triumphantly declared that the musical closed after one night. Good headline stuff, but a myth: we’d had a week of runs before the press night and audiences were healthy. The cast had a well-deserved day off before the proper opening night, which is when the demons set in. On the opening night itself, our sound man told me that the beautiful and perfect balance had been destroyed by forces unknown. Some head microphones had also been seriously tampered with and others were missing.
My questioning began as calmly as I could muster. The repeated answer to my enquiry as to who had been in the theatre the previous day was ‘No one’. I was paying for the damn place, so that should have been the correct answer. I knew it wasn’t. I’m an easy-going guy, but my face got increasingly closer to the head honcho, who wasn’t unaware of my physical presence either. After five minutes of protestation I eventually pushed the truth out of him. Unbelievably, they’d allowed a twenty-piece Brazilian jazz-rock outfit in behind our backs and wrecked our sound. On top of that, this amateurish theatre only had one, hired-in, machine for processing tickets, meaning that every ticket holder, including celebrities and, crucially, journalists, had to wait for ages in a long, long queue that straggled down the street. Once again, the delightful Merlin Holland had agreed to say a few words before the performance on behalf of his grandfather, but someone from the adjacent hotel made such a long and tedious speech that there was no time for him. The sound on stage and in the auditorium was atrocious and with some of the head microphones not working properly, many of the cast were understandably thrown, despite their professionalism. I spent much of the performance walking the street.
I pulled the show. I had to. The press destroyed it. The TV crews, newspapers and magazines who’d been invisible when I needed the publicity suddenly manifested themselves and showed an unbelievably keen interest in the show. Funny how everybody loves a failure. One of the lines reflected that ‘they adore a persecution, but abhor an absolution’. Oscar would have enjoyed a fine example of life imitating art.
I didn’t shirk the attack. It came from all fronts, with everyone jumping gleefully on the bandwagon. I was happy to justify anything except my stupidity, as Oscar might have said, but didn’t. As well as answering the press, I agreed to be interviewed on several TV shows, including one where a journalist attacked the rhyming couplets. ‘Good enough for Shakespeare,’ I retorted, which brought a gasp of horror that I dared compare myself to the Bard. I wasn’t, I was merely pointing out that many of the greatest and most durable plays in the English language employed rhyming couplets from time to time. Then I had the audacity to liken some of the script to Gilbert and Sullivan. I wasn’t saying that I was as good as G&S, but was simply alluding to an accepted style for which I was now being criticised.
Remember the clairvoyant who announced that one day the musical would be known globally? He was right. I had calls of sympathy from Australia, the United States, South America, South Africa, Spain and all points east and west. The global cuttings laid flat reached floor to ceiling several times over. Bad news travels fast, but smirking, self-satisfied, lead-him-to-the-scaffold news travels at Mach 2 with an upgrade. I got the upgrade. I’d been hoping for the Lew Grade.
Wouldn’t you think that after that I’d leave it alone? I’d capitulate, surrender to the barbarians at the gate and desert the Oscar who’d served me so ill? Nope. Against all odds, there were still believers who knew the piece would work. Peter Kosta, who had worked tirelessly on the production at the Shaw, pushed for the show to do a week off Broadway. His determination paid off, and with him and musical director Michael Reed on board we flew to New York for another crack at it. The York Theatre and the cast were terrific, but it proved tricky to get producers there in what was an icy, snowy March with some biting winds whipping off the Hudson River. I fondly imagined that staging it in the States for a week would mean no UK media attention, but I really don’t learn. They were onto it in a nanosecond, but this time round not quite all the coverage was negative. The Independent called me the Stephen Sondheim du jour, and reckoned that Oscar was ‘monstrously underrated’.
At least it proved there was life after the Shaw Theatre. Unlike Genesis’s Lamb, Oscar wouldn’t lie down on Broadway or anywhere else and continues to periodically twitch and kick. The continued interest means that it will re-appear, sometime, somewhere, probably with the strapline ‘The musical that dare not speak its name’.
