Thank U Very Much was the title Mike McCartney chose for his autobiography, and as titles and catchphrases go it’s hard to beat. According to its author, he came up with the idea for the song when he was on the phone to Paul thanking him for the birthday gift of a Nikon camera, but by the time he sang the first version to John and me, the camera had given way to an Aintree Iron, Gertie the girl with the Garston gong, and something about a Fazakerly fishcake. We played around with the lyrics to extract all references to Liverpool suburbia (save one), for obviously it was a song with the potential of appealing to an audience worldwide. So in came the Sunday Times, ‘Our gracious team’ and the ‘napalm bomb’, as well as the ‘family circle’, meaning Mum, Dad and the kids, which prompted Huntley and Palmer to send us each a tin of their ‘Family Circle’ biscuits as a little thank you for promoting their brand. (With a little forethought we might have been better off giving thanks for Jaguar cars, Philips TV sets and Glenmorangie whisky, but we weren’t to know.) And even though John and I threw in our tuppence worth, it was very much Mike’s creation and all credit, then, must go to him. As well as PRS, of course, publishing and mechanical royalties, together with all ensuing advertising and commercial revenue. George Martin was our producer at the Abbey Road Studios and within a month of its release in November 1967 it reached number four in the charts and we were on Top of the Pops.
The single reference to a Liverpool placename we kept in the song was the ‘Aintree Iron’ and if there’s one question I’m always being asked (apart from ‘Why poetry?’ ‘Where do you get your ideas from?’ and ‘How did you manage to keep your affair with Michelle Pfeiffer a secret for so long?’) it is ‘What is the Aintree Iron?’ Usually there’s somebody on hand who will wink conspiratorially and announce, ‘It’s Brian Epstein, isn’t it? Rhyming slang, iron hoof – poof?’ Or, ‘It’s Tommy Smith, isn’t it? Used to play centre-half for Liverpool?’ Or, ‘It’s Aintree Racecourse, isn’t it?’ Whatever answer is on offer I’m only too happy to concur. But if you’re of a certain age, interested in pop music ephemera and would genuinely like to know the answer to a problem that has puzzled generations for nearly forty years, you will certainly be looking forward to finding it in the second volume of this autobiography whose working title is ‘The Aintree Iron, Myth or Mythology?’.
The prime minister of the day, Harold Wilson, was not amused by a lyric I had written for a pugnacious BBC television documentary called Yesterday’s Men, which was turned into the theme song and sung by the Scaffold. It began:
Like Humpty-Dumpty, he sat on a wall
Giving the orders and then
In the midst of it all, he had a great fall
Now he’s one of yesterday’s men.
The MP for Huyton let it be known that he found the song personally offensive, so plans for ‘Yesterday’s Men’ to be the catchy follow-up to our surprise hit were ditched. The irony is that he had previously named ‘Thank U Very Much’ as his favourite record, so I have the dubious achievement of being associated with a prime minister’s most-liked and most-hated song.
What was wonderful about the sixties was the way class barriers came tumbling down. Isn’t that right? A whiff of patchouli plaited with marijuana, communal changing rooms at Biba, working-class photographers and rock stars cavorting with toffs, it was time to garage the tumbrils and dismantle the scaffold. Not the ‘fresh, highly original, self-sufficient comedy unit’, of course, for I like to think that in our own small way we helped bridge the class divide as the following vignette illustrates.
We were invited one evening to perform at the Savoy Hotel. It was all quite hush-hush and we were given few details of the event until the day before. All we knew was that we were to sing ‘Thank U Very Much’ at a private dinner party in honour of Sir Tommy Sopwith, the pioneer aviator and designer of the Sopwith Camel, the First World War fighter plane.
‘Shall we do a few other songs as well?’ we asked.
‘No, just the one song, it’s his favourite apparently.’
‘How about a couple of funny sketches, perhaps with a Great War theme?’
‘No.’
‘I could write a poem in his honour?’
‘Just the song.’
So we duly turned up with five session musicians and asked to see the stage where we could set up and sound check.
‘Stage? Oh, dear me, no,’ said Jocelyn Stevens, then editor of Queen magazine and our contact for the evening. ‘You’ll be doing your thing here,’ (‘here’ being a chintzy sitting room) ‘and when supper is over the guests will wander through and, once they’re settled, Lady Sopwith will wheel Tommy in. It’s his eightieth birthday today and he’s no idea that you’re here and so it will be a wonderful surprise.’
Left to our own devices for a couple of hours, we mimed a rehearsal, made short work of the sandwiches and watched television with the sound turned off, until near enough to midnight the audience drifted in. I use the word ‘audience’ in its narrowest sense in that the performers outnumbered it. Jocelyn Stevens brought Sir Max Aitken over to say hello but there was no time for further introductions as the door opened and a wheelchair taxied down the runway.
Thank you very much for the Sopwith Camel
Thank you very much
Thank you very, very, very much.
At first it was all too much for the great man, who was nonplussed, thinking perhaps that a gang of burglars, caught on the job, had burst into song. But once his wife had reassured him he joined in the chorus and insisted we sang it again;
Thank you very much for the Sopwith Pup …
Sopwith Tabloid …
Sopwith Snipe …
Sopwith Dolphin …
Sopwith Salamander …
(We’d certainly done our homework.)
Thank you very, very, very much.
Flushed with triumph we were introduced to the Sopwiths, Princess Alexandra and Angus Ogilvie while the champagne circulated and the conversation sparkled. Which brings me back to my point about hurdling over those class barriers. I mean, their lord- and ladyships could have said, ‘Right, you lot, here’s your money, now piss off back up north where you belong.’ But they didn’t. No, they were more than happy to let us stay in their company for twenty minutes or so. Well, fifteen, but it was getting late. Thank you very much.