Have you ever felt a little Krankie?

Glaswegian husband and wife comedy duo The Krankies are now famous mainly for falling off props and for their sexual escapades. It was all so different back in 1981.

The Krankies – It’s Fan-Dabi-Dozi!

The Krankies,
It’s Fan-Dabi-Dozi!,
RCA NL70494,
1981

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When the comedy duo The Krankies came out as being swingers in 2011, the world, or at least the dwindling part of it that reads British newspapers, was shocked. That anybody had been even the slightest bit shocked in the first place was a trick worthy of the greatest of magicians. Whether by distraction, sleight of hand or by hiding their sexual proclivities in plain sight, The Krankies had deceived a nation for over forty years.

Who would have suspected a happily married couple in their late 60s? A slightly unconventional couple admittedly. A couple in which the wife regularly dressed up as a ten-year-old schoolboy in order to annoy her daddy (played in this scenario by her husband). Who could possibly have ever suspected anything untoward in that relationship? Who indeed. The whole stage act of The Krankies was founded on a premise so mad and improbable, that no-one suspected a thing. It is also equally possible that many people had suspected everything all along, but were too horrified to give full reign to their imagination. To imagine the Krankies making love, with other people participating, is a single step too far into a world of horror and madness. The writhing tentacles of Cthulhu have nothing on that insanity inducing image.

Janette and Ian Tough (aka The Krankies) met in Glasgow at the city’s Pavilion Theatre in 1965, the same venue which in 2004 would see Janette cheat death after plummeting from the top of a massive ten feet tall beanstalk during panto season.  The production back in 1965 was Babes in the Wood and Janette was making her panto début after giving up a career as a shorthand typist (with the emphasis obviously on the short). Ian was an electrician at the theatre, desperately trying to be discovered and be given a break on stage, 42nd Street style. Sadly no-one was horrifically injured at short notice, so Ian instead turned his attention to Janette who was playing one of the Babes. The two hit it off and formed a song and dance act almost immediately, performing backstage at the panto, probably much to the annoyance of everyone.

Once the panto finished, the duo then unleashed their song and dance act on the world, playing the club circuit in Scotland and Northern England. After two years they married and relocated to England, a location more central to the heartland of the clubs. Like many a song and dance act before and since, comedy and banter soon became an integral part of the act and later, more important than even the singing and dancing. When their big break came, the song and dance act was forgotten and it was all about the comedy.

Following an appearance on The Royal Variety Show in 1978, The Krankies were hot property. A 1976 album, Two Sides of The Krankies, exists to demonstrate what the act was prior to this pivotal moment. The A-side is a record of The Krankies club act featuring ‘The Little Boy Routine’. Ian dominates the B-side with well-executed baritone recordings of traditional Scottish ballads, interrupted only by Janette singing ballads in the style of a chipmunk high on helium and unrefined cane sugar. The little boy routine came to dominate the act of course, a wee 4 ½ feet tall monster in a school cap was born, and poor Ian probably never got to sing a rousing Scottish anthem ever again.

By 1981, The Krankies were mainstays of the Stu Francis era Crackerjack, the act from the club circuit being sanitised and re-packaged for children. The appeal was obvious; Jimmy was a cheeky, irreverent and naughty little boy that said and did the things that children would only dare to. The fact that Jimmy was a 35-year-old housewife and his long-suffering father was actually Wee Jimmy’s husband seemed largely irrelevant. Children seemed prepared to forgive the deception and parents were frankly too baffled to know if they objected or not. In 1982 LWT granted the duo their own children’s TV series The Krankies Klub. The BBC tempted them over in 1985 with a tiny wee bag of money to front The Krankies Elektronik Komik, which after mutating into Krankies Television would run until 1991.

The album It’s Fan-Dabi-Dozi! was released in 1981, just as Krankies-mania was talking hold of the UK. There’s no surer way to achieve sudden massive popularity than by having a ridiculous catchphrase, the more inane and unfathomable the better. And as idiotic catchphrases go ‘fan-dabi-dozi’ is one of the best. It by turns means absolutely nothing, grates on the nerves, is instantly memorable and can be uttered by everyone from schoolchildren to the elderly and insane.

Building an entire record around one annoying catchphrase is not an enterprise to be taken lightly. The job on this album went to Scottish jazz musician Pete Kerr, long-serving clarinettist with the Clyde Valley Stompers and prolific record producer for anyone with a clan tartan and half a tune to their name. While many more serious producers would have been fazed when confronted by Ian and Janette Tough, Pete’s experience recording with the likes of Andy Stewart, Jimmy Shand and the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards must have cushioned the blow somewhat. He fashioned a contemporary sounding record, writing lyrics for most of the songs, arranging a pumping glam disco backing for the demented jocular shriekings of Wee Jimmy, and crafting some clever silly novelty songs into the bargain.

