Seize the Day

by Mike Read

  ‘Why not?’ asks Smiley.

  ‘I was talking to the pig.’

  By the time Shakin’ Stevens took to the roadshow stage at the Wish Tower Slope, the Army had discharged their latest recruit.

  We finished the week at Southsea, so surely Smiley had suffered enough? No, there was more to come. I went to town the next day, performing ‘The Colours’ with The Men They Couldn’t Hang (what a song) and sending Smiley up to the old ramparts of Southsea Castle to try to find someone to interview. We went live to him and some 15,000 people looked up to the remnants of the castle.

  ‘You won’t believe this,’ said the small dot 100 feet up, ‘but there are some nuns coming towards me.’

  I believed it. Of course I did. I’d sent them. They were paintball specialists, with their guns under their habits. I’d spent the morning organising them. Smiley’s interview was about to get underway when the ‘nuns’ let him have it. The crowd roared, Johnny Beerling, who had come down to ensure (or at least encourage) good behaviour, groaned and it was a bedraggled, sorry-looking, multi-coloured Smiles that trudged back to the roadshow.

  Heaven knows why the roadshow turned us into shrieking third-formers for one week of the year.

  Apart from the roadshows, there were many one-off outside broadcasts. Early in 1988 I did some live programmes from the Ideal Home Exhibition, interviewing all and sundry and throwing in the odd impression. All was well until I had to chat to Rodney Bewes, whose ‘Likely Lad’ voice I’d imitated many times. As soon as the person you’re attempting to take off is sitting in front of you wearing a querulous frown, mimicking becomes well-nigh impossible. My impression floundered. On a brighter note I also did the review programme Singled Out from there with Carol Decker and Rick Astley, and there was a celebration dinner. Prince Edward joined us, but the guest they’d seated me next to blew me away. It was Guglielmo Marconi’s widow. Her husband had invented radio. That was how young the medium was. OK, she was his second wife, but to lie in bed and listen to the radio with the man that made it possible must have been an incredible thing. The delightful Maria Marconi was eighty-eight at the time, her husband having died fifty years earlier. She told me that she’d married him when she was twenty-four and that Benito Mussolini had been the best man at their wedding. Maria lived to the good age of ninety-four. Without her husband there wouldn’t have been radio … or roadshows. Thank you, Guglielmo.

  Our head of music, Doreen Davis, was always up for programme ideas, and early in 1982 I came up with one. ‘What about Three Men in a Boat?’ It was the time of the Falklands War, so they felt the country needed something cheery on the radio.

  ‘I like it, I like it.’

  There was no messing with Doreen. If she liked it, it was as good as done.

  It wasn’t warm in April and early May. We even had a late frost or two. The crew had been press-ganged from the mean streets of W1, having taken the King’s Shilling, and were pressed into service. I was given the unenviable task of skippering the craft on its journey from Hampton Court to Oxford. The surly crew swarmed up the gangplank, without so much as a parrot or a ‘yo ho ho’ between them. Knaves. The onboard security was to be handled by a four-legged guard with a large tongue and a wet nose. The driver/steerer/pilot/navigator was the bearded American with the Mafioso handle, Paul Gambaccini. In the galley was another man who sported whiskers, the gourmet chef/washer-upper Noel Edmonds. As Radio One breakfast shows went it was certainly different.

  Our starting point was the maze at Hampton Court. This proved to be trickier then we imagined. It’s only a third of an acre, but feels like 300, and has half a mile of paths. I swear I heard the disembodied voice of Gambaccini at some point, muttering something about a topographical algorithm from behind a gnarled hornbeam, but I can’t be sure. I may have cursed William of Orange, for whom it was planted, once or twice as I couldn’t remember the tip that seasoned labyrinthines, as I feel they should be called, wisely imparted to us first-formers. Was it ‘always turn left’, ‘always turn right’ or ‘keep the hedge on your left’? Whatever it was, it held us up. Once on board, Noel’s dog thought better of it and decamped after a few hours and our producer, Dave Tate, fell in the river. Things were going swimmingly. The turn-out at every lock was amazing.

  I’m still staggered that no one got a ducking. Knowing that Noel and I were likely to have something up our sleeves, one or two crews that we met on the journey got in first and chucked the odd tomato or egg. We may be decent fellows and all that, but a chap can’t turn the other cheek when tomatoes are hurled. We retaliated. We also discovered that feeble rejoinders such as ‘They started it’ cut little ice with the authorities. We knew we were in trouble when a Thames Water Authority launch pulled up alongside. Someone had snitched on us. Now it would be acceptable ‘whistle-blowing’, but then it was most definitely ‘snitching’. We were ordered off the river. The dressing-down, from a man with enough stripes to attract a zebra who was looking to settle down in a leafy suburb, brought us back to our senses. At the next lock we were to disembark, the authority having already informed Radio One of its intentions to remove the three offenders from the Thames. How could I blame the man in the galley or the chap with the wheel? I was the captain and as such would have to take the punishment for my men. ‘Tie me to the yard-arm,’ I insisted, ‘and give me the lash.’ There were no takers.

  We reached the lock and sure enough there were the TWA blokes. Crikey, they looked grim. Would I be ‘kissing the gunner’s daughter’ before noon? No, I wouldn’t. Smiley Miley and the Radio One team had been rascally and devious once again. It was well planned, brilliantly executed and my crew, from commodore to powder monkey, were completely fooled.

  Another intriguing Radio One creation was the annual Teddy Bears’ Picnic, a roadshow where up to 30,000 people turned up with their bears. Hairy bikers came in packs with well-loved bears strapped to the handlebars, some folk pushed prams full of bears and others even dressed as bears. Ursine creatures, old, new, borrowed, blue and every other colour turned up to mingle with their fellow bears and picnic, not in the woods, but in the grounds of a stately home. It was usually Peter Powell and me on bear duty with Simon Mayo, Mark Goodier and Philip Schofield making the odd appearance. The Radio Times featured a wonderful cartoon of Peter, Mark and me as bears. Our first teddy bear excursion was to Harewood House, which proved so popular that the traffic jams it caused made the national news.

  Assorted Sootys, Poohs, Paddingtons, Yogis and even the odd ear-buttoned Steiff, with a price tag on its head, dragged their owners kicking and screaming to Longleat for another ursine gathering fronted by the furries’ best friends, Peter Powell and me. Peter always brought Edward, his bear, and even Lord Bath flourished his teddy for the crowds. He told me that he normally kept a low profile and often enjoyed putting on his old clothes and just pottering around the garden and that tourists, especially those from abroad, would often shout at him to ask for directions. ‘Hey, buddy, which way to the house?’ ‘I say … yes, you. Could you tell us where the toilets are?’ ‘Hey, mate, where can we get a cup of tea?’ He never told them who he was. I think it quite amused him.

  At Chatsworth House the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire made us very welcome. We set up camp in the local hostelry. When I arrived, late at night and tired, the first thing I saw was peacock marmalade for sale. ‘Wow, I’ll have two jars of that, please.’

  ‘On your bill, sir?’

  ‘Absolutely. In fact, make it three.’

  ‘You’re fond of marmalade, sir?’

  ‘Yes, but this is really unusual. What does it taste like?’

  ‘Very much like marmalade, sir.’ It could have been Jeeves speaking.

  ‘Is it similar to normal marmalade, you know, the kind made of oranges?’

  ‘The very same.’

  ‘But this is made with peacock.’

  He smiled wanly and let me down gently, ‘A common mistake, sir. The Peacock is the name of the establishmen
t.’

  Thankfully, I was more alert the following morning for the roadshow, which was another success for the bears, with even the Duchess brandishing hers. Afterwards, she kindly showed me around the huge greenhouses, gave me some cuttings to take home and instructed one of the gardeners which fruit to cut for the Duke’s breakfast the following day. The youngest of the Mitford sisters and in my opinion the most attractive, she was charming and engaging, but felt she’d been hospitable enough without discussing the family history, which has been a mixture of pleasure and pain. They inherited Chatsworth after Andrew’s older brother Billy had been killed during the war. Billy had married John F. Kennedy’s sister Kathleen, known as ‘Kick,’ but she herself, widow of the heir to Chatsworth was killed in a plane crash in 1948. With Billy the heir to the leading Protestant family in England and Kathleen a daughter of the leading Roman Catholic family in the US and sister of the future President, who knows how the future may have played out had it not been for three untimely deaths.

