Seize the Day (15 page)

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 establishment.’

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…’

M
Y 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 blurred 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.'

‘Rubber! Old friend of our pappy's, right?'

‘Yeah.'

Things were going well until they caught sight of me in the back of the car. ‘Who's he?'

‘Friend of mine. He's cool, man. He's a cool guy.'

I'm not certain whether ‘cool' was the best description of me at that moment, but I tried to live up to it as best I could. I affected nonchalance. I probably looked like Johnny English in a tight corner. The brace of big lads looked as if they were making up their minds about me. ‘OK,' they said at length, ‘no trouble.'

I wasn't looking for any. I was looking for a steel pan.

Mangy dogs and an assortment of inexplicable odours followed us through a very run-down assortment of cramped buildings until we reached what was apparently our goal. The man sitting on the step was gimlet eyed. He surveyed me in particular. Freddie saved the day. ‘Hey man, you remember me … it's Rubber.'

The man was now wide eyed with delight. ‘Rubber!'

‘Yeah.'

‘Can you still shake it like you used to?'

Uncertain of what exactly, if anything, either or both of them were about to shake, I respectfully semi-averted my gaze. The hut's incumbent was sporting nothing but a leather thong on his manhood.

The shaking done, the conversation resumed, this time in the local patois. The request for a steel pan resulted in much shaking of the head. It looked a lost cause until Freddie started to plead in earnest. I – well, Freddie – was given a small, highly decorated pan, the sort of thing you'd find in a souvenir shop. I began to tell him that wasn't what I had in mind, when I was encouraged to say goodbye and follow my leader. Out of earshot, Freddie told me that the man didn't have any and wouldn't sell me one even if he had, because I was white. I couldn't do much about that.

As we passed an old shed, I could see shafts of sharp sunlight bouncing off dozens of steel pans. ‘Freddie,' I hissed, ‘look.'

‘You haven't seen them. Come on quick now.'

After getting a similar reaction on three other islands, I eventually struck lucky in Tobago. After kicking an imaginary football around the Dwight Yorke Stadium, I headed to a music shop to further my quest.

‘You a musician?' said the owner.

‘Yes.'

‘Whaddya play?'

‘Guitar.'

He handed me an acoustic. ‘Play.'

I did and he was impressed enough to recommend me to someone who made the elusive percussion. I'd clearly come on a bit since Aigues-Mortes. It was another slightly dodgy area, but I got in, got my steel pan and got out. I have it still, but where the beaters are, heaven knows. I can see I'm going to have to go through the rigmarole again to get replacements.

My sojourns weren't always of the lecturing variety. There were also pretty decent broadcasting trips too. I broadcast from my hotel balcony in Bermuda, surrounded by tea and breakfast, from where I could gaze down on the sea, golf course and tennis courts. A living
hell, you'll agree, but I soldiered on, even forcing myself to play a few hours' tennis each day. Saints have been martyred for less.

In Bermuda I got to be a mod. My father would never let me have a scooter, so of course the injustice has burned within me ever since. I wanted the chrome, the symmetrical lights and, on the whippy aerial at the back, the obligatory squirrel's tail. In fact I'd have been happy with any tail: vole, badger, weasel … actually I'm not certain how many of those have proper tails. Maybe because the mods had them all. Before I'm accosted by animal rights activists, let me point out that I am an animal lover myself and would only have used the tails of fauna on my imaginary Lambretta or Vespa had they expired naturally after a long and happy life (the fauna, not the scooters). With a 30 mph speed limit on the island, scooters were the order of the day. Singing a few choruses of ‘We Are the Mods' from
Quadrophenia
, I made my way eagerly to the hotel's hire shop.

Only once had I driven a scooter. I was fifteen. It was a private, gated road and the friend who owned the Lambretta in question assured me that it was quite legal on a private estate. After just twenty seconds in the saddle I discovered that he was wrong and the two policemen that emerged from a side road were right. It wasn't a heinous crime, so the superintendent, who knew my Pa, gave him the nod. ‘Needn't take it any further. Not serious.'

My father, it seems, had other ideas. ‘No, let him go to court, it'll teach him a lesson.'

So I went, nervous, apprehensive and unsure of what to expect. Despite being in school uniform of course and putting on my best ‘shining morning face', I was told off and crept away ‘unwillingly to school'. Now, here I was on only my second venture on a scooter.

‘I assume you're ridden one before?'

‘Yes, absolutely.' Nothing but the truth, to which you will attest, but the man who I was trying to convince wasn't convinced.

‘Do you need me to show you anything?'

‘Everything.'

‘Everything?'

‘Well, you know, they vary a bit. I've only ridden in England.'

‘These
are
English.'

‘Are they? Oh yes, I can see that now.' After a little more blustering I was allowed a couple of practice laps around the hotel.

Within ten minutes I hit the highway. ‘I'm free! Look at me! I'm a mod! I'm a mod! Let's go to Bognor and see Bluesology at the Shoreline Club!' With a head full of soul anthems I cruised ‘Beautiful, Beautiful Bermuda', a classic song by local heroes the Merrymen. The sea was the deepest blue I'd ever seen. Really, it made me gasp.

I also love Jamaica. I know Noel Coward, Errol Flynn, Ian Fleming and co. beat me to it by many years, but I did sample the echoes of that post-war atmosphere by visiting their homes. Although Flynn died back in 1959, his wife Patrice, who has just died at the age of eighty-seven. I scaled the dizzy heights to Firefly, Coward's house some 6 miles east of Orcabessa on the north coast of the island. The view is so spectacular that it is no surprise that Sir Henry Morgan, one-time governor of Jamaica and sometime pirate, made this lofty viewpoint his home in the 1600s. He may have gone, but Noel remains, for he is buried here and a statue of the self-styled ‘Master', seated, stares nonchalantly out to sea, cigarette dangling languidly from his hand, clearly waiting for my selfie with him.

The mid '50s house is very basic, almost Spartan, considering that this is where he entertained the Queen, the Queen Mother, Sir Winston Churchill and numerous luminaries from the acting fraternity. Firefly is intriguing because it is just how he left it. The monogrammed towels hang from the rails in a rather cramped bathroom and a wall of the unprepossessing bedroom still has books from the period on the bookshelves. Downstairs, the gramophone sits patiently by a pile of vinyl LPs, waiting for the next party of revellers to arrive. Perhaps it might include Sophia Loren, Elizabeth Taylor or Vivien Leigh; they were all here in this room at one time or another. So was Charlie Chaplin. The ghosts of the greats are all around. By a strange coincidence,
the LP on top of the pile when I visited was by Olivia Breeze, the daughter of our one-time neighbours Alan and Renee Breeze, friends of my folks. Alan had been a featured vocalist on TV's
Billy Cotton Band Show
. Outside, the old swimming pool, where the likes of Laurence Olivier, Audrey Hepburn and Marlene Dietrich once frolicked, is now filled in and film stars frolic no longer.

Taking as his basis the Keats poem ‘When I Have Fears that I May Cease to Be', Coward wrote a few lines that never fail to move me. If you ever make it to Firefly look out for them on one of the walls: