Fab 208 magazine, with Betty Hale still editor, folded in 1981 after an admirable run of eighteen years. Betty celebrated her 80th birthday in 2007 – and we shared a ‘fab’ lunch in the Oxo Tower, London in December of that year. Fab 208 magazine, with Betty Hale still editor, folded in 1981 after an admirable run of eighteen years. Betty celebrated her 80th birthday in 2007 – and we shared a ‘fab’ lunch in the Oxo Tower, London in December of that year.
Unity Hall continued writing novels and biographies until her death in the early ’90s.
Billy Fury’s 1969 marriage to Judith Hall broke up a few years later. Fury sent his friend Keith Moon to collect his luggage from the marital home. Fury went into semi-retirement in the late ’70s and early ’80s due to poor health, and shared a farmhouse in Wales with his partner Lisa Rosen. He died on 28 January 1983 aged just 42.
Jason Eddie lived in Liverpool until his death in September 2011 after several years of poor health. We were in touch again by email in recent years and made our peace.
George of Edison Lighthouse died in the early ’80s. Two of the band, Stuart Edwards and Dave Taylor, were still performing as an Edison Lighthouse duo as recently as 2003.
Hal Carter went on to build up one of the biggest music management businesses in London – the Hal Carter Organisation, specialising in ’60s and ’70s artistes. Hal died in July 2004 aged 69 and his daughter Abbie took over the business.
Jimmy Campbell, despite his seminal album Son of Anastasia (1969), never achieved huge fame at the time, and died in 2007, but his old material is now recognised for its brilliance.
Biba moved to the old Derry and Toms Kensington department store in 1973 but was never the same, and it closed in the mid-’70s. The Biba name was revived in 2006 as a new fashion collection.
Tony Prince left Luxy to start up the DJ bible, MixMag and the international Disco Mix Club or DMC, the world’s leading company, label, magazine and website for DJ culture. He lives in Buckinghamshire.
The Osmonds’ fantastic popularity worldwide began to fade after the mid-’70s until reviving during the pop nostalgia wave since the millennium. Most of the brothers spent the ’80s and ’90s struggling to support their growing families and coping with near-bankruptcy. Merrill suffered from depression and diabetes, Wayne a brain tumour, Alan has multiple sclerosis, and in 2004 Jimmy suffered a stroke. The brothers now have over 50 children and grandchildren between them and in 2017 will celebrate sixty years in show business.
Donny Osmond went on to a solo career starring in Joseph and his Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat on stage for several years in the ’90s. Now he performs and tours once more with sister Marie.
Olive Osmond died, aged 79, two years after suffering a massive stroke, in May 2004.
George Osmond died in 2007.
Keith Moon died on 7 September 1978 of an overdose of Heminevrin, pills prescribed to help him overcome his alcohol addiction.
Jim Morrison died in Paris on 3 July 1971, of heart failure brought on by heavy drinking.
Richard Harris died of cancer, aged 72, on 25 October 2002.
Peter Wyngarde was caught up in a homosexual scandal later in the ’70s and his career never recovered.
‘Six foot of dick’ morphed into Richard Girling, highly-respected investigative journalist for The Sunday Times and campaigning author.
Richard Chamberlain has sustained a career in films and TV ever since Dr Kildare and finally came out as gay in 2003, saying he’d been too frightened to mention it before.
David ‘Kid’ Jensen became one of the UK’s most popular radio DJs on BBC Radio 1 and then on Capital Gold. He is now a freelance radio presenter and lives in Surrey with wife Gudrun. He has three children and, last time I heard, two grandchildren.
Dave Cash is still DJing for BBC local radio and we are still in touch. He would like to point out that the car he used to drive around London in was not a Jaguar but an Aston Martin DB5.
Tony Blackburn moved back to the BBC, after a sixteen-year absence, in 2004, as a BBC Radio London presenter; he also works for Radio 2 and is a regular in many TV programmes.
I last saw Nigel Hunter back in 2007 when he came to the lunch with Betty Hale at the Oxo Tower.
Rodney Burbeck is still a busy media professional and owner of Rodney Burbeck Publishing Services.
Julie Webb got married, moved to Rutland, had five children and became a reporter on a local newspaper.
Sadly Georgina Mells and I lost touch many years ago but I have heard she lives in her parents’ old house in Buckinghamshire.
Jim Dale MBE, 80, lives in the USA. He is a highly respected actor who is in the American Theatre Hall of Fame, and performed his one-man show Just Jim Dale in London’s West End in 2015 to mark fifty years as a theatre performer.
Roy Carr continued as a music journalist and broadcaster, became an author and record producer, and is still a much-respected authority of the music of the era. His Facebook page says he lives in Yokohama, Bolivia.