  Kick is buried at Chatsworth, JFK flying in to pay his respects not long before that fateful day in Dallas.

  It wasn’t all sweetness and light though. If my group the Rock-olas were on the tour, we’d often play some gigs in the evenings and agreed to do so at one major Northern resort. The evening started off pleasantly enough and our set went down well (it was the first night we featured Born to Run) so I was unprepared for the promotor’s wife’s contribution. I was chatting with one or two of the audience after coming off stage, when it seemed like my head had exploded. This woman had smashed a heavy ice bucket full of ice over my head from behind. I had no idea what had happened at that moment, but on instinct I turned around and scythed my adversary to the floor with a sweep of the leg. I was immediately surrounded by a ring of steel. Some six or seven bouncers were rubbing their knuckles and advancing. Only some very slick and fast talking by my producer John Leonard avoided serious bloodshed. Radio One did receive an apology a few days later. Another flashpoint was at a West Country resort. As soon as a few of the roadshow team repaired to a local club for a drink, a guy intermittently ambled up asking a few alcohol-fuelled questions such as ‘who do you think you are?’ and ‘you’re no one special.’ I knew the answer to the first one and agreed with him on the second. Presumably between the question and the statement he’d found out. The gist was that his girlfriend was apparently making flattering comments to which he objected. Clearly she’d had a few then. My producer on the occasion was Paul Williams, who made the sensible suggestion that we leave before things got out of hand. We left, but they still got out of hand. As we walked up the side road by the club, the aggressor re-appeared, blocking my way. I tried to reason with him and Paul tried to reason with him, but he just wouldn’t be reasoned with. Then he became physical. It’d been a long day, I’d tried my best to avoid violence, but I wasn’t going to stand there and let him start poking me. I hit him very hard, just once and he went down like a sack of potatoes. Paul could panic at times, probably in my case with justification, but back at the hotel he woke our the Radio One PR people and made a series of phone calls to the controller and anyone else that might take the sting out of what he was convinced would be a headline story for the tabloids. We never heard another word.

  Which goes to show into how many historical, geographical, agricultural, topographical, hysterical and sometimes physical areas the roadshow could take you. You could find yourself discussing Hitler’s paintings with Lord Bath, broadcasting in submarines, hiring helicopters, purloining flocks of sheep, injecting a cow, delivering milk, blowing kazoos with Wham!, playing tennis with a thousand people, firing cannons from castle walls, getting lost in Hampton Court Maze, shooting the breeze with Prince Philip, going down a coal mine, being the fireman on a steam train or standing next to the grave of JFK’s sister. And each one began by stirring us into action with that rallying jingle ‘Today … live from…’

  CHAPTER 6

  TRAVELLIN’ MAN

  MY FIRST PROFESSIONAL excursion from these shores was in 1977, when Neil ffrench Blake dispatched me from Radio 210 to Norway for reasons now obscured by time, memory and lost tapes. It was certainly with microphone and tape machine in tow to interview everyone from the captain of the ship to people who couldn’t speak English. A force nine in the North Sea thinned my stock of potential interviewees, who in turn failed to thin the smorgasbord, leaving me with a mainly Norwegian contingent with whom to make conversation in Bergen. I was so taken with Bergen harbour, surrounded by hills, that I wrote a song as soon as we docked. Never recorded, the fruits of my creativity have vaporised over the years and remain of the moment. Perhaps just as well. With its enchanting wooden alleyways, the town had the feel of a time long-forgotten. My trip also took in Kristiansand and Stavanger, but I fear I returned with far less material than was expected of me. I reasoned that I might not get the next overseas gig. But lo! I was wrong. A second chance came my way when I was sent south to the Canal du Midi for a week. My girlfriend at the time, Annie, also came on the trip, as did the radio station’s engineer, Chris Harris, and his boyfriend. The guys knew the partner of a world-famous parfumier who lived in Paris and as we were motoring down they suggested we met up with him for dinner at La Canelle on the banks of the Seine. C’est si bon, I thought, in the style of Conway Twitty’s last UK hit. One look at the menu, however, and all wasn’t quite as ‘bon’ as I’d supposed. A mere glance at the prices sent the bank balance into freefall. They assured me that it would be fine; their fabulously rich chum would be picking up the bill. Of course, their fabulously rich chum disappeared without picking up the bill and we were relieved of a major part of the week’s budget, leading to an atmosphere that was less than convivial. Still, all wasn’t lost: Chris’s mother had made us so much food that the boot of our car was positively groaning with it. So were we when we discovered that, having spent the whole journey to Port Cassafieres snuggling up to a leaky petrol can, everything that had been formerly edible was now formally inedible. Never mind, we are English, we can ‘make do and mend’. Well, Chris was actually of Slavic stock, I recall, but heck, he’d been with us long enough to be impregnated with the spirit. Sponsored by the travel agents Cox and Kings, my brief was to record the journey and package it to make it sound as appealing as the trio of sirens were to Odysseus and his crew. My job was not, as I determined, to lure would-be holidaymakers to their deaths, courtesy of the daughters of Achelous or Phorcys, depending on your mythological leaning, but to encourage them to sample the delights of the canal.

