Seize the Day (35 page)

I also enjoy sporting history and a long-term part-time project is the ultimate book of the history of the FA Cup Final, with a write-up of every final, photographs of every winning side and a whole load of facts to boot. It'll be full of useful and fascinating stuff: for instance jazz musician Humphrey Lyttelton's uncles both played for the Old Etonians in the 1876 final, and the 1878 final between Wanderers and Royal Engineers was refereed by a Bastard. A forerunner of many, you may think. Perhaps, but he was the only genuine Bastard, Mr S. R. Bastard in point of fact.

I also wrote a screenplay about the 1873 FA Cup Final between the Old Etonians and Blackburn Olympic. I was originally cast as consultant to Julian Fellowes, but he proved to be too busy so I landed the role and was delighted with the result. Taking in football history, social history and relationships on and off the field, it examines the eve of the professional era and the first time that the FA Cup went north. The Old Etonians, Old Harrovians, Old Carthusians, Oxford University and Royal Engineers had had it all their own way until the working-class teams from the north brought in training, diets and … money! The game would never be the same again.

My interest in history led me to becoming increasingly involved with the Heritage Foundation and the blue plaques they erected. Initially commemorating comedians, they soon progressed to plaques for all areas of the entertainment industry. For several years, I was
the vice-president and Robin Gibb the president. We shared a love of history and with the foundation's chairman, David Graham, were involved with erecting plaques for such luminaries as Sir Norman Wisdom, Sir John Mills, Peter Cook, Keith Moon, Kenneth Williams, Joe Meek and Jerome Kern.

The Kern plaque, unveiled by Robin and
Les Misérables
lyricist Herbert Kretzmer, had a special meaning for me. A few years earlier I'd watched the Kern biopic,
Till the Clouds Roll By
, and had become strangely obsessed by one particular scene. This depicted Jerome and his manager cycling through an English village. One of them gets a puncture and the manager goes to find help, leaving Kern by this quaint rose-covered cottage, featuring the delightfully un-English address (on the US-style mailbox!) of something like 1093 Main Street. Intriguing how England was perceived by Hollywood film moguls. He wandered in through the open door, sat down at the very conveniently placed piano and played until a young lady appeared, questioning his presence. In a nutshell he thought she was the maid, when in fact she was the daughter of the house, and they subsequently fell in love. Why I became dead set on finding out in which village these events played out in real life I have no idea. It plagued me for weeks. I googled, I researched, I drew a blank. Three months later I was having dinner with some friends on a steam train in Kent. I asked whether they still lived by Walton Bridge. They did.

‘Do you know that, on the very spot where your house is, both Turner and Canaletto, at different times obviously, painted the old bridge?' I asked them.

‘We did, but do you know the two pubs across the river?'

‘Yes I do, The Swan and the Anglers.'

‘What do you know about the Swan?'

‘More than you imagine. I often played in the garden when I was a kid and I did my very first paid gig, singing and playing guitar, for a friend's eighteenth birthday in the main room, of which a photograph still exists.'

‘Ah, but what you probably don't know is that the room in which you played your first paid gig was the room in which the American songwriter Jerome Kern was playing the piano when he met his wife-to-be.'

I was utterly speechless. They had no idea of my quest and were equally speechless when I told them the story. It transpired that Kern had married Eva Leale, the landlord's daughter, at St Mary's Church, Walton-on-Thames, sixty years before I was confirmed at the same altar. Who can possibly say what made me so obsessed and that there would be a double link between us? I was so delighted to be able to organise a blue plaque for the man who wrote such classics as ‘Old Man River', ‘Smoke Gets in Your Eyes', ‘The Way You Look Tonight' and ‘I've Told Every Little Star'.

Among the regular guests at the Heritage Foundation's post-plaque lunches were a number of Bomber Command veterans. They were clearly disappointed that their efforts, and more importantly those of the 55,500 Allied aircrew who perished keeping our country free from oppressors, had never been recognised. From the first-voiced thoughts at Foundation functions that something be done about the injustice, we initially raised small sums for a memorial that, like Topsy, ‘just growed'. As the wheels turned, the
Daily Telegraph
and later the
Daily Express
championed the cause and more people became involved, including Jim Dooley, formerly of the hit group The Dooleys, with Robin Gibb adding his profile and passion to the project as well as his time and energy. Architect Liam O'Connor was brought in and benefactors stepped up in the shape of Lord Ashcroft, John Caudwell and Richard Desmond. The scheme now had legs and began to take shape. Liam was responsible for the design of the memorial which he wanted to be in keeping with nearby monuments designed by his architectural hero, Aston Webb. Philip Jackson was responsible for the sculpture that provides the memorial's focus, depicting a Bomber Command crew home from a mission. There was to be no triumph or jingoism in the seven 9-foot-high figures. They display
fatigue and exhaustion, with eyes to the sky, praying that their pals make it home too.

The Ministry of Defence came in for some criticism for not assisting with funds, especially after many veterans exposed themselves financially by putting up their own money. Other veterans missed out on applying for tickets for the unveiling, but very movingly, many people returned theirs so that the airmen could attend in order to pay tribute to their mates. HM the Queen, flanked by many members of the royal family, unveiled the sculpture in Green Park on 28 June 2012, with an Avro Lancaster dropping red poppy petals over the park. Vanessa Brady and I sat in the sunshine, feeling very patriotic and knowing that justice had been done for the boys of Bomber Command. Robin would have been so proud, but at least his name is, quite rightly, carved on the monument.

I met Vanessa at one of Robin and Dwina's garden parties. I say met, we were actually pushed together by Dot Most the wife of my first publisher, Dave Most. We began a gradual relationship that increased with time. It was only after a few weeks that she revealed that we'd almost met back in the mid '80s. It seems that we were both at a function and our eyes met as she walked across the room. As she was with a group of friends I didn't really have the bottle (or the glass) to go and talk to her. So being a useless bloke, I sent someone else to ask on my behalf. Wrong. Back came the answer, in the negative. By the time she decided to make another trip across the room, I'd gone … as they say in the song, ‘Who know where, who knows when.' But we did meet again years later.

Three years ago I discovered that if I'd asked her myself she'd have agreed quite willingly to a glass of something from the Champagne region, with the implication that she would have been happy for the conversation to blossom as the
prunus
in May, from that point. I was swift to point out that I hadn't arrogantly dispatched a Pony Express rider to do my dirty work, it was simply shyness. You know the score. Striding purposefully towards a table hidden round
a corner and containing half a dozen girls to talk to just one of them, demands nerves of steel and several acres of confidence. Then there is the question of approach. The comedic? The smouldering? The domineering? It's a tough call. That's why I sent in the troops. Well … man at arms. After the passing of half an hour VB claims she noticed I'd gone, as she rounded the corner on her way to the ladies room. I claim she couldn't restrain herself and just had to see whether I was still there. Maybe the truth lies somewhere between the two. Being a
carpe diem
kind of chap I should have seized the moment and also heeded Horace's quantifying follow-up,
Quam minimum credula postero
, and not put my trust in tomorrow. This tomorrow was a long time coming and it was just after Robin and I had been on stage singing
Massachusetts
.

Robin and I were always keen to pursue plaques that were more historical than necessarily showbusiness. Sadly my old pal passed away in 2012, but I feel he's very much a part of the British Plaque Trust, a registered charity that we set up in 2013. In October of that year, with my fellow trustees, Vanessa Brady, Ian Freeman and Major Ian Mattison, we erected a blue plaque at Wembley Stadium to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Football Association. Relatives of the Founding Fathers of football, who drew up the rules back in 1863, were flown in from the USA and New Zealand to join those closer to home. The former West Ham United and England player Sir Trevor Brooking made a speech and unveiled the plaque, assisted by one of the youngest descendants present. The FA historian and I both said a few words and a QR tag was later fixed to the plaque, meaning that future generations will be able to not only download the FA history directly from the plaque, but also watch a recording of the blue plaque ceremony. I was delighted that my friends Sir William and Lady McAlpine were able to attend, as the McAlpine family had built the original Wembley Stadium in 1923. This delightful couple live with herds of deer, a tribe of meercats, a full size railway line complete with engines and rolling stock, a family of capybaras,
a railway museum, a fleet of dogs, a flock of alpacas and anything and anyone else that turns up.

