Over the Moon

by David Essex

  Eighteen months was the longest time I had been in any show since Godspell and I must admit that Mutiny! took its toll on me. Towards the end of the run, I was definitely beginning to flag: I seemed to have a permanent cold and was pretty run-down.

  I remember that Cliff Richard was starring in a musical nearby called Time, and one matinee show he brought the whole cast down with him to check out the friendly competition. It was a pity that I was feeling so rough that particular day that I growled through my entire performance like Lee Marvin on downers.

  I could easily have lapsed into seeing out the end of the run on autopilot were it not for a very necessary wake-up call. After one lacklustre matinee show, an American tourist left a letter on Savoy Hotel-headed notepaper for me at the stage door. It basically said, ‘If you don’t want to be in this very fine show, then why don’t you leave?’ He was completely right: he had detected that I was merely going through the motions, and his comment shocked me back to the top of my game.

  Nevertheless, I must admit that I was relieved when the curtain came down on the last Mutiny! one Saturday in November 1986. By the following Monday, I was high in the sky and on my way to a distant and wonderfully distracting corner of the globe. It felt very much like time for another solo travelling adventure.

  19

  TWO HEADS ARE BETTER THAN ONE

  AFTER THE STRESSES and strains of eight Mutiny! shows a week, a trip to India seemed exactly what the doctor ordered. Intrigued by the much-vaunted spirituality of this mysterious, sprawling land, I resolved to see as much of it as possible and headed off with little except a few changes of clothes in my backpack.

  I was also determined to stay in guesthouses and B&Bs owned by local people as much as possible. I have spent far too much of my life in anonymous chain hotels and did not want to ape Lou Reed, who once told me that he had decorated his New York apartment like a Holiday Inn so that he would feel at home when he was on tour. I trust he was joking.

  When you first arrive in India, all the preconceived clichés seem to be true. The rutted roads are a kinetic chaos, with fume-belching trucks, tuk-tuk taxis, boneshaker bicycles and lowing cows all competing for space. Poverty is rampant, and in the big cities like Mumbai (or Bombay, as it was then) and Delhi, spices and sewage intermingle pungently in the humid air. Yet the country is addictive and fascinating.

  Arriving in Delhi, I got my bearings and sampled a local curry or two – basically bones in spicy gravy – before heading over to Mumbai. I made friends with two Air India air hostesses and one of them invited me to stay with her and her boyfriend, who allowed me to take my life in my hands and take his motorbike into the city’s traffic. There is no rush hour in Mumbai: every hour is rush hour.

  There were intriguing sights everywhere I looked. In Mumbai I saw vultures circling over a building occupied by holy men with beards down to their waists and talon-like long fingernails. My hosts later explained that when these ultra-religious men died, their bodies were left in a place called the Towers of Silence for the vultures to devour. The birds were waiting for their supper.

  Nobody visits India without seeing the Taj Mahal but the most memorable feature of my train journey to Agra was gazing out of the window of the packed carriage to see countless local men crouching and unloading some generous post-breakfast bowel movements by the side of the tracks. At least the dazzling white temple itself was just as breathtaking as its advance reputation suggests.

  My next port of call was the famous ‘pink city’ of Jaipur where my wish for unusual places to stay was more than satisfied. A friendly tuk-tuk driver delivered me to a palace that was run by a maharajah who he said was a little down on his luck and would rent out occasional rooms to tourists he took a shine to.

  The palace was like a museum to the long-lost days of the Raj, with elephants’ tusks mounted in the hallway, gold paint flaking everywhere and flea-bitten peacocks roaming the grounds. My red-and-gold bedroom held a spectacularly hard four-poster bed and a zoo’s-worth of stuffed hunting trophies, including a rather baleful-looking stuffed tiger’s head.

  I was told dinner would be served in one hour, and after a gong sounded I wandered down to the dining hall. As the only guest, I was the sole occupant of a twenty-person dining table, but that didn’t stop the maharajah supplying ten staff to serve me. The food was good, but the fact that four or five over-servile waiters appeared at my elbow every time I so much as twitched made me feel ridiculously self-conscious.

