by Mike Read
I had no idea of my physicality, size or colouring. I liked to think that I was Big George McPherson, wielding my blades in the thick of the battle, yelling, ‘To me, lads, to me.’ I may, however, have been Wee Georgie McPherson, wetting myself and scuttling for the shrubbery at the first sniff of the enemy.
‘You clearly survived the battle, George.’
‘Yes, but no one stood around waiting to be hanged. We dispersed and were pursued. I suppose some were luckier than others. The plan was to rout us all in the end, so someone suggested appropriating a boat and heading for Holland.’ I had no more information to give Lawrence, my regressor. It all went dark. He said in a gentle voice, ‘I don’t think you made that boat, George.’
The local historian whom the programme director consulted said that much of my story aligned with the actual history and that I should visit the area. I keep meaning to. Each November I promise myself that this will be the year. I’ll walk the battleground and see if anything feels familiar.
A less daunting show was Through the Keyhole. I managed to appear as the keyholder on several occasions. There were probably two reasons for this: first, the programme was directed by Ian Bolt, who’d given me my first national TV series with Pop Quest; second, I moved house a couple of times. They seemed to like my houses because I didn’t go to great lengths to neutralise them or import books and objects to create an impression. There were also enough oddities about the place without going near the giveaways of the record collection, the jukeboxes or the tennis bags.
For some reason I had acquired an army of frogs. These amphibians arrived mainly by default. There was never any intent to hoard, collect, impound or colonise these slimy but loveable creatures, yet they infiltrated my home disguised as Christmas presents, birthday presents and dinner party gifts. Some just seemed to materialise. I swear there was some reproductory thing going on. I’m reliably informed by the anuran experts in my social circle that they get into a position known as ‘amplexus’. Whatever this position may be, and I’m told it’s pretty normal biological stuff, I can honestly say that I never encountered any amphibious shenanigans while patrolling the corridors. When Loyd Grossman arrived to probe into my personal possessions he seized upon the frogs with the creative hunger of Aristophanes looking for a new comedy. There were frogs reclining in soap dishes, frogs playing the guitar, frogs honking saxophones, frogs on lilypads, waste paper baskets in the shape of frogs, frog mirrors, frog vases … the list seemed endless and a tad embarrassing.
‘The person that lives here is clearly a toadophile,’ he drawled, creating a brilliant new word in the process. He may have suggested ‘looking in the croakroom’, but I can’t swear to it. I had been cruelly exposed and resolved to thin the ranks of these creatures as soon as was humanly possible. If Loyd returned today the only evidence of frogs he’d find would be a copy of the comedy by the aforementioned wit of ancient Athens.
The Keyhole camera crew, as with most crews, arrive before the presenter to set up. With frogs reduced in number and having moved house I pondered my fate as I prepared for my second appearance. Would Loyd savage me for having an Alice in Wonderland room, with Alice wallpaper, paintings, books and ornaments? If so, I’d get in first. It’s not a well-known fact that in another life Loyd Grossman masqueraded as Jet Bronx, the frontman of low-charting punk outfit Jet Bronx and the Forbidden. I was one of the few that possessed a copy of their forgotten gem, ‘Ain’t Doin’ Nothin’’. I opened the jukebox and inserted the vinyl, to the amusement of the crew. I gave them a guitar each and as the Grossmanmobile slid to a halt on the drive, I started the record at full ear-splitting volume and the camera guys and I launched into a frenzied and badly synchronised mime of that shining example of lyrical perfection. It must have stirred long-buried yearnings, for not many years later Loyd re-formed the band. I like to think I played some small part in the renaissance of an outfit whose career peaked at number forty-nine back in 1977.
That wasn’t the only record I possessed that had been released by a Through the Keyhole presenter. I also owned a mint copy of an amusing David Frost single which I deftly dropped into the ‘on air’ conversation with him during the programme. He was visibly shocked. It was as if Richard Nixon had just revealed to him that he had in fact been canonised for leading a virtuous and blameless life. The single was ‘The Cricket Bag’, a parody of the old classic ‘Deck of Cards’, only in David’s version it was his cricket bag and its contents that served him as his Bible and his prayer book. I was even able to quote a line or two in the stunned silence that followed. I’m not sure which lines, but quite possibly ‘When I look at the four bails I think of the Gadarene swine, or at least four of them … And when I look at the eleven men in a team I think of the Ten Commandments, plus one.’ It was hot stuff, and I could swear that the man who had crossed swords with everyone from Nixon to the Shah of Iran and John Lennon to Muhammad Ali was temporarily lost for words. Forget traditional weaponry, there is nothing more powerful than an embarrassing recording that the artist has imagined is long forgotten.
No one was ever lost for words on Give Us a Clue. You weren’t allowed to use any. It was always a fun TV show in which to take part, with first Michael Aspel and then Michael Parkinson at the helm and Lionel Blair and Una Stubbs as the captains. Liza Goddard later replaced Una Stubbs, but all this is mere scene-setting for the grimmer truths to come, the dark side of Give Us a Clue. David Clark was the producer and he was the man who indicated that major and incredibly vital factor: which chair was yours. Picture the scene. It’s your first day. You don’t know the rules. Well, you do, but you realise pretty quickly that there are more elements to this than simply playing the parlour game. The most damning thing that ever happens in a familial game of charades at home is someone squeaking, ‘You’re not supposed to speak!’ In the murky subterranean world of the TV version, things are markedly different. As the new boy you are expected to know your place. It’s no good making a desperate lunge for the chair next to Lionel’s; that coveted place belongs to a senior, a Bernie Winters or a Kenneth Williams, with a sense of superiority and the ability to tip you not only off the seat but off the programme. In fact it’s best not to look as though you might be thinking about it … even as a joke. Forget being a quick-witted guesser or a brilliant actor, to sit at the left hand of Lionel was the ultimate accolade. It was the pinnacle. You get the idea. As the new bug you held onto your end seat at the edge of the fray, while the big boys ‘did their thing’. You got to act out one title, but rarely, if ever, did you get a second crack at demonstrating your thespian skills.
Then there was the guessing. This wasn’t as straightforward as you’d imagine. There were unwritten rules. Body language and audible admonishments let you know that you’d either guessed too soon, and nobody likes a clever dick, or you didn’t get it at all, which was a slight on the acting skills of those at the senior end of the line. A correct guess between the 90th and 100th seconds of the allotted two minutes was acceptable. With Bernie Winters that wasn’t always easy. His clues for almost every title consisted of clutching various parts of his anatomy, pulling a few faces and using as much physical innuendo as possible. How one was meant to guess obscure titles from an even more obscure charade, heaven knows.
After a year or two, you’ve paid your dues and are moved up the line. You are now one chair nearer to Lionel. This is a measure of how your career is progressing. Some have been known to fall off the end, without ever realising their hopes and dreams of making it to chair three. This move puts you in a solid position to challenge for that final seat; that place coveted by many but achieved by few.
With almost inexpressible joy that day eventually arrived for me. Somewhere between the pound note ceasing to be legal tender and archaeologists discovering the Globe Theatre, I made the grade. I watched with trepidation as David Clark’s digit wavered a little, before, compass-like, it pointed at the object of my desire. This was it. Nerves of steel were needed now. I was
‘next to Lionel’, meaning that great things were expected. Even Gyles Brandreth was one seat below me, and poor Roy Barraclough was clinging on to the end chair as if it were a lifebelt adrift in the Caspian Sea. If a Union Jack had been handy, I’d have stuck one in the chair, informed Her Majesty the Queen and asked Sherpa Tensing to take a quick snap.
Again there is much to remember. Single cut-away shots of you are now no longer solo efforts to be admired by the sofa-dwelling viewers. Lionel has carte blanche to lean in and share the shot with you, and lean he will. This is part of the price you pay for this promotion to the giddy heights. However, and I cannot emphasise this too strongly, while Lionel may lean into your shot, you may not lean into any single shot of Lionel’s. The distant sound of the firing squad taking out some former miscreant is a salutary reminder of this. But hey, every TV series is different. Carpe varietatem.
I returned to Northern Ireland for a TV show where they sent various folk to different ‘retreats’ to see how we’d cope away from the helter-skelter ride of showbusiness. I was given a very basic room, ate frugally and drank water, while the crew stayed at a hotel and made merry at a pub or restaurant every night. I wrote poetry, played my guitar, and was encouraged to think, contemplate and pray. I had to keep a video diary and was counselled at the end of each day by Father Patrick.
‘Has God spoken to you today, Michael?’
‘He might have done.’
‘In what way?’
‘He might have done it without me knowing.’
‘I think you’d have known.’
‘Maybe it was subliminal.’
‘Possibly, possibly.’
I made a note to be more positive the following evening.
Chairing a forum between young Protestants and young Roman Catholics was an eye opener, as was my trip to Rathlin Island, 6 miles north of the Antrim coast. There are longer sea journeys, but when I tell you that on this one virtually everyone was seasick, including the ship’s cat, you get the drift of what a riptide can do to the balance. The riptide in Rathlin Sound is notorious and I hit a bad day, with the boat pitching, dipping, rolling and tossing, which sounds like an old blues song. Hang on, let me grab the guitar. Rathlin is an amazing place with views to the Mull of Kintyre (I would have grabbed the guitar again, but somebody’s already beaten me to that one) and Bruce’s Cave.
One of the earliest stories that I ingested at school that seemed to have a modicum of interest about it was that of Robert the Bruce and the spider. At that age it’s possible that the greater interest lay in the spider, and its ceaseless attempts to spin a web, than in the deposed Scottish king. Now, here I was … in the very cave in which he squirrelled himself away back in 1306, after a pasting by the English at Perth. No one can of course be certain about the spider, but in the legend it embodied the moral that was hammered home to us wee ones: ‘If at first you don’t succeed, try, try, try again.’ And here, whether under the influence of arachnid or by his own resolve, Bruce vowed to re-gain his kingdom, which he did after a home win at Bannockburn.
I’ve been interviewed in some unusual places, but being in bed was one of the most comfortable. I was a guest on Emma Freud’s TV show, Pillow Talk, where presenter and guest shared a double bed for the duration of the interview. It may have been comfortable, but it was no easy ride. The topics were: Mike Read versus Robert Maxwell; a poem I’d written about Jeffrey Archer; being late for the Radio One breakfast show; and not being married.
My Archer poem was a parody of Rupert Brooke’s ‘The Old Vicarage, Grantchester’, using the theme that both Brooke and Archer, some seventy-five years apart, had viewed that little corner of the world as a haven, as their sanctuary. The programme alleged that I was being supportive of Jeffrey Archer when I was actually being observational. I didn’t expect my opinion on anything interesting or half-intelligent to be taken seriously. Radio One DJs didn’t venture into this territory.
The MR v. Maxwell saga referred to a girl who sold an erroneous story about me to the press which had been published by the Sunday People. I sent a writ on a motorbike to Maxwell’s HQ in Oxford and then had vast sums of money extracted from me as I fought the case. I was intrigued when my QC smilingly informed me that even though the newspaper story was untrue, I might still lose. Not what I’d imagined. The paper tried to prove that they were justified in running the story as it depicted ‘my lifestyle’. When asked what that meant, the reply was something along the lines of ‘He goes out with girls’. That particular aspect of human behaviour has been going on for hundreds of thousands of years, so I didn’t really consider it a justification for printing porkies. The press even camped outside the rooms of a girl I’d known at Oxford, disrupting her theology finals. After running up a massive bill, Maxwell’s team capitulated and coughed up. Expecting a missable two-line apology under the haemorrhoids ad at the base of page thirty-nine, I was surprised to receive a prominent half-page apology in which the Sunday People threw their lexical and metaphorical arms around my neck. Oh, and they gave me a large cheque.