  I recorded material en route, painting audio pictures of Sète, the Venice of France, and Aigues-Mortes, the latter thought to have originally been knocked up by the local builders Gaius Marius Ltd around 102 BC. Most folk of note had turned up here before us, Charlemagne, Louis IX, Philip the Bold and a host of other colourful characters. Philip the Fair belied his name by banging up a crowd of Knights Templars here, and much later a bunch of Huguenots suffered the same fate. We had dinner in this medieval walled city complete with guitar, which the others had insisted I take so that we could burst ecstatically into song when replete. The instrument was spotted by the locals.

  ‘You play?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Splendide … you sing for us then we sing for you.’

  It sounded like a fair deal, although a more acceptable scenario would have been ‘You sing for us and we give you a free meal’. Still, I gave forth with a few ancient classics from the Beatles, Buddy Holly and possibly a wild card from the R. Dean Taylor catalogue. Although I felt that I’d more than held my own, there was no spontaneous applause. No rapturous shouts of ‘encore’, or even an encouraging ‘bravo’, but maybe that was their way: a deep, silent respect for a wandering English minstrel. Then two of the locals produced guitars. I smiled stiffly as they put Manitas de Plata to shame without troubling to use all their fingers. These guys were on fire and there was no escape for the humbled guitarist who’d let his country down as twenty bl
urred digits flicked and danced their way up, down and across the fretboards. I had to sit it out, as I dropped from number one in the Aigues-Mortes chart to number fifty before you could say ‘Por el camino de ronda’. These lads were good. Obviously I declined to perform at other auberges, for fear of a repeat performance. Maybe they could all play like this. Maybe Bert Weedon was flogging copies of Jouez en un jour on the shores of the Mediterranean.

  Subsequently I came to work on cruise ships. I embraced cruises, fondly imagining fascinating folk hewn in the image of an Evelyn Waugh novel lounging in steamers on the sun deck and discussing the last days of the Raj. Of course they weren’t as I imagined, but I still embraced. Many of us do it: two or three talks on your chosen subjects, a splash of loot and a free holiday, with pretty decent food on tap 24/7. My subjects were Common-Sense Politics, The History of the Modern Olympics and My Songwriting Career, with the odd pop quiz thrown in for good measure. When one isn’t working there’s plenty of sporting activity, films, theatre shows and a library, not to mention talks by the other speakers. Plus you wake up somewhere different in the morning without having made any effort. On sunny days I can bask and lounge and on squally days I can write. Cruises are terrific.

  I love the Caribbean, and have returned frequently to various haunts there, often quad-biking along beaches or through rain forests. Captivated by the steel pans played throughout the region, I tried to buy one on several islands. In St Lucia, my pal Freddie, a native of the island but now domiciled in London, tipped me the wink. Collected by one of his cousins in an old jalopy, we headed for what turned out to be a shanty town area. When the car stopped, in a district in which I’d never have stopped a car, we were approached by two rather sinister-looking guys. They didn’t say anything. At some 6 ft 4 in. tall and with physiques closely modelled on Mike Tyson’s, they didn’t have to. Their eyes and demeanour asked the questions. Freddie did the talking. ‘Don’t you recognise me, man? It’s Rubber.’