  The next day started well but then declined very, very badly. I trekked off to see some Hindu temples, even riding an elephant on the way, but made the mistake of buying an ice cream from a roadside vendor. Some grotesque projectile vomiting ensued, and by the time I made it back to the palace I had never felt so sick in my life.

  For the next two or three days I hardly moved from the rock-hard bed. The maharajah brought a local doctor to see me and he gave me an injection from a giant needle and some brightly coloured pills that sent me off on a long, strange trip into the dark recesses of my mind. The tiger on the wall was by now looking particularly malevolent.

  After a ropey few days I recovered enough to head off to Goa, a different experience entirely. This serene coastal area was full of hippies and Portuguese architecture, a souvenir from the former colonial power, and in the women’s looks I saw reminders that Goa had spawned many gypsies and Romany people. I also just about survived a scare when a badly over-crowded ferry sank as we were crossing a river.

  My Indian odyssey came to an end in Srinagar at the foot of the Himalayas, a beautiful spot where I rented a floating house-boat. Vendors would call in tiny boats, selling anything that you could require, including a tailor who measured me for a shirt and then delivered it later the same day. It was bizarre to sit in this tranquil paradise and hear gunshots from the disputed Kashmir border between India and Pakistan just a few miles away.

  Halfway up a mountain in Kashmir I met a holy man dressed in sun-faded orange robes. We sat and talked for hours about life, death and his theories of reincarnation. He told me he felt I was a kindred and much-travelled spirit and asked if I was a holy man in my own land. Maybe I should have told him that I once played Jesus.

  India reinvigorated me and I returned to England fully refreshed in time for Christmas with Verity and Dan. Carlotta flew back to London and I began 1987 by recording a musical version of a poem by former Poet Laureate Sir John Betjeman for an album that was compiled by Radio One DJ Mike Read. ‘Myfanwy’ was a minor hit.

  I was keen to return to music and touring and began work on an album to be called Touching the Ghost. The title referred to the nebulous, almost mystical process of songwriting: I have always felt that trying to define where the initial spark of inspiration that builds into a song comes from is like trying to touch a ghost.

  Feeling more inclined to work with a producer than produce the record myself, my mind drifted back to my old sparring partner Jeff Wayne and I realised how much I’d like to work with him again. I did not know how he would react, given the fractious experience of Out on the Street, but he was receptive when I phoned him, and when he jokingly greeted me at the door of his studio with a box of plasters and bandages, I knew we’d be OK.

  We picked up exactly where we had left off a decade earlier, as the best friends always do, and making Touching the Ghost was a lively and creative process. I was also hankering for a return to the road so Mel Bush assembled one of his trademark fifty-date tours for the autumn.

  The jaunt was about to begin when Carlotta dropped the bombshell that she was pregnant.

  In all honesty, I was simultaneously thrilled and perturbed by this unexpected revelation. I was excited at the idea of becoming a dad again, and starting a family with Carlotta, but part of me worried how Verity and Dan would take the news. I knew that I couldn’t bear either of them to feel that they were no longer quite as important in my life.

  Carlotta shared my concerns: she had become close to both of my kids
, particularly Danny, and didn’t want to hurt them. With typical considerateness, she suggested that she return to Rhode Island for the pregnancy while I waited for a moment to break the news. I agreed and she flew back to America.

  Carlotta, her pregnancy and my kids dominated my thoughts all through my autumn tour and she and I spoke on the phone every day. After the tour Christmas was upon us, and I decided to wait until the festive season had passed before trying to explain to Verity and Dan that they were not losing a dad but gaining a brother or sister.

  It was a good thing that I did, because just after New Year 1988, Carlotta phoned with a scarcely believable, utterly unexpected news bulletin.

  ‘Are you sitting down?’ she asked me.

  ‘Why?’ I inquired.

  ‘It’s twins.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘Right,’ I said, lamely. ‘Blimey.’