I became embroiled in many This Is Your Life escapades, invariably being brought in to ensnare some poor, unsuspecting cove. I was meant to be the interviewer for Bob Geldof, who began to look doubtful at the lack of recording equipment in the scheduled theatre. Midge Ure and I discussed Bob’s possible reaction. The expletives, we thought, were a given, but there was an outside chance that an element of physicality might just creep into the proceedings at some point. As it happened he was fine. Several of us waited to be part of a Mickie Most radio programme at Broadcasting House, only it was TV and the big red book for a man who was quite shy despite his success as one of the country’s top record producers. We did Bert Weedon’s This Is Your Life at Thames TV. One of the regular aspects of the programme was the subject having to recognise a voice, usually from there distant past, but for Bert they wanted to play it differently. The scenario went something along the lines of, ‘do you recognise this guitarist?’ whereupon I hit a string of dischords and bum notes. I seem to recall that it baffled him initially before realising it could only be me. For the hit on Alvin Stardust, my job was to take him to lunch, to keep him out of the way during the set-up. I guess things overran as we must have ploughed through many courses.
‘More pudding Alvin?’
‘You’re not serious?’
‘Absolutely, I’m going to.’
‘You’re kidding, you’ve had a starter, a main course, another starter and two puddings.’
‘I’m still a bit peckish.’
‘I’ll leave you to it then.’
‘No … no … stay and watch me … no hang on … coffee? You must have a coffee. Great for the digestion.’
And so it went. I could see him appraising me; assessing my mental state. I took a hell of a lot of calories on board, but the ruse worked. Eamonn Andrews was still presenting the show when the subject was my broadcasting pal from Radio Luxembourg, Stuart Henry. Eamonn and I sat in a giant, hollow cake with a couple of other folk from his life. We sat on a bench in total darkness with Eamonn sweating profusely as he was prone to do. I think we all did, squashed into a cupboard sized gateau. Like Bob Geldof, there was some concern about Stuart’s possible reaction and accompanying expletives. Again, the subject behaved impeccably and the audience gave him a standing ovation at the end of the show. Stuart though wasn’t one to suffer fools, so when one guest bent down over his wheelchair and shouted, ‘Well Stuart, how are you?’ in a slow, patronising voice, he looked up sharply and replied, ‘My body’s not very well, but my mind’s working perfectly thank you.’
For ten years I hosted the TSB Rockschool TV programme, started by my now long-time friend Andy Trotman, which encouraged musical groups and artists from schools and colleges around the country to enter a competition where they’d be judged by some pretty formidable artists.
It was very successful, but I imagine the programme I hosted on 5 May 1990 had the biggest audience I’ve ever performed
to, with a worldwide 100 million tuning in for the Tribute Concert to John Lennon. I was delighted to be asked by Yoko Ono to present the show with Christopher Reeve, him representing the USA and me the UK. Ten years after Lennon’s death, an eclectic mix of world-renowned names came together to celebrate the life of the cynical, short-sighted art student who became a global icon, both with the Beatles and in his own right.
I thought that Yoko might be demanding, challenging and difficult, but not a bit of it: she was charming, helpful and caring, even knocking on my hotel door to make sure that I was happy with everything. I was. Who wouldn’t be? The line-up was like a who’s who of music and included Lou Reed, The Moody Blues, Roberta Flack, Terence Trent d’Arby, Wet Wet Wet, Herbie Hancock, Al Green, Sarah Vaughan, Joe Cocker, Foreigner’s Lou Gramm, Deacon Blue, Cyndi Lauper and the Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra. The incredibly talented Dave Edmunds was the musical director, leading a top band. Lou Reed, I remember, knocked out fair old versions of ‘Mother’ and ‘Jealous Guy’.
The venue was the Pier Head, where a 45,000-strong crowd gathered, flanked on one side by the River Mersey and on the other by the Liver, Cunard and Port of Liverpool Buildings. It doesn’t get much more Liverpool than that. Yoko told everyone that ‘John was committed in his life and music to spreading peace and harmony in the world in his generation and generations yet unborn’.
Yoko got a leading US designer, Michael Hoban, to make around a dozen top-quality leather jackets for the occasion, with ‘Lennon’ hand sewn, also in leather, on the back and a bird symbolising peace over the lettering. I was really made up to be given one of these items, as apart from its rarity value and the great memory it evoked, Michael’s other clients included Elvis Presley, Elton John, Diana Ross, Paul McCartney, Sammy Davis Jnr, the Rolling Stones and Tina Turner! Not bad for a guy who’d been the leader of a teenage street gang in the ’50s. I still have the jacket, but I’ve never found an appropriate event at which to wear it.