‘I SAID WE WOULD GET ALL THE BOYS – PHIL COLLINS, BILL WYMAN, RINGO STARR AND ALL THAT LOT – TO TURN UP, BUT ERIC CLAPTON SAID, “THEY DON’T KNOW HOW TO PLAY.” I SAID, “IT DOESN’T MATTER. WE’LL JUST GIVE THEM THE WHITES AND THEY CAN GO OUT THERE, AND THE CROWD WILL BE HAPPY!”’
David English was born on 4 March 1946, in Isleworth, west London. He is a record producer, author, actor and charity fundraiser. After seven years with Associated Newspapers he joined Decca Records in 1971 for two years, before becoming president of RSO Records, where he worked with Eric Clapton, the Bee Gees and many more. He has appeared in films and on TV and written 17 books. Since the mid-1980s, his Bunburys cricket team has raised substantial funds for charity and to support the English Schools Cricket Association. He was awarded a CBE in 2010 for services to charity and cricket, having previously received an MBE in 2004.
I have never met anyone quite like David English. He is charismatic, eccentric, entertaining, hyperactive, witty, charming, charitable and a raconteur, who is variously and affectionately known as The Loon, Dr Dave and Arthur (after Arthur English, the old actor and comedian). He lives in a north London country cottage, swimming in what he describes as his paraphernalia. Two large glass cabinets are crammed into the hallway, each stuffed with cricketing memorabilia, including several trophies and caps donated by Geoffrey Boycott, Rod Marsh and Viv Richards among others.
The desk in his office is reached along a narrow walkway, hemmed in on either side by letters, brochures and piles of other papers of every description, together with more caps and sweaters and a prized birthday present from Ian Botham: his 1986/87 Ashes-winning blazer. The walls in every room are covered with cricket photographs, posters, cartoons, scorecards and caricatures, alongside gold and platinum discs from the chart-topping days with Eric Clapton and the Bee Gees. Amidst this chaos, and without a computer, typewriter or secretary, David has handwritten thousands of letters and raised millions of pounds for charities.
Once he has cleared just enough space on the settee for the pair of us, we sit down to talk. I cannot help but notice one item of a non-cricketing nature: a 6ft high, fibreglass blonde model in a very skimpy outfit. ‘Barry Gibb and I were walking down the road in Miami and this beauty was in an antique shop,’ David explains. ‘He said, “Dave, that’s your type isn’t it – blonde and big boobs?” I just said, “Yeah,” and didn’t think any more about it. I got back here and a week later the Post Office rang and said, “Mr English? I’ve got something for you from Mr Gibb in Miami, Florida, with his best compliments.” And Barry had sent it to me. There was a note with it: “Lots of love, Baz.” And there she stands, blonde and curvaceous, like my ex-wife! But everything else you see is to do with cricket. They all tell a story and I remember everything vividly. The reason I’ve got all these pictures and things up is that they remind me what happened and when. So I’m surrounded by my memories and when I go, maybe they could make this into a little museum or something similar.’
Putting those memories to one side, we move on to talk about his earliest taste of cricket, which turns out to have been at an unbelievably early age! ‘I remember my mother, who used to wear a belted camel coat and looked like Lauren Bacall, the American actress, pushing my pram through Hendon Park to the Burroughs district of Hendon, where we used to get powdered milk, cod liver oil and orange juice. On the way home I remember seeing a game of cricket in the park. I would have only been about six months old but this is the truth. She used to push me through the park every day and I remember the activity, and seeing the cricket, at a very young age. My father didn’t play but when I was four or five, I used to go to Hendon Park and try and coerce anybody I could to come and play cricket with me. Up against a tree, or wherever there was space to do so. I just used to love playing and when the holidays started I used to go and play every day in Hendon Park. It is just something I love doing. I can’t think of anything more pleasurable than whacking a ball around, or hurling a ball about, and just bowling whenever I had the chance to do so.