  It was a lot to take in but the more I thought about it, the happier I was about it. Bizarrely, this extraordinary news made it a little easier to spill the beans to Verity and Dan. Happy-go-lucky as nine-year-old boys always are, Danny thought the news was cool, although Verity seemed surprised and a little guarded.

  The first chance that I got, I jumped on a plane to see Carlotta and check everything was OK. She was fine, although nearly as wide as she was tall, and we headed down to her local hospital for a scan. They had more news for us: it was two boys. I loved the prospect of two more sons, and Verity was relieved to know she would still be her daddy’s only girl.

  Back in London, my stalwart PA Madge had a meeting request from a BBC drama producer named Susi Belbin. Mel and I headed down to Television Centre and the charming, husky-voiced Susi asked if I would consider taking the lead role in a sitcom called The Lock-Keeper.

  Derek had always been understandably keen to keep me away from the cheesier, lowest-common-denominator elements of TV work and I’d always trusted his instincts but the meeting was a good one, and when Susi presented me with a handful of work-in-progress scripts, I promised to go away and read them.

  When I did, I liked what I read. The comedy felt whimsical and gentle compared to the crass stereotypes and set-pieces of traditional sitcoms. I also thought the lock-keeping hero, Davey Jackson, an easy-going Cockney wide boy with a dodgy past and a gypsy soul, could almost have been written for me. Even Derek admitted the scripts were OK so I decided to give it a go.

  Susi concurred with my suggestion to change the title from The Lock-Keeper to The River and we cast fresh-faced and talented Scottish actress Kate Murphy as the leading lady and Davey’s love interest. I was also commissioned to write the theme tune to the series, and was sitting at my piano striving to do exactly that late at night on 19 May 1988 when the phone rang.

  I never get late-night phone calls, so one thought flashed into my mind immediately: Carlotta! I was right. It was one of her Italian-American family – and I was in such a state of shock that I can’t remember which one – telling me that Carlotta had gone into labour a month prematurely and been admitted to a Rhode Island maternity hospital.

  ‘I’m on my way,’ I said. A sleepless night of worrying followed until I headed towards Heathrow Airport before the sun was even up. The first flight I could commandeer got me to Boston by five in the afternoon East Coast time.

  A family friend called Jim met me at the airport and broke the momentous news. Carlotta had given birth around two hours earlier, while I was probably somewhere over Greenland. I was sorry to have missed the births, but this feeling was quickly lost in the overwhelming relief that Carlotta and the twins were OK.

  The two-hour drive to the hospital seemed to last weeks and as soon as we got there I ran through the labyrinth of corridors to find Carlotta. She was looking a little the worse for wear and decidedly battered by what she had been through but she only had thoughts for the boys, who had both been whisked into an Intensive Care Unit. The words struck dread into me.

  ‘Can I see them?’ I asked, and a sympathetic nurse walked me through to the ICU, where medics were attending to seven or eight babies in respirators. She took me to the far end of the room and there they were: my two new sons, the elder weighing just three pounds fifteen ounces, and his younger sibling (by fifteen minutes) one ounce less.

  They had drips and seemingly dozens of other leads and tubes attached to their tiny hands, feet and noses. They looked weak and helpless and as if they must be in pain from all the gadgets attached to them, and as I looked at the sweet little woollen hats on their heads to keep them warm, I felt as if my heart was breaking.

  My voice trembled as I addressed a doctor who was standing by another ventilator nearby. ‘Will they be all right?’ I asked him. ‘It’s a little early to tell,’ he replied in a detached, professional manner: they were really not the words I needed to hear.

  As I gazed at the twins, another nurse appeared and stuck yet another needle into one of my boys, who cried out in pain. I felt a huge instinctive rush of anger towards her but controlled my passions and repeated the question. She turned towards me and smiled.

  ‘Of course they will,’ she assured me. ‘It’s not unusual for twins to be premature and underweight. Now, don’t you worry!’ At which point, I felt the most extreme mood swing towards her imaginable, combined with a sense of intoxicating, exhilarating relief.

  Carlotta and the twins were in hospital for two weeks as they recuperated and regained their strength and I visited every hour I was allowed. As I sat by her bedside we talked over names. Her family home in Rhode Island was on a former Native American reservation so we playfully worked our way through a few cowboy names and settled on Kit Carson and Billy the Kid. That was it, then: Kit and Bill it was to be.

  The three of them were safely back in the arms of Carlotta’s doting family a week or two later when I flew back to London to begin filming The River. It was a wrench to leave them behind so soon, but on another level, I was used to such partings: it was what I had been doing my entire life.

  The series was filmed at a village called Wootton Rivers near Marlborough in Wiltshire, which doubled as its fictional setting on Chumley-on-the-Water. A genuine picturesque lock-keeper’s cottage was the main location for shooting this sweet story of an unlikely romance flourishing in a village of British eccentrics.

  The river looked gorgeous on the TV but was actually so rank and stagnant that Auntie Beeb issued the cast with a directive that if anybody were to jump in, they should ensure that every orifice was fully covered. The BBC didn’t make it clear exactly how this challenging task was to be achieved.

  The River was a hoot to film from start to finish, with a friendly cast and scenes that frequently broke down in gales of giggles. The scripts required Davey to own a cute little piglet, but as shooting progressed we had to recast this part three times as the piglets had an unfortunate habit of rapidly maturing into hulking great porkers.

  The last episode of the six-part series ended with Katy and I sailing off into the sunset on the remains of an exploded narrow boat. Viewing figures had been healthy and there was talk of a second series but my heart was not in it – and my thoughts were elsewhere.

  Flying back to America, I bought a house for Carlotta, Kit and Bill on the borders of Connecticut and Rhode Island, about an hour from her family and within striking distance of the sea. I spent months there with them in that beautifully rugged locale, only flying back to finish off the Touching the Ghost album. It was my first release on my own Lamplight Records label.

  For the next year or two, I shuttled back and forth between Connecticut and London, juggling work and family. It seemed to work for all of us. During a visit to Los Angeles I met with some TV producers who offered me the lead role in an imminent science fiction series.

  It was a tempting offer, and had it been for six months I would probably have done it, but the contract required me to relocate to LA ad infinitum, which simply didn’t fit my plans. American TV producers are not renowned for taking
no for an answer, and eventually camped outside my Connecticut home offering me the world to reconsider. I did – and the answer was still ‘No’.

  As the eighties wound to a close, I flew back to England to appear in the Royal Variety Performance. It was an honour, and I got to meet the Queen afterwards. She told me, ‘Well done,’ which I guess was an improvement on her sister’s comments at Evita. I was to meet the Queen again years later, in very special circumstances.

  The Royal Variety Performance was slightly marred for me by the ego-driven backstage arguments about dressing rooms and running orders, and I have found similar problems when I have appeared on Children in Need. They are both excellent events to raise money for charity but too many artists seem only bothered about achieving maximum exposure and plugging their latest product.

  I have always had mixed feelings about the celebrity-charity interface and generally prefer sending a private cheque to a good cause rather than taking part in mass organised profile-raising jamborees. There are exceptions to this rule, though, as I learned in 1990 when the Voluntary Services Overseas organisation asked me to be their Ambassador of the Year.

  20

  A LOT OF WORK FOR CHARYDEE

  THE VOLUNTARY SERVICES Organisation, or VSO, sends people to the developing world to pass on their particular skills to local people to help them to help themselves. It is a remarkable and honourable organisation, but I had to think long and hard about whether to get involved with them.

  Their initial approach was a letter from a VSO official called Dick Rowe, whom I liked as soon as I met him. Dick talked me through the organisation’s laudable aims and modus operandi and I explained that while I felt honoured to be asked, I had severe misgivings about celebrities hijacking charitable causes just to enhance their own image.

  Once Dick and the VSO chief, David Green, had made it clear to me that I could make a positive difference and not be merely a semi-famous name on their headed notepaper, I was in. I was to replace Lord Lichfield as the ambassador and the handover ceremony, held at his photographic studio in London, seemed to feature dignitaries from every developing country extant.