Cameron Macintosh is reputed to be worth £635 million which is just a wee bit short of what Andrew Lloyd Webber is worth. When Cameron was asked to look at ‘La Belle Otero’ he yelled “No money! There’s no money!’ and fled to his office, or so I am told.
Of the musicals (book and lyrics) I have written only one has been produced and that is my version of ‘Peter Pan’. That came about because of a commission; otherwise it too would probably never have been done. In fact I most probably wouldn’t have thought of writing it in the first place. It is now published thanks to DCG and sits in Amazon among two hundred other versions of ‘Peter Pan’.
The very first musical I ever attempted is an embarrassment. It was ‘Salad Days’ that inspired my having a go. ‘Salad Days’ was a huge hit in London at the time. Later I came to be involved with it twice and thought it a truly twee little bit of English nonsense. However it did lead to my ‘Opus One’. Yes embarrassing as it may seem, that was the title of my first, simply because I didn’t really have anything to write a musical about. ‘Opus One’ was followed by an adaptation of Ronald Firbank’s ‘Prancing Nigger’, a title that certainly couldn’t be used today although it was an affectionate use of the word at the time and suited the book admirably. But there you go, Agatha Christie had to change her ‘Ten Little Niggers’ into ‘Ten Little Indians’. ‘Prancing Nigger’ never found a composer and I couldn’t get the rights for it anyway. This was followed by ‘Cupid and Psyche’, music by Kenny Clayton, a show I would still dearly love to see on. Forty years ago and more the young Cameron came to the house in Hackney to listen to it and went away unimpressed. ‘Black Maria’ came next, again music by Kenny, and this late in the day there is a slight chance of it being done. It lay in the script drawer for forty years but when I took it out recently I realized it was much better than I originally thought, hence it being touted again. After ‘Black Maria’, a version of ‘Pickwick Papers’, nipped in the bud by Mister Harry Secombe getting there first but which again I feel is much better than I originally thought. Then came a two hander called ‘Fugue In Two Flats’, a difficult piece if only because it takes some doing writing numbers for just two people. The music this time was by Paul Knight and I really love it. This did have an audition in London that I didn’t attend as I was working in America at the time. Obviously though it didn’t go any further. There followed a television spectacular called “Alice In Winterland”. This was at the request of one, Charles Pinner, and Charles being Charles it never saw the light of day and all I received was a rubber cheque. My last attempt at a musical while still in England was the rewrite of one on Garibaldi, the original attempt having been by a London lawyer whose pet it had been for twenty odd years. I use the word attempt advisedly and the twenty odd years should have rung warning bells but didn’t. Unfortunately he couldn’t let it go so I only completed the first act before the collaboration fell through. Finally here in Crete I wrote ‘La Belle Otero’. As with the London lawyer and his pet, this had been on the cards for me for twenty odd years or more before it finally materialized which is probably why those bells didn’t ring. The composer this time was Chris Littlewood and Chris Beeching produced a demo disc in Athens of half a dozen numbers. But that was five years ago and that was the musical Cameron said there was no money for. It does indeed take an act of God with all his angels, archangels, cherubim and seraphim to get a new musical on the road. Unless I get lucky and if it’s not too late I will never see any of these in production. A big disappointment but as the Greeks say, ti na kanoume; what can we do?

It is a truism that youth is wasted on the young. Now, having just entered my eightieth year, I find myself looking back, not with regrets, I have had a very lucky life on the whole even with its many disappointments, and whose life doesn’t have disappointments? but with some nostalgia for my youthful days. I never realised how blessed they were in virtually every way; days indeed that were filled with sunshine unappreciated. Well, except in memory, those dear dead days are beyond recall as the old song has it, so there is no use in thinking of “if!” That is one of the smallest of words but one of the most evocative. True it is not used on its own – “what if?” “if only”. What if I had made this choice instead of that? If only things hadn’t turned out the way they did, etc., but if one broods on the might have beens, that is a sad state of affairs. Rather remember your youth knowing that you couldn’t have had it any different, that that was what fate had in store for you and has had in store ever since; and if, when young, you were aware of that, you would surely have nade much more of those years and enjoyed your youth to the full.