Our next plaque commemorated Denmark Street, London, Britain's Tin Pan Alley, which was the centre for the UK's publishers and songwriters from the '20s and where the likes of the Rolling Stones, David Bowie, the Kinks, Donovan and hundreds of others began their careers. The heartbeat of the small street, just off the north end of the Charing Cross Road, was the Giaconda café, where the musicians and writers would hang out, in the hope of getting a gig or picking up a publishing deal. The café is still there, (re-opening this summer) with the blue plaque letting the world know that this is where many of the most successful songwriters began a journey that resulted in phenomenal sales around the planet. Donovan flew in to unveil the plaque, performing a song that he'd written specially for the occasion, appropriately called ‘Tin Pan Alley'. I say unveiled, but the cord failed to pull the curtain away, so most of the unveiling shots were of my backside as I perched precariously on a ladder to remove the curtain by hand. Several of Tin Pan Alley's most successful songwriters attended, including Don Black, Tony Hiller, Barry Mason, Bill Martin, Mitch Murray, Guy Fletcher and John Carter. Thanks to the efforts of our PR guru, Dan Kirkby, with whom I worked at Radio One, the event made all the main news bulletins on ITV and BBC as well as getting into more than 100 newspapers. Guy is terrific company and we've spent many a happy evening or weekend together along with his lovely wife Cherry. A source of wisdom and knowledge in the music industry, he commands great respect as the Chairman of PRS for Music. When I was lucky enough to receive the British Academy of Composers, Songwriters and Authors Gold Badge of Merit in 2011 it was Guy from whom I received it during the annual lunch at the Savoy Hotel.

My interest in history also involves diving off on a whim to various Civil War battle sites such as Edgehill or Naseby. I have been known to wander over Wars of the Roses sites too, like Barnet and Bosworth Field, in fact anywhere that has some fascinating historical
attachment. Many people get excited at seeing a celebrity. I get excited about famous buildings, rivers, monuments and the like.

Family history is also a passion, starting with my father's old football programmes and newspaper match reports, such as this write-up from an FA Amateur Cup match: ‘A dominating share in Walton's performance was taken by their halves, of whom Read, a keen tackler and thoughtful distributor of the ball, was outstanding.' The old man's fair play was also reported in another match: ‘There was a cry of “Hands, ref.,” when a shot from Bunce hit Read's wrist on its way through the penalty area, but with Read making no attempt to play the ball with his hand, the incident was not deliberate or serious enough to warrant a penalty.' Here, that fleeting moment in time, that cry from the crowd, that incident, is again committed to print, my father, the pre-war lad at centre-half, not knowing that he'd soon be playing in the chilling-sounding War League North. I have several cards from that period summoning him to Manchester United's ground for training. Another newspaper cutting sees the young Read sitting proudly in the middle of the front row of the Guildford City team.

Prior to joining the Army at the outbreak of war my father was accepted for service in Division A of the Metropolitan Police War Reserve, stationed at Hyde Park. The acceptance letter is dated 26 April 1939, so they clearly knew that something was in the wind.

I've enjoyed poring through family history from a very young age and that interest has never waned. I have my great-grandmother's vehicle registration card from 1928, which declares: ‘This council has been informed that a registered motor vehicle NC 2606 has been transferred to you.' The car was a Calthorpe, made by a Birmingham manufacturer that produced some 5,000 high-quality cars after World War One but by the end of the '20s had ceased production altogether. I read somewhere that fewer than ten have survived. I wonder if NC 2606 is one of them. Nestling next to the registration card is one of many speeches given by my grandmother, this one being dated October 1954: