Or: trying to maintain domestic bliss while filling stadiums (collectively), becoming a leading-man film star (briefly) and embarrassing the heir to the throne (inadvertently)

Daddy’s home! The post–Live Aid summer of 1985, I try as best I can to go back to being a family man. I usually have Simon and Joely for the long school holidays, and given that they live the rest of the year in Vancouver, and that I’m always busy somewhere, these summer months when we can reunite are sacrosanct. Even though Joely, Simon and I speak regularly, every visit is a surprise. They both have bigger personalities, become more fashion-conscious, more aware of their hairstyles and, of course, taller.

I have many home videos from that era, and it’s fascinating to listen to their evolving accents. Joely in particular gradually goes from prim and English to more mid-Atlantic. They are both turning into lovely young people with fine manners, although, of course, with these changes come problems—problems I wish I’d been there to share. For me and my geographically distant children, there are growing pains on both sides.

“Home” now is Lakers Lodge in Loxwood, West Sussex. We decided to move from Old Croft while I was recording No Jacket Required in London. Jill took on the major task of finding us a new base while I was otherwise detained in the studio. It wasn’t quite the same as my mum buying a new house and moving the family into it in the course of one of my dad’s nine-to-five days, but, well, it is a bit.

Lakers Lodge dates from the early eighteenth century, when it was called Beggars Bush. Grade II listed, it’s a big old Georgian house, sturdily built, with twelve acres of land and a formal walled garden. We later dig a lake, enabling me to do with my children what my dad did with me—mess about in a boat. This house was the local nerve center during the Second World War—I have pictures of the Home Guard detachment doing rifle drill on the lawn.

The property comes with a small staff, a middle-aged couple called Len and Joyce Buck, who’ve lived in the grounds for twenty-five years. Len is a quiet and justifiably proud gardener of the old school who knows exactly when to reap and when to sow. Joyce is the housekeeper and the boss.

The previous owner had told them they would not be wanted after the sale, but I didn’t want this house unless they came with it. They’re as loyal as could be, and help Jill and I settle in. Over the ensuing years we become happy members of the community. We host big Christmas parties to which we invite the whole village; we become regulars at the lovely pub, the Cricketers; and I join the “celebrity” team who play cricket on the green on occasional Sundays. All the locals become good friends, and years later they come en masse to my fiftieth birthday party in Zermatt, Switzerland.

August also brings my and Jill’s first wedding anniversary, so there’s added reason to bunker down near heart and hearth. As I’ve been bouncing from project to project, country to country and collaboration to collaboration these past four years, she’s generally been traveling with me. Coming on the road was pretty exciting for her, though not as overwhelming as it might have been, given that she has a slightly showbiz background: her dad was a Hollywood outfitter, making suits for the rich and famous, and her mother was an actress and dancer. When I was recording a snippet of “Over the Rainbow” as a little coda to Face Value and had a sudden blank on the lyrics, Jill was able to phone her mother, who knew the lyricist, Yip Harburg. He dictated them to her over the phone. Straight from the mouth of Dorothy, as it were.

The thrill goes both ways. I love having Jill with me on my travels, a wingwoman by my side. The first half of the eighties has been a very busy time, but it could have been a very lonely time, too. Jill gives me strength and support and encouragement.

This has meant that for much of the first year of our marriage we’ve been together. Yet it has also meant that, courtesy of all the professional distractions, we’ve been apart while we’ve been together. All things considered, then, summer ’85 is a time for the four of us to be as blissfully domestic as we can.

Us having children is, by mutual agreement, not on the table right now, and won’t be for a few years. Firstly, we have Joely and Simon to consider. They’re still young—with her being born on August 8, in the school holidays, I generally get to celebrate Joely’s birthday with her; conversely, I usually just miss Simon’s birthday, which falls on September 14—and we don’t want to complicate things further before they’re ready to deal with yet more change.

I have huge admiration for Jill: it’s been very difficult for her inheriting a family. It’s difficult for the kids, too, taking Jill as a stepmother. In fact, technically Joely now has a stepmother and a stepfather, but not since day one have I ever thought of myself that way, and neither has she. I’m her dad, she’s my daughter, that’s it.

But this fragmented, internationally scattered family—something we’ll joke about years later, when it’s even more fragmented and scattered—is more than just a traditional “mum and dad got separated” set-up. It’s tricky, and I try to keep things peaceful, functional and above all loving.

Anyway, the summers are time off and a break for me—but they’re not particularly a break for Jill. Suddenly she becomes a mum. She’s very good with it, but it’s not without its trials all round as the kids try to reconnect with an unavoidably absent father and connect with a new mother figure. When they’re older, Simon and Joely tell me that they found it harder than they made it look at the time, even during the brief spell when they were living back in the U.K. with Andy. In fact, Simon reveals to me that he regularly ran away from primary school in Ealing because he hated school so much. Or maybe he hated his life so much. Either way, I can’t help but carry the guilt.

No one tells me this at the time. But I do, I belatedly realize, have photographic evidence. In a school photo, Simon is positioned at the end of the line; in fact he’s sitting a good meter away from the rest of his schoolmates. It couldn’t be more symbolic if he was clutching a vinyl copy of Face Value under his arm. I still wince at that photograph of my little boy.

So, working hard to make up the dad hours that I have so painfully lost through trial and circumstance, I spend a lot of time with the kids. I sometimes think this might cause a problem for Jill. We’re together but apart once more. But I can’t stop thinking about the inevitable: Joely and Simon leaving to go home to Vancouver. So I cherish every minute they’re with me in England.

Jill and I have our time, after Joely and Simon have gone to bed. We’ll watch a movie or talk, but as they grow older the bedtimes get later, and the time we have alone together shrinks—like most couples with kids.

When the school holidays are over, I reluctantly drive Joely and Simon to Heathrow and wave them off on the long-haul trip back to their mother, unaccompanied minors on a ten-hour flight to Vancouver. I wouldn’t dream of doing that with Nicholas and Mathew now—I’d get on the plane with them. I don’t know what I was thinking of. I apologize to Jo and Simon here and now for my selfishness. It didn’t feel like that at the time, I promise, especially as I was doing battle on another front.

I’ve become used to bargaining with Andy, bartering about when I can have the kids. Divorce can be cruel to children, pawns in an adult game. They hear one side of a conversation, the shouting, the phone slamming down, then have to listen to Mum or Dad berate the other. It’s bad enough their parents not living together anymore; they certainly don’t want to hear them arguing now that they’re apart. But wisdom comes with age, and I now feel I have a master’s degree in divorce and people management. I will come to view my adult life as forty years of negotiation.

—

The summer holidays done, I’m ready to go back to work. Not that I resent this in any way. Unlike my dad, who was frustrated and I think ultimately damaged by the job he was forced to do, what I do for a living is what keeps me living. I love my job.

With the kids safely back in Canada, Genesis come together at The Farm that October to start work on the record that will become Invisible Touch. Now that I’m ensconced at Lakers Lodge, Mike, Tony and I all reside near each other, and we can all drive to the studio within ten minutes.

If ever I was going to quit Genesis in favor of my solo career, in theory this would be the time, with the tailwind of No Jacket Required still blowing hard. But at the same time, I’ve missed the guys. Tony and Mike have become more lovable as time goes on, which is the reverse of the traditional rock-band narrative. Tony, formerly rather diffident and difficult to talk to, has become a great friend, funny and witty. He’s a different person, especially with a glass of wine in him. Mike, too, has loosened up.

So I’ve missed them, and I’ve missed our magical way of working in the studio. We have nothing planned, so we go in and improvise. We play. It’s not like John brings in a song and Paul brings in a song. I don’t know any other band that works like we do, sitting round, improvising together, until something forms. Every other band seems to be more organized—more boring—than that.

I think, “I can’t do this anywhere else.” We have something special here.

Genesis is also a safe haven. I’m back in the group, surrounded by friends (it’s the same road crew I have on my solo tours). We work together, we relax together, we eat together. You come into the studio in the morning and the roadies have some breakfast waiting. When you’re making an album, there’s a lot of time where you’re not doing anything, especially once you start recording, so a couple of hours later you might wander over and see if there are any cold beans and sausages left. Then there’s curry in the evening. You put on weight making an album. Love handles aside, the only problem is having to clock off each day.

We start with a blank sheet of paper, and the lovely big control room that’s been built in The Farm since we last recorded here. We also have a live room for my drums, but we start to use drum machines more than on any previous album. This frees me up, both in the writing of the songs and the singing of them.

The track “Invisible Touch” is one example. Mike has this insistent guitar riff, I start singing, and instantly I have this phrase: “She seems to have an invisible touch…” This touch “takes control and slowly tears you apart…” This is someone dangerous and destabilizing. This is Andy, and it’s Lavinia. Someone who will come in and fuck up your life, man, which is the line I will end up singing onstage, much to the audience’s general whooped appreciation and my kids’ embarrassment.

But “Invisible Touch” isn’t bitter or angry—it’s an acceptance. Sometimes when Simon’s had relationships that haven’t gone well, I’ll say to him, “She seems to have an invisible touch…” and he’ll laugh. He appears to have relationships similar to the ones I have. Even with my son Nic and girls he’s meeting at school, I tell him there are certain people you shouldn’t go out with. But you find yourself attracted to them.

Yet while there’s a haunted, fever-dream quality to the lyric, there’s a bounce to “Invisible Touch,” its sound influenced by “The Glamorous Life,” a big American dance hit from 1984 by Prince’s sometime percussionist and co-singer Sheila E. It’s one of my favorite Genesis songs, and when it’s released as the first single from the album in May 1986 it becomes our first—and only—U.S. number 1 single. In fact it’s the first of five American Top 5 singles from Invisible Touch, which to this day is Genesis’ bestselling album, released one year after No Jacket Required, my bestselling album.

Oddly, the worlds of Genesis collide in other ways in this period. Having dominated the American sales and airplay charts that summer, we’re knocked off pole position in the singles chart by Peter’s “Sledgehammer,” which is taken from his brilliant fifth album, So. He’s a long way from a fox’s head, but he does now have a stop-motion animated head in the classic video for the song.

Hands up: I do envy Pete. There are some songs he’s written that I wish I’d written—for one thing “Don’t Give Up,” his gorgeous duet with Kate Bush. But even here at the height of my success it seems that, for every achievement or great opportunity that comes my way, I’m starting to accrue bad press as a matter of course. Pete seems to get good press seemingly equally automatically. It seems a bit unfair, which I appreciate is a pathetic word to use in this context. A few years later, in 1996, when I release Dance into the Light, Entertainment Weekly will write: “Even Phil Collins must know that we all grew weary of Phil Collins.”

Between the completion of the recording of Invisible Touch and the start of the ensuing tour, I hook up again with Eric. It seems like we’ve both been forgiven for Behind the Sun, because I’m allowed to drum on, and co-produce with Tom Dowd, his new album. It’s to be called August, as that’s when his son Conor was born. We record in Los Angeles under the watchful eye of Lenny Waronker, to make sure there’s lots of guitar. August becomes Eric’s bestselling album to date, a happy outcome we might attribute to better song choices, Waronker being right, my being a much better producer, or a magical combination of all three. We carry that momentum into a run of live shows in Europe and America on which I become part of Eric’s touring line-up. It’s fantastic fun playing with Eric, Greg Phillinganes and Nathan East—we’re in such raptures we call it The Heaven Band—and a lovely, relaxing prelude to what is about to happen.

The Invisible Touch tour starts in September 1986, with three nights in Detroit at the 21,000-capacity Joe Louis Arena. It won’t be over for ten months and 112 shows.

This is the tour on which we start to have underwear thrown at us onstage. Prior to this we’d get the odd shoe—were people limping home?—but now it’s underwear. Why? Five American Top 5 singles have brought us a younger, more liberated audience? The passion in the lyrics of “Invisible Touch” is getting to people? Tom Jones isn’t touring this year?

Round the world we go, three nights here, four nights there, five nights at Madison Square Garden. Days off on tour? Not really interested. I’ll hang around the hotel, maybe go to the cinema, and not much else. It’s not because I might get bothered by fans in the street; it’s because I’m just counting down the hours till that night’s gig. That’s what I’m here for. Alternatively, I sit in my room and listen to the tapes of the previous night’s show, checking out the sound mix, alert to any sloppiness or mistakes from any of us onstage. Eventually I will realize that each show is its own time and place.

Sometimes, at the suggestion of the best throat doctors rock’n’roll money can buy, I’ll take myself off to the nearest steam room. Now that I’m playing so many shows, solo and with Genesis, and increasingly in large venues, I live in fear of losing my voice, and the steam helps.

Probably, then, I’m not much fun to be around on tour, so I always encourage Jill to go out—do some shopping, see the town, get a feel for this latest pit stop on our ongoing global wanderings. This also helps me to have some time alone and recharge my batteries. I’m obliged to give so much of myself onstage, I need all the “me” time I can get.

I know how it looks. There I am, sitting alone in my room, in silence, listening to last night’s show, or trying to find something to watch on American TV. I sound like Greta Garbo.

In Australia our routing overlaps with that of Elton John, and I spend an instructive evening in his dressing room in Melbourne. He’s playing with the Melbourne Symphony, and it’ll be broadcast all over Australia. Elton throws a moody because he thinks he’s lost his voice. It looks like he’s about to pull the gig, no matter how this might impact on the dozens of orchestral players and the tens of thousands of fans. He calls for his limo, is driven round the car park in a low-speed huff, but in the end comes back and takes the stage.

Post-show, back in his dressing room, I tell him I only noticed a slight vocal wobble in one place, during “Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me.” He’s pleased to hear that, but I sense a tantrum remains but a tickly tonsil away.

For me, it’s an illuminating interlude. Most times the audience just don’t notice these subtleties—I’d barely noticed and I knew he was hoarse. You need to think twice before letting a sore throat mushroom into a diva-shaped cancellation. There are few excuses that will cut it with 20,000 fans, short of actually dying in the steam room pre-gig.

The Invisible Touch tour finally ends back home in July 1987. But only six of the 112 shows are in the U.K., so we’d better knock it out of the park. Dauntingly, those parks are the national football stadiums of Scotland and England: Hampden in Glasgow and Wembley in London.

For a football fan, these are special moments. At Hampden they let us use the trophy room as our dressing room, and I’m thinking, “This is where England and Scotland played…I wonder if Jimmy Greaves sat here…”

Wembley is tremendously atmospheric, and the four nights we play there are easily the triumph of the tour. When you’re onstage in front of 86,000 people—at the legendary home of English football—and you lead them in lovely, daft crowd antics (“woo-ooo” when the lights come down during my introduction to “Domino,” for example), it’s a thrilling, intoxicating sight. I feel very powerful that night. Top of the world, Ma. And my ma was there, as she was at every Genesis show in London, even when, her sight failing and her legs going, she had to be pushed there in a wheelchair.

After most shows I’m down to earth with a thump. But there is something strange at Wembley that I never feel anywhere else. This place was so important in my early years that to actually walk around the stadium, to walk the turf, is just a wondrous feeling.

So how do I alchemize my four-nights-at-Wembley golden-god status? Not with champagne, cocaine, supermodels and speedboats. During the Invisible Touch tour I’ve been visiting local model-railway shops the world over, shipping fun-sized rolling stock back to the U.K. There I intend to fill the basement of Lakers Lodge with a Lilliputian layout that will have Rod “the Mod” Stewart sobbing with HO-gauge envy.

I also take the opportunity to revisit something I swore I’d never touch again: acting. I’ve just done ten months on some of the world’s biggest stages—of course I can be a leading man. And surely this time no one’s going to edit me out of the action?

—

I was twelve years old in 1963 when the Great Train Robbery happened. I remember skimming the headlines in Mum and Dad’s newspaper the day after the heist. I knew it was important. Most of Britain seemed to quite like the audacity of the fifteen-strong gang of thieves stopping the overnight Glasgow to London mail train in such a simple manner—by tampering with the signal lights—then relieving it of its cargo of banknotes, the princely sum of £2.6 million. That’s about £50 million in modern terms. Very, very princely.

After their capture, the members of the gang landed outrageously long prison sentences. The swinging sixties were just starting and the country’s mood was changing, so the popular feeling was that they were made an example of by the British Establishment. One of the incarcerated thieves, Ronnie Biggs, disparagingly known inside the gang as “the tea boy,” escaped from London’s Wandsworth prison and fled to Paris, then Australia, before settling in Rio de Janeiro, where he made quite a name for himself as the celebrity train robber. In 2001, almost forty years after the robbery, he finally returned to the U.K. and to justice.

Two of the main members of the gang managed to skip the country even before Biggs, fleeing to Mexico, where they too became folk heroes to some people back home. One of them was the gang’s leader, Bruce Reynolds. The other was first mate Buster Edwards.

So it was that one day in 1987 I received an offer from a film company. They were making a movie based on the life of Buster, who, after returning from Mexico skint and homesick with his family, had spent nine years in jail before going straight and running a flower stall outside Waterloo railway station in London.

As the film-makers saw it, Buster’s story was a romance. Throughout his life of petty crime and the accompanying jail time, he and his wife June were inseparable. They wanted to tell the couple’s story, with the Great Train Robbery simply as background.

Would I consider taking the role?

Of course I’d consider it. I might have been well rid of acting at the twilight of my teens and the tail end of the sixties—I’d had more than a few bad experiences on-screen (and on the cutting-room floor), plus I was more interested in making it as a musician—but that’s a long time ago now. A new creative challenge is appealing.

Why me? It seems that the director, David Green, was watching TV one night when my episode of Miami Vice came on. Within a few minutes his wife said to him, “There’s your Buster.”

Green already has his June: Julie Walters, the talented and much-loved British actress and comedian. She won a BAFTA and a Golden Globe, and was Oscar-nominated, for the title role in 1983’s Educating Rita. Her involvement is a mark of approval on this project, and overcomes any lingering doubts I have.

One of my first tasks is to take a false nose for a test-drive. The real Buster had terrible cosmetic surgery when he was on the run in Europe. The idea is that I’ll start the film with a fake nose, then it’ll come off and my real nose will act as the post-surgery nose for the bulk of the action. Still with me? This makes sense for the filming, but does suggest that my real nose is deemed to be rather comedic. I try not to take offense. We actors have to have thick skins, darling.

Immediately after I emerge from make-up, a lunch is organized at Wembley Studios for producer Norma Heyman, David Green, Julie and me. Still wearing the prosthetic nose, this is the first time I meet Julie, and the idea is to see if we can connect. She’s pleased to meet me and my fake nose, and I instantly fall for her. She’s so attractively funny, all her genius Acorn Antiques and Wood and Walters sketches flooding fondly back. But a little bit of “falling” is OK, because leading men and women need to have chemistry, right? Enthralled by such an experienced actress, and a lovely one at that, I’m secretly anxious as to whether my old acting skills will be up to scratch. I don’t want to let Julie down.

As if the mortification of having to meet her wearing a dodgy false nose isn’t enough, Green and Heyman suggest that we dive into a rehearsal. Specifically, the rehearsal of a kissing scene. Under normal circumstances this would probably please me no end. But as there wasn’t much kissing required in Oliver! or Calamity the Cow, I don’t know how you stage-kiss. What are the parameters? Are there tongues? And what happens if my nose falls off?

As I’m trying to get my head, and my lips, and my nostrils, round this, the director is leaning in, barking instructions: “Harder…closer…you’re married, remember…watch the nose!” Green and Heyman are shouting at me from about a foot away. This is all very intimidating.

Finally, we’re done, and without Julie being too traumatized. Luckily, the nose is blown and we do the film without it.

This is when Danny Gillen enters my life. Belfast-born and a big man with a big heart, he’s hired to pick me up every morning at 5:30 in West Sussex, drive me to the locations in various parts of London and look after me throughout the day—not least to make sure none of Buster’s old “pals” decide to come say hello—then drive me back home. We become inseparable friends throughout all this, and remain watertight to this day. From Buster onward there will be many experiences, and not a few scrapes—involving everything from paparazzi to over-eager fans to junkie Australian burglars—that I will only manage with the tireless help of Danny.

I must confess that I find the part of Buster Edwards easy to play. I suppose he’s an extension of The Artful Dodger, a cockney wide-boy. But there are tempests off-screen.

Overnight between October 15 and 16, 1987, a huge storm batters England. That night at Lakers Lodge I feel the sturdy Georgian house shaking and the apocalyptic crashes of trees being blown down. I lose about twenty in all, but other people are far, far worse off—across the country an estimated 15 million trees are felled and, in modern money, £5 billion-worth of damage is done.

The next morning Danny and I can’t drive to the film set in London as most of the roads in rural Sussex are blocked by fallen trees. Finally, late in the afternoon, we manage to find a way through, and the scenes that meet our eyes are horrific: trees broken like matches, even in central London, destroyed houses, flattened cars, lives uprooted everywhere. We try to do our best with the scenes that day, but everyone’s head is somewhere else: most of the cast and crew have suffered damage to their houses and they’re trying to reach relatives, emergency services, utilities companies and insurers.

In the end we reshoot the scene a few months later, by which time Julie is almost seven months pregnant. But we manage to act around the elephant in the room.

The producers didn’t want me to meet Buster himself before filming, lest I become confused in my portrayal; the script is, after all, a bit of a fairy-tale-cum-sitcom telling of his life. I do, however, briefly encounter him before we start, at the pre-shoot soirée where the cast and crew get to know each other. That lack of familiarity does mean there are a couple of key missteps in the film. I play him as a keen smoker, as it seemed everybody smoked in the sixties; plus it gives me something to do with my hands when we’re filming. But I discover that Buster was the only one not smoking in the sixties. Much worse, there’s a scene in Mexico where I smack June/Julie. When he sees this, Buster is appalled. “I’d never do that to my June,” he says to me, rightly offended.

More broadly, ultimately Buster and June consider the film to be nothing like their real life—Buster confided in me that it was not as Lavender Hill Mob as it was written.

Buster’s partner-in-crime Bruce Reynolds attends the same cast and crew party, and later occasionally drops by as we film on location. We become quite friendly and one day, when we’re shooting at a place similar to Leatherslade Farm, where the real robbers holed up after the crime, Bruce sidles over and whispers, “This is a choice place, Phil. I’ll have to remember this address.” It seems he’s still open for business.

Meanwhile, the soundtrack to Buster has been encountering its own turbulence. The film-makers’ first thought is to ask me to sing the theme song. They want the Phil Collins package: actor, singer, writer. I’m firm. “No, I don’t want people to think of me as a singer when they see me acting.” I’m taking this job seriously. It’s going to be a tough enough gig without my band/pop persona elbowing its way onto the screen.

I offer some alternatives. I know some people who can provide authentic period music. I’ve just met one of my heroes, Lamont Dozier of Holland-Dozier-Holland Motown fame, on the No Jacket Required tour. He came backstage in LA and we exchanged love and phone numbers, and vows to work together. Beatles producer George Martin is a good friend of mine, too.

For some unknown reason the producers seem underwhelmed by the idea of George, but Lamont they like. So I ask the Motown legend and he agrees to write some songs. He flies to Acapulco, where we’re filming scenes from Buster’s exile, bringing with him a couple of musical sketches: an instrumental with a title, “Loco in Acapulco,” but no lyrics, and another piece which has neither title nor lyrics. Overnight I write the lyrics to both, give the second a title, “Two Hearts,” then go up to Lamont’s hotel room and sing them to him.

“Well,” Lamont says, smiling, “you’re going to have to sing them now, they’re your songs…”

As it’s to be placed in the middle of the film, I refuse to sing “Loco in Acapulco.” I eventually ask The Four Tops, and produce them with Lamont. I have the unnerving job of singing the melody to Levi Stubbs, one of the most incredible voices of the sixties. I come under heavy pressure, however, to sing “Two Hearts.” Eventually I say, “OK, but it’s not going to be before the end credits, is it? I want people to decide whether I can act before they hear me singing.”