A coincidental culinary ménage à quatre occurred during the time we did Oscar in the Big Apple when Tim Rice called me, only to find that we were walking down adjacent streets of the city. Another call revealed that our choreographer friend Anthony Van Laast was also in town, checking on the city’s production of Mamma Mia. With Michael Reed, who’d worked extensively with all three of us, making the fourth corner, we had a rather jolly evening being excessively and deliberately Englishmen in New York. Luckily it was a night off, unlike the night the legendary guitarist Les Paul played just around the corner. It coincided with a major rehearsal and my bitterest regret while there was not getting to see and hear him.
In the late summer of 1991 I’d had a call from Slade, who were in the studio putting down a new track that they thought just might put them back in the top twenty (where they rightfully belonged). They felt that the song, ‘Radio Wall of Sound’, needed a punchy American-style DJ delivery to give it some pace, but it wasn’t really working with any of them doing it, so they asked if I’d pop up to the studio in north London. No problem. They already had a few phrases, I scribbled a few more and after a few playbacks of the track, I was able to push some hard-hitting US-style lines into the gaps. The more I heard Jim Lea’s song, the more I thought it was going to be a monster. It had a great tempo and a seriously catchy chorus, and was a terrific idea overall. The band graciously asked me to appear in the video, which was great fun, with me recording the studio scenes at Broadcasting House. It’s not easy to lip-synch at speed when you’ve forgotten what the hell you babbled about at the original recording session. The video was brilliantly shot and, like the single, laden with atmosphere. I didn’t see how this could fail to put them back in the chart. Their last top twenty hit had been in 1984 with ‘All Join Hands’. ‘Radio Wall of Sound’ did climb to number twenty-one, their highest position for seven years, but I honestly felt that it was going all the way. It remains a radio favourite and re-emerges periodically on greatest-hits albums. Dave Hill later approached me with a view to writing a musical as a vehicle for Slade’s hits, much like We Will Rock You and Mamma Mia, and I worked on an angle for a possible script for a while, but nothing has come to fruition. Dave and I still discuss it from time to time, so who knows? Dave and Don Powell are still out there on the road, playing Slade’s great catalogue of hits and enjoying every minute of it.
During 1992, Peter Powell, encouraged Apollo Leisure to look seriously at two Dickens-based musicals for which I’d written all the songs, A Christmas Carol and Great Expectations. Rather decently, they saw the value in them and we began auditioning for a run at Theatr Clwyd at the end of the year. After spending a heck of a lot of time in the recording studio and finely honing the numbers, I went up for the opening night of A Christmas Carol, or rather, the opening matinee. I was staggered at one point to hear the audience singing along to one of the songs. How could this be? The songs were new. Had I unwittingly plagiarised some classic? To my relief, I discovered I hadn’t. The theatre had rather cleverly sent out four of the songs on a cassette to various local schools, so they could learn the story, hear the music and be encouraged to read Dickens. By the time they came to the show, they were almost word perfect. Smart marketing. Chris Corcoran took the role of Scrooge and expertly played the part to include humour, fear, contrition and pathos. Not all went smoothly for our talented if sometimes volatile director, Christopher G. Sandford, as one of the cast, in a fit of pique over something, sneaked back one night and cut up every single wig with a large pair of scissors. Cue the understudy. I discovered only recently from a member of the cast that another of the team was putting several noses out of joint to such an extent that a few tins of cold custard were wilfully poured into his boots just before he was due on stage. He apparently squelched his way through the whole scene, with the viscous yellow liquid slopping onto the stage and making a rather decent slide for the rest of the cast.
A Christmas Carol later re-appeared for a healthy run at the Theatre Royal, Nottingham with the great Anton Rodgers playing Scrooge. It nearly didn’t happen, though. With a hectic schedule at Capital Radio and busy writing new material and film scripts, I hadn’t had time to get to rehearsals and work through the songs as I would normally have done. When I heard the rough demos that the cast had laid down I went ballistic. Several melodies had been changed by the arranger, with the blessing of our director, who then had the gall to insist on a royalty. I’m sorry, but you can’t simply change someone else’s songs just like that, and then claim part ownership. I was livid. There were long and angry phone calls, but I made damned sure that I got my way. It’s like defending and fighting for your children.