There were a large number of singles culled from the album, much like Michael Jackson’s Thriller, except with an even shriller, scarier looking man-child lead singer.  Although unlike Thriller there was not a sole charting entry to speak of. In 1981, before RCA snapped them up for their major label début, The Krankies released Fan-Dabi-Dozi as a single with Wee Jimmy Krankie as a b-side. The aforementioned Pete Kerr wrote and produced Fan-Dabi-Dozi which has a definite disco Wombles-glam stomp about it. The lyrics are shamelessly culled from nursery rhymes and peppered with some appallingly bad jokes courtesy of The Krankies. Wee Jimmy Krankie is a manifesto from the demonic, diminutive imp himself, and is a record of a happy carefree time when corporal punishment ruled in school. A time when canes and the occasional hefty clout achieved what understanding, love, prescription drugs and counselling largely fail to do these days.

We’re Going To Spain enjoyed two separate single releases; first in 1981 as the b-side for Jimmy’s Gang and subsequently as an a-side in its own right. The concept of Jimmy’s Gang actually existed, a fan club for the miniature mite being launched on Crackerjack as a means for misbehaving, annoying children everywhere to join in a mass movement, with the reward of free badges for their unquestioning subservience. The song sounds much like a Nazi rally would if the Bay City Rollers had been around in Nuremberg at the time and were off their heads on speed. It’s a treasure alright.

We’re Going To Spain is a holiday novelty hit that sadly never became a hit. Twice. When it first appeared, We’re Going To Spain was a catchy well-constructed holiday novelty song, capitalising on the fortuitous rhyme of ‘Spain’ with ‘on an aeroplane’. It grated certainly, but no more than many other holiday songs that became hits. On its re-release as an a-side in 1982 it became, thanks to Scotland’s qualification for the World Cup Finals in Spain, a well-constructed football song that grated a lot less than many other football songs and which also failed to chart. This despite the genius of Pete Kerr and The Krankies upping their game by rhyming ‘holiday’ with ‘Sandy’ (the official SFA mascot) as well as ‘plane’ and ‘Spain’ with ‘play the game’.

Despite being the Scottish FA’s official single for the tournament and a positive advert for power of rhyming dictionaries, John Gordon-Sinclair had the hit with the much dourer and frankly less enjoyable We Have a Dream. Thankfully, team Scotland no longer qualifies for international football tournaments, so such terrible novelty song dilemmas will not arise in the future.

To play us out, I present The Krankie Rock, the b-side of yet another failed single. The a-side Hubba Dubba Dooby is a competent piece of pounding rock that might have graced the output of any number of 70s glam bands. Only the odd jungle noises, high pitched trilling and bad jokes give away the fact that it was recorded by The Krankies rather than Mud or The Sweet.

The Krankie Rock is a competent novelty song that incorporates improbable dance moves and the line, “rock it to me Jimmy”. How it failed to be a hit is a mystery. Like Jailhouse Rock for impressionable under 10s everywhere here is The Krankie Rock:

The official site of The Krankies – swinging from a festive beanstalk somewhere near you:
http://www.krankies.com

Little and Large – The punk rock years

The Manchester-based comedy duo Little and Large entertained the nation for many years with their impressions of Deputy Dawg – but they remained utterly bemused by punk.

Little and Large – Live at Abbey Road

Little and Large,
Live at Abbey Road,
EMI EMS 1003,
1981

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I think it’s fair to say that by 1981 the musical movement known as ‘punk’ was well and truly over. The 1970s had been a heady time and music had changed immeasurably within that most turbulent of decades. Glam, prog, heavy metal, disco and punk had all risen and fallen to various degrees by the end of 1979. By 1981, Sid Vicious was dead, The Sex Pistols had split up, The Clash were experimenting with reggae and rap and The Damned were laying the foundations of the Gothic movement. Charles and Di were compiling their wedding list while New Romantics across the country were causing shortages of hair spray, pirate costumes and shoulder pads.

Musically and culturally speaking, in 1981 punk had been and gone, but like snow that clings on stubbornly in hidden ditches for many weeks after everything else has melted away, there were places where punk refused to die. To this day for instance, a few tourist-friendly, local council appointed punks still wander the streets of Camden with their three-feet high Mohican haircuts posing for holiday snaps in return for loose change. Punk also remained alive and well, and living in the brains of two oddly shaped comedians from Manchester.

