Sir Terry Wogan couldn't have written a better introduction had he been alive today. I think it might have been penned with a tear in his eye and a crystal ball on the table, the one he used on a regular basis to tell my future, as you'll soon discover. What he couldn't know is that I would write and publish this book. Most of my friends say they will buy a copy so that should boost the bank balance by about a tenner, if I'm lucky, which I have been during most of my life, and that theme, plus a deep love of music, permeates this tome throughout. I wouldn't say it's a rags to riches story but I can still hardly believe that a little lad from the back streets of Manchester could have had the fun journey I have enjoyed. I hope you'll travel with me through childhood and teens to the Swinging Sixties in London and Manchester, where I briefly found employment as a schoolteacher and civil servant, through my time as a singer/songwriter/record producer and pop star in Norway (Oh yes I was!). From the seventies onward the BBC was my main focus as a producer with thirty years before the mast on the Good Ship Radio Two working with some of the all-time great broadcasters like Jack Jackson, Simon Bates, Sir Terry Wogan, Jimmy Young, David Hamilton, Kenny Everett, Wally Whyton, Anne Robinson, Michael Aspel and Ken Bruce. The cream on the top during those years was meeting my heroes Gene Vincent, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash, The Crickets, John D Loudermilk, Neil Sedaka and Roy Rogers. Did I mention The Beatles?
The great northern city of Manchester was an education, an inspiration, an introduction to my two great passions - music and sport - and a springboard to explore the wider world, which I did on many occasions from a very young age, being regularly parcelled off to stay with relatives in Yorkshire, and once to friends on the Isle of Man.
All this before the age of twelve when I took matters into my own hands and began a love affair with Vienna and Austria by taking part in a student exchange programme every year until I was 18. Maybe my parents were relieved to be rid of me for a period of time - this is not a misery memoir, but things were less than easy. And I certainly enjoyed my holiday visits away from home. It was always a great adventure, which is how most of my life has been ever since.
In January 2020, I made one New Year's resolution, to start writing this book. I started compiling and collating dates to bring the memories into focus, and as I did, I realised...
It all started with a bass guitar. A Fender Precision Bass, to be exact, about which I knew nothing at the time I bought it, but which put me on a trajectory to a life-long involvement with popular music and the rarefied atmosphere of stars and celebrity.
I could have called this book "All About That Bass" but Meghan Trainor beat me to it!
So it became "Easily Led and Hard on His Shoes" which were a couple of the many things my mother used to call me, the first for being a little naïve and credulous and the second for my inability to resist kicking anything in the street, be it a stone, a stick or a tin can. She also told me I had a mind like a butterfly. So let's focus, shall we, and get on with the story?