‘At primary school, which was quite a rough place, we just played in the playground where we had three stumps chalked on the wall. There wasn’t anybody who coached cricket there but when I went to a prep school, there was a guy who told us how to hold the bat and so on, which was a start! Then, when I was 12 or 13, we used to go to the Middlesex Indoor Cricket School at Finchley once a week, which was a great learning experience. I was so much in awe of the coach, Jack Robertson, who would always be wearing his Middlesex sweater with the three seaxes badge. He had a bat that had been sawn in half and we used to have to hold it in one hand, with the other hand behind our back, and hit the ball cleanly.
‘In 1963 I joined the ground staff at Lord’s. Len Muncer was MCC head coach and we used to flog score cards and bowl to the members and do whatever else we were told to do, and for me it was just exhilarating. Don Bennett picked me for the Middlesex second team quite a few times, and I played for MCC and scored a hundred at Lord’s for the Cross Arrows. I was on 99 and a bloke called George Hepworth, a Yorkshire lad, hit me on the pads. I was plumb lbw and a Lord’s hundred was slipping away from me, even if it was on the nursery ground, so I ran down to the other end to the umpire who was about to give me out. I said, “No, no, please!” He put his dreaded finger down and I was able to make 100 not out. Hepworth swore at me, “F*****g ’ell, you bastard!” Soon after, I asked Don Bennett, “Look, do you think I am good enough to play professionally?” and he said, “I don’t think you’ve got the attention span. You love the game, but would you be willing to get to the ground at 9 o’clock, nets at 9. 30, cricket from 11 until six, every day of your life? I think you would be better off doing what you are probably best at, which is all sorts of different things.” I think I probably could have played first-class cricket to a certain level but I would never have been Gower or Botham, so I went off and worked for the newspapers instead.’
Having taken Don Bennett’s advice, David moved into a whole array of different activities before cricket beckoned once more. But it beckoned in a very different way and resulted in the creation of his own cricket team, known (in due course) as the Bunburys. ‘It all started in Eric Clapton’s garden, where I first suggested to him that we start a cricket side and call it Eric Clapton’s XI. I said we would get all the boys – Phil Collins, Bill Wyman, Ringo Starr and all that lot – to turn up, but Eric said, “They don’t know how to play.” I said, “It doesn’t matter. We’ll just give them the whites and they can go out there, and the crowd will be happy!” So he told me that if I could get it all together, then he would turn up.’
Their first game was at Ripley in Surrey and despite the non-stop pouring rain, it attracted a crowd of 5, 000 or more. David remembers it all too well. ‘I promise you, John, it was absolutely peeing down but I had been in touch with all my musical contacts and despite the weather they all turned up to play. Most of them didn’t have a clue. Eric was looking the wrong way, drinking red wine, and somebody else had a cigar on – it might have been Gary Mason. But I do know that 26 grand went to the Royal Marsden Hospital as a result. We used to play every Sunday after that and, because of Eric obviously, we used to get very big crowds.
‘I always used to try and keep him out of harm’s way so we could protect his fingers. One day we were playing at Penn Street in Buckinghamshire and although I didn’t want him to, he was fielding in the gully, probably so he could chat to the boys. The bloke who was batting whacked it and the ball broke Eric’s finger! So I’ve now got visions of lawyers and litigation and all sorts of problems because Eric is about to go on a tour to Japan. But that wasn’t the end of the affair. As he walked off, a bumblebee stung him on the other hand, so he soon had both hands in buckets of water. He just sat there looking at me and said, “Right, Arthur, that’s it. I’m retiring.” As a result, the name of the team had to be changed, although as it turned out Eric was able to do the tour!’
The team was rechristened the Bunburys, with a little rabbit as the club’s logo. The name is based on another of David’s ‘different things’. ‘I wrote 14 children’s books, called Bunbury Tails, all about little rabbits who play cricket. There was the BBC, the Bunbury Broadcasting Corporation, with Bunny Johnston and Richie Bunnow as commentators, and the Bunburys had Ian Buntham, Rodney Munch and Dennis Lettuce playing against the cats from Whisker Town, managed by Chairman Miaow, with Mike Catting and Imran Kitten in their team.