I find it strange when I hear, as one frequently does, the youth of today say “I’m bored. There’s nothing to do.” I can’t remember as a youngster ever feeling bored – there was always something to do. Admittedly I had the advantage of living in a seaside town but I didn’t spend all my life on the beach. I was never much good at games, only playing rugby when moving on to high school, but younger than that, going right back to early boarding school days say, there were Dinkie Toys, lead soldiers, toy farms, homemade bows and arrows; later carts made from old orange boxes, a length of timber for the chassis and a cross piece of wood at the front with string or rope tied to each end so that it could be pulled one way or the other to turn. There were bicycles, the scouts, camping, the St.John’s Ambulance Brigade, always places to explore, the occasional picnic on a Sunday (what excitement getting everything ready for it and looking forward to the day), a dive into the country when driving was still an exciting thing to do and on a Saturday afternoon perhaps a visit to the Bioscope, all dressed up, neat and tidy and hoping there would be a cartoon and, if there was, the whole cinema would erupt with the shout of “Cartoon!”
There was no television, no computers on which to play games. We had the radio and terrific serials (or so I thought at the time anyway) to listen to, and a pair of comedians who today would be considered racist, doing an Indian send-up called “Applesammy and Naidoo”. Bored? Not in a hundred years.
Would today’s young generation live as varied and interesting a life instead of being hunched over their computers hours on end.
Thinking back now, they were halcyon days despite at times the occasional tear but wasn’t that all part of growing up?

Say what shall my Blog be today? Back in London some, goodness knows how many, years ago I thought of working up an evening’s entertainment called “Say what Shall My Song Be Tonight?” which is an actual Victorian ballad and a very pretty one it is too. The lyrics of many Victorian numbers may not have been up to much, in particular some of the most popular Music Hall numbers, but tunes, my boy, tunes, that’s what it’s all about, and Victorian tunesmiths knew what they were doing. The idea of the entertainment was to have four singers, one of each: tenor, bass baritone, soprano, contralto and an accompanist, the music interspersed with light verse and anecdote. This was when a number of small companies were doing the pubs playing Music Hall and Chris was in great demand to do his Gilbert The Filbert, Oh That Gorgonzola cheese, She Pushed Me Into The Parlour, In The twi-twi-twilight, Paree, and more. He had quite a repertoire and always went down a storm so no one could understand why he was never invited to appear at the old Players in London. The reason was actually quite simple – it’s called a clique. We used to love going to the Players. We knew most of the artistes performing there, some quite close friends and, even if you saw the same faces over and over, the atmosphere in that dilapidated old tunnel of a place with the trains from Charing Cross Station sometimes rumbling overhead, it was always an evening of jollity. Unfortunately, when it came time to move to a brand new venue a little way up the road, all that wonderful old atmosphere simply disappeared. I think we paid maybe two visits to the new home and lost interest. In the old building we saw pantomimes and, of course that very successful musical “The Boy Friend” started its life in the old Players. Sandy Wilson wrote himself a lifetime’s income with that one piece and nothing that followed could compare. As pastiche it is just too perfect, a little gem. That’s not to say it can’t come unstuck. I saw a production in America that was simply awful but that was mainly due to some of the weirdest casting and misdirection. So often in theatre there is misjudgement of that kind – the right play in the wrong house, the wrong play in the right house, the wrong director, the wrong cast, so when one sees something that literally makes you shake with excitement it’s a wonderful experience. Such a one was a production I saw in Toronto of “March Of The Falsettos”, a small cast giving everything they’d got quite brilliantly to a tiny house in the Canadian equivalent of an off-off-Broadway house. Also at James Madison a student production of “Come To the Five And Nine Jimmy Dean” that had me on my feet and that doesn’t happen very often.
But back to my proposed Victorian evening that never happened. I seem to remember one of the anecdotes was of an English actress, I think it may have been Fanny Carby, who was feeding the squirrels in New York’s Central park, got bitten on the finger and a cop wanted to know if she could identify the squirrel wot done it before she was whipped off to hospital for an anti-tetanus shot. And so to the next number, a ballad titled “Somewhere A Voice is calling.” Of all the Victorian/Edwardian music I know I only mention that one because my father, if ever he was persuaded to sing, and he had a very good voice despite his shyness, would always sing “Somewhere A Voice Is Calling.”
Handel seemed to be a favourite with my mother: Lascia ch’io piango, Ombra mai fu, known as the Largo. Then there was O Don Fatale and Softly Awakes My Heart from Samson and Delilah, a song called Parted (mentioned in my autobiography), and she loved Just A Song At Twilight, and of course there was I’ll Walk Beside You she was always being asked to sing at weddings. All good old schmaltzy stuff. All tunes.

The mosquitoes have put in their first unwelcome appearance as two bites on the arm and one on the ankle testify and they don’t half itch! I really don’t know where the mosquito fits into intelligent design or why they should be so attracted to me. If there are three or four people sitting around I am the one they invariably head for.