Syd Little and Eddie Large were those two comedians and their 1981 album Live at Abbey Road is like a grubby window into their brains. Brains which are like a museum that no-one has ever voluntarily visited except on a cut-price school trip or to take shelter from a sudden Bank Holiday rainstorm. The brains of Little and Large constitute a cavernous echoing place where curious voyeurs and students of history can see all of their thoughts on punk preserved forever in an empty, draughty museum of pointlessness.

For some reason, in the minds of Little and Large, even in 1981 punks are still sticking their fingers up at respectable showbiz entertainers and sneering at their lame comedy. And for some other equally unknown reason, punks are embodied in the unlikely form of Kate Bush and Adam Ant, two extremely un-punklike performers. To hear Little and Large debating whether those ‘punks’ Kate and Adam will still be remembered in thirty years’ time is to hear the clanking train of irony plummeting and crashing off of the tall viaduct of ill-informed stupidity.

In mitigation, and it is only slight mitigation, Syd Little and Eddie Large were immensely popular at one stage and the transitory young pop stars of the day must have seemed like dabbling amateurs to the two seasoned pros who had worked for twenty years on the comedy circuit to enjoy their moment of mass appeal.

Little and Large had started performing together in the early 1960s. Syd was a pub singer and Eddie a bar room habitué more intent on drinking heavily and misbehaving than pursuing a showbiz career.  Every pub has one; the annoying nuisance who needs to be the centre of attention, even if it’s for all the wrong reasons. Born Cyril Mead and Edward McGinnis, the duo changed their names to Little and Large very early on in their career as apparently ‘Mead and McGinnis’ sounded too much like a drinks order being announced rather than a stage act.

During a gig by Syd at Timperley Labour Club one night in 1962, the amp broke and urged on by Syd’s brother, Eddie first got up onto the stage to support Syd. Eddie’s support, such as it was, consisted largely of insulting Syd and poking fun at his bizarre appearance. Syd did not look or sound like a pop star but Eddie did look every inch a chubby Northern comic, and so a highly unlikely double act was born. Timperley Labour Club has since been demolished, as is only fitting. The houses on the site are probably still haunted by the spirit of Little and Large, the sound of phantom Deputy Dawg impressions echoing across the estate on dark wintery nights…

As can be gleaned from the duo’s adopted stage names, Syd was the little drainpipe-shaped one and Eddie was the large rotund one with a perm. Nothing about them was subtle and their comedy did not move on much from that 1962 gig. Even by 1981 the act still consisted largely of Eddie insulting Syd and chattering away inanely while Syd attempted to sing a song. This album is that act preserved for posterity. Like pickled walnuts, whether that act should have been preserved or not is another question.

Unlike ooh say Adam Ant or Kate Bush, two randomly selected artistes whose work hasn’t dated, this album has not dated well. In fact the record was probably dated the moment it came out. Through Eddie’s endless turgid babbling stream of impressions, the act makes reference to obscure adverts, dated TV shows, old films, children’s shows and other source material which was largely forgotten years before the album was even conceived.

The first side is mainly just inane banter. Endless inane banter. Impressions are heaped upon impressions; Deputy Dawg, Barbara Woodhouse, John Wayne, Jimmy Savile, Prince Charles, Jimmy Clitheroe, Deputy Dawg again, Eddie Waring and Cliff Richard are all channelled through Eddie like some mad seaside psychic hosting a séance of the still living. Syd manages a few snatched verses of a song here and there, and battles through to side two like a punch drunk boxer, reeling from the verbal assaults of Eddie Large.

Side two does actually have some music in between yet more musings on punk rock. There is a loose collection of their early singles, played to a live audience in the Abbey Road studios which actually doesn’t grate too much, but it is still very banter and impression heavy. Eddie’s ‘famous people starting their cars on a cold morning’ routine is the biggest comedy highlight, which is certainly saying something.

The album is a record of a live act in an unfamiliar setting. Neither truly live nor in front of a paying audience demanding to be entertained, the good-natured crowd gathered around them are largely the musicians, singers and engineers who made the record. It’s all very chummy and unchallenging.

With John Squire and Ian Brown now reconciled, The Stone Roses reunited and The Happy Mondays gigging again, the only great double acts from Manchester that still haven’t put their decades of bitterness and differences aside and reformed remain Morrissey and Marr. Oh and of course Little and Large. Time is running out for all of them, so let’s hope Morrissey and Marr, and Little and Large see sense and reconvene soon. Preferably as a four piece, Eddie probably does a hilarious Morrissey impression and I bet he knows exactly what Johnny Marr’s car sounds like on a cold morning.

So to play us out, here is Syd and Eddie’s hymn to Bridlington. Why a Yorkshire seaside resort needed a tribute from two Lancashire comedians I don’t know, but it serves as a neat counterpoint to Chas and Dave’s championing of Margate. The extolling of chips and sausages in the lyrics is made ever more poignant by the serious heart disease that both Little and Large suffered from in later years, but let’s cast that aside for now and roll up our trousers for a grand old jig on the beach. Hurrah!

Leslie Crowther – Swings and roundabouts

Famous towards the end of his career as a consummately slick game show host, Leslie Crowther was for many years a popular children’s entertainer, a role preserved for posterity in this swinging 1968 album.

Leslie Crowther – Songs For Swinging Children

Leslie Crowther,
Songs For Swinging Children,
Pye NPL 18247,
1968

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It’s a very difficult feat for a children’s TV presenter to make the successful transition from kiddies favourite to bona fide adult entertainer. Blue Peter presenters for example have, over the past fifty-five years, proved remarkably adept at making plastic spaceships out of household rubbish and engaging with a succession of temperamental pets, but few have built lasting careers outside of the programme.  For every Matt Baker or Richard Bacon who have enjoyed a high profile career after leaving Blue Peter behind, there is an Anthea Turner or John Leslie pursuing an inexorable descent into ignominy and obscurity.

In 1968 Leslie Crowther made the bold decision to leave the long-running children’s TV show Crackerjack. Born in 1933, he had been with the show since 1959 after being spotted by the producer Johnny Downes while performing in a winter season with the itinerant seaside theatre troupe ‘Fols-de-Rols’. Crowther had been with the beach-side players since 1954, touring each year, with annual forays into pantomime to break up the routine.

For Crackerjack, Leslie Crowther was booked initially as a comic. His chosen straight man was the eccentric theatre veteran Peter Glaze and together they wrote and performed in a succession of comic sketches that cemented their place in the affections of the nation’s children. When the show’s MC and respected elder statesman Eamonn Andrews bowed out in 1964, like an ingénue in a Broadway musical, Leslie stepped eagerly up from the chorus line and took over as host.

In his 1994 autobiography, The Bonus of Laughter, Crowther describes his fear at being typecast forever as a children’s entertainer, to say nothing of the dubious pleasures of being followed around and hounded in public by hordes of excited children out to meet their hero. With the offer of a long run in Let Sleeping Wives Lie (a Harold Brooke and Kay Bannerman farce produced by the King of the medium Brian Rix), Crowther left Crackerjack behind with few regrets and was off to pursue a new career.

There were to be many highs and lows over the next few decades. Touring plays, further summer seasons, sitcoms such as My Good Woman with Sylvia Syms, endless Stork SB commercials and a long battle with alcoholism all lay ahead. It’s probably fair to say though that Crowther’s chief talent and greatest successes after leaving Crackerjack came as a game show presenter, first with the twee panel show Whose Baby? and later The Price Is Right and Stars in Their Eyes. The transition from hosting a weekly interactive show with excitable, unpredictable children to doing the precise same thing with adults was a logical step that he took in his stride.

Songs For Swinging Children was released in 1968, the year that Crowther left children’s TV behind. As a farewell to all things juvenile it’s a jolly wave goodbye rather than a tearful parting. The general theme is of jaunty child-friendly novelty songs made with a very slight nod to the musical tastes and social trends of the 1960s. Something similar had been attempted by Max Bygraves on the Leslie Bricusse penned 1961 album Nursery Rhymes For Grown-Ups. The majority of the songs on Leslie’s album are written by him with a few exceptions, and while they are less satirical and outright comical than Max’s earlier record, they are certainly no less enjoyable.

Most of the songs are clearly intended to appeal directly to children and the album is peppered with jaunty novelty numbers. Tracks such as Trafalgar Square Dance, an upbeat and most unlikely tale of swinging London and the various birds that dance around its streets and squares, as well as Little Red Bus and The Unicorn are all great examples of songs that would keep any overactive toddler quiet for a few precious minutes, with their silly noises and simple tinkling melodies.