Then, I shoot myself in the foot. I say, “We also need a love song from that period somewhere, something Buster and June might hear on the radio—a crooner like Andy Williams singing a ballad like, say, ‘A Groovy Kind of Love.’ ”

“Great idea, Phil!”

“Yeah, but not me,” I clarify, panicked.

“OK, but can you give us a demo of it, so we know what you mean?”

I call Tony Banks and ask him for the chords of the song, record a quick half-hour demo version, then send it to the producers.

“This is fantastic, Phil!”

“But you’ll get someone else to sing it, right?”

“Sure we will.”

I go to see a rough cut of the film and there it is, my demo, playing over a romantic goodbye kiss between Julie and me. I protest. But because it works so well in the film, I’m stuck with it. So we re-record “A Groovy Kind of Love,” with orchestral maestro Anne Dudley producing, and that version is released as a single.

To paraphrase a far greater sixties-set British film: I was only supposed to blow the bloody doors off…Instead I end up with another number 1 single in the U.K. and the U.S., and a lot more stick for doing another middle-of-the-road sixties cover, even if it was just a project for a movie.

But, in the scheme of things, so what? After the film comes out in November 1988, I’m pleased to see Buster Edwards become a different kind of folk hero. He and June are a lovely couple, and they become firm friends of Jill and I, visiting Lakers Lodge a couple of times a year. When Buster commits suicide in 1994, I’m devastated. The tabloids run terrible stories about him, but my feeling is he was just depressed and bored. He’d say to me, “Fuck, Phil, I’m selling flowers outside Waterloo Station. None of the excitement of the old days…”

Buster is a classic minor Brit-flick: a nostalgic, romantic romp in a swinging-sixties period setting that does well at the U.K. box office. Julie and I paired together was great casting, and I’m thrilled at the experience. Finally, my first lead role.

Before its release, my performance receives decent advance notices, so I’m pleased to be able to do something with this new-found (and no doubt fleeting) cinematic clout. In another part of my life, I’m still a trustee of The Prince’s Trust. Having become quite close to Prince Charles and the Princess of Wales, I do the obvious and invite them to attend the opening of the film in aid of the Trust.

But then the tabloid press kick in. During the Great Train Robbery one of the gang coshed the train driver, Jack Mills. He died seven years later, but people said he was never the same after the robbery. The newspapers run stories along the lines of “Royal Film Glorifies Violence,” and suddenly there’s an embarrassed back-pedaling.

One night I arrive home from performing “A Groovy Kind of Love” on Top of the Pops and Jill says, “There was a phone call for you. You have to call Buckingham Palace.” Blimey. Clearing my throat and putting on a shirt and tie, I dial the number given, ask for this or that equerry—“We’ve been expecting you, Mr. Collins”—and am put through to Prince Charles.

“I’m ever so sorry,” says Prince Charles in that Prince Charles way. “It’s stupid, a stupid fuss about nothing, but Diana and I can’t come.”

Postscript: Buster tanks at the U.S. box office. They don’t know Buster Edwards from Buster Keaton, or the Great Train Robbery from Casey Jones. But the soundtrack gets some love at the Grammys—“Two Hearts” wins the award for Best Song Written Specifically for a Motion Picture or Television and is also nominated for an Oscar. And at the Golden Globes in 1989, the year of A Fish Called Wanda, this means John Cleese is in the audience, nominated for Best Actor in a Motion Picture Musical or Comedy.

Bounding onstage at the Globes in LA to collect the award for “Two Hearts” (Best Original Song), I say, “This is fantastic for me. This is actually from a British movie called Buster that sank without a trace, mainly because of the company that was distributing it. But as I always say, forgive and forget. Or at least pretend to.”

Hearing this, one voice pipes up, laughing. It’s Cleese, recognizing one of his Basil Fawlty lines. That makes my night: I’ve made John Cleese laugh.