It would appear that the Soviet Socialist Republic of Hackney were we lived for some time, where excellence we were once informed is elitist and political correctness reigns supreme, is now one of the most dangerous spots on earth, where stabbings are a constant occurrence and with gangs of black feral youth shooting indiscriminately at each other and hitting innocents in the process; teenagers being chased into parks by gangs and dying of multiple stab wounds. Mind you, that still hasn’t stopped the exorbitant rise in property values. A one bedroom flat in a converted house a couple of doors down from where we used to live is on the market for the asking price of a quarter of a million! This means in relative terms that our old house is now valued at two million or more, depending upon how many one room flats you can convert it to. And when we sold it for sixty three thousand we thought that was asking too much. It gets more and more ridiculous.
In England we used to like using olive oil but because of the expense it was always used sparingly, a few drops at a time virtually and we could seldom afford the best virgin. Here there is no holding back, mainly because we are constantly being given it by friends and neighbours. Our friend Stewart came around the other day with a twenty litre container filled to the brim. The same goes for halva which I might have mentioned before (there has to come a time when I repeat myself). In England we used to buy it by the ounce, here we buy it by the half kilo. But the good days cannot last as prices rocket. Who knows, soon we might not be able to afford it here.
The oranges have finally come to an end – the last few being the juiciest sweetest oranges I have ever tasted. The loquat season has started to take its place. It’s a pity the season is so very short. The loquat is one of my favourite fruits together with mangoes and guavas. These are the fruits I grew up with. Oh, I should add lychees and granadillas – all tropical fruit you will notice. Lychees and granadillas have always been expensive even in South Africa way back then – prohibitive in England. I grew a granadilla vine here from seed and it yielded masses of fruit but, unfortunately, suddenly there was snow and that killed it.
I remember when I was a child my mother sometimes drove us down to the South Beach in Durban where she parked the car facing the sea and if there was a chilly wind blowing off the beach, as was sometimes the case, we would sit in the warmth of the car eating lychees bought off an Indian lady vending along the beachfront, a long bamboo pole over her shoulder with a basket at each end. They would also come around to the house selling vegetables. It must have been a very hard life for little return.
And talking of mothers, today Douglas’s mum celebrates her 70th birthday and he managed to get all his flights back to Newcastle for the big event so she is in for a lovely surprise.

A.A.Gill – I hate him! Why do I hate him? Quite simply because I find his writing is so consistently bloody brilliant. A new bundle of Sunday Times culture sections landed on the doorstep a few days ago (thank you the Maffins of Huddersfield) and the very first one opened at Gill’s television reviews didn’t exactly have me gasping for breath but certainly continued my admiration for this man’s work. Without unnecessary elaboration his writing is witty and stylish, polished to a degree others can only aspire to. It is said that the hardest writing makes for the easiest reading but his prose gives no indication other than it simply flows without effort. This is possibly not true but that is how it reads. I wish I could write half as well and I simply hate him. I hope the Sunday Times pays him oodles and oodles of cash. He deserves it.
I don’t know why but from the bookshelf in my bedroom I took down Dotson Rader’s memoirs of Tennessee Williams ‘Cry Of The Heart’ to read again after a long long interval and have found it as fascinating as the first time round. I can’t say I enjoyed it but I was deeply moved by it. What a tormented soul Tennessee was but then so many writers seem to have teetered on the verge, if not of madness, at least a mental or emotional breakdown. I think back on what I have read of Tolstoy and Gordon Craig as two examples, both monsters each in his own way who I would like to say more about at a later date but then there are all those American writers who killed themselves with booze or drugs or both. Next to them I am a boring figure or normality, if there should be such a thing as normality. But a quote here from Rader’s book – ‘The critics always bellow that their reviews don’t affect, psychologically, a writer’s ability to create. That isn’t true. Critics have killed more writers than liquor. They certainly defeated Tennessee. One of the few times I saw him cry was when he read a review about his work by John Simon, entitled ‘The sweet Bird of Senility.’ How smugly smart and how cruel can you get? For those who might not be au fait with Williams’ work the play is “Sweet Bird of Youth”. There is a saying that those who can’t do, teach. Perhaps it should be those who can’t do, criticise. After the mauling “The 88” got from the London critics it was at least two years before I could even think of writing again.
But it’s not only the professional critics who can be unkind. Another incident Rader mentions is as follows, ‘… we walked over to Park Avenue to get a taxi. While we stood trying to wave down a cab, a woman came rushing up to us.
“Aren’t you Tennessee Williams?” she asked.
Tennessee grinned, delighted at being recognised by what he assumed was a fan.