‘Some of the things that have gone on in Bunbury matches have been crazy. I often saw drinks and fags on the field. Bill Wyman used to smoke, even when he was bowling his leg breaks. He’s not a bad bowler, although most bowlers use sawdust when it’s wet, not fag ash! I wouldn’t have to ask him to bowl – he would come up and say he wanted to bowl there and then, more often than not right in the middle of an over. He took the only televised hat-trick ever at the Oval. [Bill tells the tale elsewhere in this book. ] The game was to mark the 50th anniversary of VE day and I had Keith Miller and Denis Compton there, and Sam Fox bowling with Devon Malcolm – it was all very surreal. Everyone was wired up for sound for the live coverage on Sky, but the language was unbearable and at one stage Foxy [Graeme] Fowler shouted a four-letter word at Syd Lawrence. The producer went absolutely mad because viewers were phoning Sky to complain. He screamed into my earpiece, saying that I had to get them to stop swearing and to stop discussing “who had or had not had their end away in the last week”! It just went on and on, and I couldn’t control them. At one stage there were five blokes chatting away in the slips and at the end of the over they wouldn’t move, so we then had five mid-ons! I tell you, John, it is all so much fun!’
That had been evident when I saw David in action at one of the Bunbury matches, an annual fund-raising fixture against Norma Major’s XI at Alconbury in Cambridgeshire. He seemed to be permanently surrounded by players, sponsors, guests and friends, and introduced many of the latter as a son or a daughter when very often they obviously were not! At lunch, he played the part of the stand-up comedian like a seasoned pro, entertaining his captive audience with a string of gags that nearly brought the marquee down. When the cricket eventually got under way, Test players Robert Key and Charlotte Edwards were in the Bunbury side, alongside an array of footballers and personalities who gave a sizeable crowd autographs and entertainment as a part of the afternoon.
When I asked Bill Wyman about David as a cricketer, he told me, ‘Blimey! He bowls fast, or at least he used to before his knees went. Or was it his hips? He bowls fast, and he’s a bloody good batsman, oh yeah. He always got 30, 40, 50. Really quick as well. He’s a bit of a slogger. Good eye. Often dropped catches, though, in the field.’ Rory Bremner is also a great fan. ‘He is a great character and has done very well in terms of getting a lot of very good players. These matches are one of the big reasons why I enjoy playing the game. Having said that, I stopped playing for a while because it became a bit like a circus! You would turn up and there would be 18 playing for the Bunburys. I used to enjoy fielding in the covers but I would find there were already four fielders there, which tended to make it a bit congested!’
For 25 years David has succeeded in getting many famous people to play cricket for the Bunburys. They come back week after week and play for nothing. David believes the reasons are quite obvious. ‘They have a good day out, the public loves to watch them, and it gives them a nice feeling to know that they are helping so many charities. Over the years we have been able to help worthy causes such as Cancer Research, Age Concern, ChildLine, the NSPCC, Addenbrooke’s Hospital and very many more. I get all these letters from charities and I decide which ones I am going to support. I particularly like the children’s charities and the ones that help old folks.
‘I like to go and see the children – not just send the cheque but to actually see where the money is going and how it might help. I’m a patron of When You Wish Upon A Star [the charity dedicated to dream making for sick children]. Each year they charter planes to take youngsters who are very poorly to Lapland to meet Father Christmas, and this is something we did. Just to see these children – many of them terminally ill – to see the wonder in their eyes and the glow on their cheeks is very moving. I said to one little chap, “Do you like football? Do you like David Beckham?” And this little voice said, “You think I’m a boy, don’t you? I’m not – I’m a girl!” and she burst out laughing. She had leukaemia – no hair. And was still laughing. I could easily have cried.’