At the end of 1993, Great Expectations also made its debut at Theatr Clwyd. Prior to the opening, and with the musical having been cast, we took all the performers into a studio by Wembley Stadium to record all the songs. They arrived not having heard a single note, so we had to rehearse, routine and record from scratch. It was chaotic and frenetic, but we got everything down. Of course, later, when everyone had bedded in and knew the numbers intimately, they wanted to go back in and do them again, but it was not to be. The album was released in that form. Having forked out a not insubstantial amount of loot for the scenery, Apollo Leisure then decided that the show should go on tour. Great news, except for the fact that this scenery wouldn’t fit the venues. So new scenery was built and more costs incurred. But it was very good, I have to say, even if not quite to the standard of Frank Lloyd Wright. In fact Great Expectations toured twice. On the first tour Darren Day played Pip, with Nyree Dawn Porter and Brian Glover portraying Miss Havisham and Magwitch. Hello! magazine gave us a wonderful double page spread. Nyree said, ‘I consider it an honour.’
For the second tour, Darren and Nyree were back, and Brian was replaced by Colin Baker, making an effortless transition from Dr Who to Magwitch. Colin graciously wrote to me after the run: ‘I would just like to thank you, both for providing such a splendid show for me to lurk and menace in and for turning up to see it from time to time so that we felt that someone out there cared.’ On the last point, certainly, Colin was right. You don’t bring a child into the world, nurture it, educate it and then ignore it. Nor should one with a musical. As in life, show a keen interest and keep touching the tiller imperceptibly. Don’t let the boat hit the bank before you try to correct your course.
For the national tours we re-recorded four of the songs, ‘Great Expectations’, ‘The Loneliest Night in the World’, ‘Estella’ and ‘Heart of Stone’, for release. ‘The Loneliest Night in the World’ emerged on the 1998 compilation Musicals of the Night, alongside songs from Miss Saigon, West Side Story, Phantom of the Opera and My Fair Lady. The tracks were laid down at Abbey Road with a full orchestra and my great pal Michael Reed as musical supervisor and arranger, which he also had been for the tours. We always refer to each other as ‘Your Majesty’. I should probably explain. I heard that every time the switchboard operator at Buckingham Palace connected the Queen with the Queen Mother, because they had the same Christian name, his official line had to be, ‘Your Majesty, Her Majesty, Your Majesty.’ As Michael and I had the same name I started using the line on our phone calls and it stuck, eventually being shortened to ‘Your Majesty’. It certainly makes people look up when the mobile goes in a public place and you answer in respectful and regal tones, ‘Your Majesty.’
The Mail on Sunday magazine proclaimed that it could ‘see no reason why he [Read] can’t take the West End by storm’. By storm? Even by bus would have been good. The paper’s theatre critic, Baz Bamigboye, seemed confident that it would be staged in London: ‘Mr Read has become a one-man music industry, with productions of his various shows touring the country. Now there are plans for his Great Expectations to hit the West End later this year.’
One night I was driving back home from Nottingham, after watching the show. There had been dense fog the whole way and I had had to concentrate intensely. I was only a few miles from home, then in deepest Sussex, when my thoughts began to run a second or two ahead of themselves. I knew what I was going to think a brief moment before I thought it. It’s a tough symptom to describe, but that’s the best I can muster. You might counteract with the rational response, ‘Well, you’ve just thought it – the “premonition” is the actual thought, so the repeat is simply an echo.’ It wasn’t that, though, and it scared the hell out of me. I’ve tried to rationalise whatever happened to me many times, even putting the blame on eating a whole bag of liquorice allsorts during the journey. I’ve since have been assured by experts that it wasn’t the liquorice. I know they say that the brain always runs slightly ahead of itself, but this was a very different and scary feeling. I pulled over several times before making it back to the farm. Alison had come round for supper and was rather bewildered at my state. It certainly shook me up. I can only assume that my level of concentration had been such, peering into thick fog for some hours, that it affected my thought process in some way. Maybe the brain slowed down to the speed of consciousness and thus had a problem dealing with the surroundings and conditions.