“I saw your play last night,” the woman continued.
“Yes?” he was still smiling’
“Yes. Tell me how can I get a refund? I thought it was just awful.”
Tennessee angered and hurt ran into the street.’
His advice to Dotson Rader was never be a playwright and, if there are budding young playwrights somewhere out there who are not prepared to put up with the shit that will be thrown at them, no matter how great they are, like Williams, stop right now.

The Double Deckers, The Double Deckers, The Double Deckers! Douglas has recently had to have three sites on the internet offering pirated DVD’s closed down and there is another yet to go. It is nearly forty years since this series was made during which time I have had one small royalty cheque from France, otherwise not a penny have I or anyone involved in the making of the programme seen all these years; but someone is and has been making money out of it including music, reissued on CD by Cherry records who maintain they don’t have to pay royalties for the songs. The above is not quite true. I have received small amounts through the Performing Rights Society for the four songs (lyrics) I have in the show which is how I know about the worldwide sales. But the fact remains, had I received according to contract what was due to me, I have to admit life without constant financial worries would have been a lot easier. There is no official DVD and evidently there has been a petition signed by three thousand people (possibly more by now) for one to be made. In the meantime the pirates have a field day and, apart from stopping their advertising, what can one do? Even if we could afford it, taking legal action would be far too costly for the possible returns.
I bought our first house in London because of great expectations, imagining the royalty cheques that would flow in to pay off the mortgage. It just never happened. 20th Century Fox who evidently still hold the copyright have always maintained the show never went into profit which is a load of balderdash considering it has been sold all over the world, has been shown umpteen times syndicated in the states, on the BBC and on ITV more than once and cost peanuts to make, £25000 per episode. It’s no consolation to know I am not the only one to be thoroughly shafted by the big companies or even by lesser mortals but it is infuriating. Big film stars on multi-million dollar salaries who feel they have been cheated can take their studios to task. I can’t.
What is even more galling is that if it hadn’t been for that meeting in Wardour Street with Harry Booth and Roy Simpson when I suggested to them that they make a modern version of “Our Gang” for the Children’s Film Foundation, The Double Deckers would never have come into being. Neither Harry or Roy had even heard about “Our Gang”. I knew of it because of the projector my father bought me when I was a kid and the little rolls of 8mm film that went with it. So for the CFF we made “The Magnificent 6½” and that led directly on to The Double Deckers. And would you believe it, in publicity handouts, the head of the CFF took it upon himself to coyly admit it was his idea in the first place that started the whole thing off? You simply can’t win.

Another scandal for the church, already battered by the paedophile problem. An English bishop this time, admittedly now no longer part of old Popy’s mob but with breakaway followers of his own, is on trial in Germany for denying the holocaust. He has refused to attend the trial but it is going ahead without him. He admits it and will be found guilty and fined in absentia. Like flat-earthers, fundamentalists, and the belief in intelligent design when all the evidence piles up to proves the opposite I find it difficult to understand just what the point is in denial of this kind. The Bishop only has to visit one of the concentration camps (we have been to Dachau) to know he is in the wrong. Human beings really are the strangest animals and I sometimes think the more intelligent they are the more stupid they can be at the same time if that is possible.
When I was in Kenya I worked on a farm growing flowers, gladioli and carnations to be exact, but I never knew what a huge industry flower growing is in Kenya. I thought our farm at Njoro was an exception. Evidently now disaster has struck because of the cloud of ash from the Icelandic volcano grounding all flights. Flowers can only be kept in cold storage a short while. There are about 300 growers in Kenya employing 100000 people and estimate they are losing one and a half to two million dollars a day and flowers make up twenty percent of Kenya’s exports. Let’s hope the flights resume quickly. Suddenly one realises just how much in bondage we are to the aviation industry. Millions of passengers all over Europe are stranded, the airlines like the flower growers of Kenya are losing millions of dollars a day and it must surely have a terrible knock-on effect. The holiday season has started and if people can’t reach their destination the domino effect comes into play when all the trades reliant on the season; hotels, taxis, restaurants, souvenir shops and more will suffer, and here on Crete they had a bad enough season last year. Douglas wants to fly to the UK this week for his mother’s seventieth birthday and we don’t know if he is going to be able to do so. As if that isn’t bad enough, at the end of this week Greek airports will grind to a halt by a two day strike – yet again!
On a lighter vein, talking of flowers, April is a yellow month which is something I’ve probably remarked on before: the lemon trees laden with fruit, the broom in full bloom, the wild sage and all along the roadside yellow flowers in abundance. Van Gogh would have loved it. He called yellow God’s own colour.