Noel Edmonds was banished to the BBC wilderness in 1999 after many years as one of the UK’s top entertainment presenters – but made an amazing comeback with Channel 4’s Deal or No Deal.
John Alderton is still with Pauline Collins.
Gene Pitney died in April 2006 after a gig in Cardiff. The year before, my brother Rob saw the ‘wailing tom cat’ perform at Llandudno in 2005 – and said he was brilliant.
Leonard Nimoy continued to act into the ’90s but announced his retirement from movies in 2002 and became a photographer and poet. He died in February 2015 at the age of 83. Nimoy’s last tweet before he died said, ‘A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory. LLAP*.’
* Live Long and Prosper – Mr Spock’s most famous catchphrase.
Jack Wild died of alcohol and smoking-related mouth cancer on 1 March 2006.
Richard Beckinsale’s baby Kate grew up to be the Hollywood film star Kate Beckinsale.
Richard Beckinsale died of a heart attack in March 1979 aged 31.
I have no idea what happened to Mrs Hill and her children and I haven’t got the heart to find out.
Adam Faith died of a heart attack at 62 in 2003 shortly after coming off stage while acting in a play in the Midlands. His daughter Katya is a film producer and cameraman.
PJ Proby is 77 and lives in England. In 1977 he played Elvis on the West End stage, now has a thriving fan club and appears in concert and in revival tours around the UK as well as running his own recording label.
George Best died in November 2005 of complications from treatments for alcoholism.
Babs Lord went on to marry actor Robert Powell and became a world class sailor.
Les Gray of Mud died of a heart attack in Portugal in February 2004.
Dave Mount of Mud left the music business and worked in insurance until his death in December 2006 aged 57.
Ray Stiles and Rob Davis of Mud got together for the first time in many years to do some gigs in autumn 2015. Ray had been playing in The Hollies, while Rob had become a successful songwriter having co-written ‘Can’t Get You Out of My Head’ for Kylie Minogue.
My mother Enid died on 17 December 2006 aged 91.
My father John died aged 75 in November 1982.
Andy Williams died in September 2012 at the age of 84. He had a UK hit in 1999 with ‘Music to Watch Girls By’ and in recent years had his own Moon River Theatre in Branson, USA and he performed until 2009. I went along to the Birmingham Symphony Hall in mid-2007 to see him in concert and he was still in good voice. I considered arriving at the stage door to hand him my IOU, but thought better of it.
Gary Glitter was sent to jail in Thailand for sex offences against children, returned to the UK and is now serving a sixteen-year sentence for further historical offences.
Tony Barrow lives in Lancashire and in 2005 wrote a biography of his time with The Beatles.
Tony Brainsby died in March 2000.
Spike Milligan died from liver failure in February 2002 .
Ike Turner died in California in December 2007 aged 76.
Ed Welch is a successful TV theme tune composer.
Ronnie Scott’s Club in Frith Street continues to be a popular jazz venue, and still plays host to private parties. Ronnie died in 1996 from an accidental overdose of sleeping pills and brandy.
The Talk of the Town closed in the ’80s and the building has had several re-incarnations. It is now the Hippodrome Casino.
The Finsbury Park Rainbow (Astoria) was left to rot for several years but has been restored, is a listed building and now a Pentecostal church.
Rules restaurant was sold by John Wood and his wife Pamela in 1984 and Buck’s Bar was demolished to make room for extra tables. Buck Taylor died of cancer in the late ’70s.
Julia Morley is still chairman of the Miss World competition – and the swimsuit round has now been abandoned.
David Cassidy, and many stars of the ’60s and ’70s, including David Essex OBE, Suzi Quatro and Slade do regular revival tours in the UK and abroad.
David Bowie died on 10 January 2016 at the age of 69. RIP ‘the new boy from Kent’. You did OK.
And me? My freelance career as a writer began with showbiz interviews and ‘human interest’ features for many publications including The Daily Mail and Woman, as well as Fab and the music press. Continuing in the random fashion that much of my working life had followed, in my late 20s I was offered a job as editor of a national slimming magazine which, for reasons that escape me now, I accepted. The Boss and I moved full-time to a house not far from our little weekend cottage, and so began a new life raising children, bossing freelance contributors around (and finding out what Betty Hale had to put up with), writing books, and growing those veg. I still live in that same house in the countryside on the Welsh Borders near Hay-on-Wye. The Boss (whose name is, in fact, Tony) and I married in April 1980 and we went on to have two sons – Will who is a burgeoning music scene photographer and senior carer with the charity Scope, and Chris who is a father, musician, DJ/producer, has performed at Glastonbury and – funnily enough – is a vegetable grower extraordinaire. Rock on!