To support the charities, David needs annual sponsorship of the Bunburys to supplement what is raised by the clubs hosting the matches. He rejects the notion of writing letters in the hope of getting positive responses. ‘Forget it, John, it doesn’t work at all. I get sponsors by making lots and lots of friends in the highest places I possibly can. You’ve got to meet people. Once they have agreed to be sponsors they come in for a season. They get their logos on the shirts and sweaters, advertising and editorial in the brochure, a table at every game and they bring their clients along. So we get wonderful support from Shredded Wheat, CostCutter, Bentley and people like that. The club we are playing normally gets sponsorship as well as raising funds in other ways. We played at Lord’s in 2010 and, largely through the auction, raised an all-time Bunburys match record of £178, 000 for the Myeloma cancer charity. In our quarter of a century, we have raised more than £14 million in total.’
In 1986 David was approached by Ben Brocklehurst, the former Somerset player and publisher of The Cricketer magazine, who introduced him to Cyril Cooper, the general secretary of the English Schools Cricket Association, which plays a crucial role in the development of schoolboy cricket. ESCA’s annual Under 15 Cricket Festival was in trouble through lack of funding. ‘Cyril told me they hadn’t got a sponsor and asked me if I could help. I told him straight away that nothing would make me more proud and I’ve been involved in what is now known as the Bunbury ESCA Under 15 Cricket Festival ever since, during which time 52 boys who have played in the Festival have gone on to play for England, including Michael Vaughan, Paul Collingwood, Graeme Swann and Andrew Flintoff. And there are 193 guys who have gone on to play county cricket. In the pre-Bunbury years, Mike Atherton, David Gower, Ian Botham, Mike Gatting and Nasser Hussain all came to be noticed during the Festival.’
The year 2008 was particularly memorable for the ESCA, with a game on the main square at Lord’s. ‘Keith Bradshaw plays for us regularly each season and is a brilliant bloke,’ David explains. ‘As you know, he is chief executive of MCC and he’s the man who made the first ever match between the England Under 15s and Under 16s possible. It was terrific: the match was tied and that day, 10 September, was designated National Bunbury ESCA Day. And that evening we had a wonderful dinner to celebrate the 60 years that the ESCA had existed.’
David has effectively dedicated most of the past 25 years to the Bunburys and all that this entails. But what does he get out of it? ‘The most pleasure for me as a Bunbury is watching the boys play in the Festival – seeing them arrive, lining up in their blazers and being presented with their regional caps. I love to see them play, dealing with a combination of adrenaline and nerves; they are so talented. And that’s the start of a lifelong friendship. They go on into first-class cricket but they all come back to play in my celebrity team. Ronnie Irani, Ian Bell, Freddie Flintoff – they will all turn out whenever they can.
‘The second thing that I enjoy when I captain the Bunbury side is the banter, because it’s priceless. The things that get said by players from all different parts of the world! They may be cricketers, actors, musicians, footballers, it doesn’t matter – it’s amazing. They all get on so well. The banter that goes on in the dressing room is quite extraordinary – it’s worth recording! Jeff Thomson and Ian Wright together have to be heard to be believed, and I like being the catalyst. I remember years ago, probably late 1970s, when Robert Powell played Jesus Christ in the TV series Jesus of Nazareth. Brilliant he was, too, but the lads used to upset him by phoning for Judas Iscariot! And Robert used to say, “No, Jesus Christ, f**k you!” Actually, whenever all this was going on he would get quite chirpy – he could be quite full of himself!
‘The only thing I would add to all my cricket chat – my anecdotes and my memories – is this. Like you, I love the game. And I just want to help as many people as I can and have a good day out.’
My time spent with David has never been less than interesting. Seeing him in his two-tone blue-and-white shoes, blue cords and cricket shirt, surrounded by his chaotic cricket memorabilia and closely watched by his pair of 19-year-old ginger cats, it is easy to understand why Mike Atherton wrote of him in The Times, “He teeters just on the right side of that fine line between eccentricity and madness.” In fact, his remarkable achievements in the world of music, for the ESCA and for charity, all clearly demonstrate that he teeters very strongly in the right direction.