The Clowns Are Coming In is another song designed to appeal to children but is instead more than just a little bit sinister and demented. The discordant off-key organ music and manic vocals adopted by Crowther in truth inspire nothing but the onset of coulrophobia. With each repeated chorus, the clowns sound ever more ominous and sinister until even the bravest listener is a quivering nervous wreck, waiting in dread for the clowns to burst in and slit their throats with a novelty rubber knife.

Like some of the best comedy aimed at children, there are also many things on the record that adults can find to enjoy. Commercial Calypso for instance owes a great debt to Lance Percival’s popularisation of the comedy calypso on That Was The Week That Was. Despite an extremely dodgy West Indian accent (something Lance was also prone to on occasions) it is an enjoyable melange of various slogans and taglines from contemporary TV commercials.

While the Egg Marketing Board are fairly quiet these days, adverts extolling the benefits of marrowbone jelly, skin creams, washing up liquid, and baldness cures are still seen often enough for the humour to endure. The final track on the LP, The Great Christmas Pudding Song, takes its inspiration from Leslie’s Caribbean vocalisations and introduces a couple of dozen new racial stereotypes and makes a number of offensive remarks that it’s probably best to gloss over entirely.

London’s Up For Sale introduces the merest sprinkling of contemporary comment. With Leslie playing the role of a dodgy cockney spiv, he tells a story regarding the sale of London Bridge to an American developer in 1968, and goes on to offer other notable London landmarks in a Monopoly board style bargain basement sale. Dear Old Carnaby Street is another contemporary number that offers little for children. A hymn to the epicentre of Swinging London, the song details some of the more outlandish 60′s fashions, such as hippy hair styles, miniskirts, military uniforms, fox furs and kipper ties.  Leslie plays the chirpy cockney on this track too, jigging his way around the West End with a cheeky grin and a bad case of rickets.

Cool Lullaby is probably the most musically sophisticated track on the album. More beatnik than hippy, it seems more a product of the early 1960s rather than a song from the end of the decade. A swinging tale of hippy parenting and switched-on hep rock and roll toddler care, it’s a novelty song for adults that might appeal to children, rather than the other way round.

So next time you are watching a children’s TV presenter prancing around on a brightly coloured set, riding an invisible horse, talking to a glove puppet or pretending to be a bus, spare a thought for the frustrated actor, pop star or game show host lurking deep within them. And pray that their career takes a more favourable course than most of their fellows and ends up with the TV success that Leslie Crowther enjoyed, rather than the Flake-sponsored wedding photos and nude snake-wrangling of Anthea Turner.

So here is the aforementioned Cool Lullaby. Sing it Leslie!

Ray Brooks – Brother, can you spare the time?

Most famous as the voice of Mr Benn, Ray Brooks made one of the more outré showbiz records ever committed to vinyl. His melancholic observations form a strange yet rewarding set of songs.

Ray Brooks – Lend Me Some Of Your Time

Ray Brooks,
Lend Me Some Of Your Time,
Polydor 2310 14,
1971

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Ray Brooks is quite simply a national treasure.  If you don’t immediately recognise his name then it is most definitely your fault and not his. Born in Brighton in 1939, Ray has created era-defining roles, be they Reg Ward in Ken Loach’s gritty 1960’s play Cathy Come Home, Tolen in Richard Lester’s swinging beat-era classic The Knack… and How to Get It, and not forgetting of course, in a much more light-hearted vein, the eponymous title role in the enduring children’s TV series Mr Benn.

In between those stand-out roles there have been many other gems to savour. Another generation of children were treated to his narration of King Rollo, and in the mid-1980s he portrayed professional gambler Robbie Box in three series of the popular comedy drama Big Deal. A big screen adaptation of Dr Who alongside Peter Cushing, a sprinkling of cult classics such as Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased), The Avengers and an appearance in Carry On Abroad all add to the legend of course. Then of course there was the demanding role of Joe; second husband and eventual murderer of Albert Square’s terminally grumpy matriarchal golem Pauline Fowler in EastEnders. Yes, without a doubt Ray Brooks should be a name deservedly familiar to everyone.

As a veteran actor with all that work behind him, the fact that he isn’t a global megastar might possibly be a source of bitterness. For lesser actors perhaps, but Ray Brooks remains an affable and amiable chap, determined to experiment and persevere as his autobiography and recent debut novel reveal.  Prone to periods of introspection and reflection he may be, but certainly not outright melancholy.  That said though, in the late 1960s Ray was definitely in a much darker frame of mind.

In 1968 while out of work and apparently listening to James Taylor’s debut album more than is really healthy, Ray Brooks decided to attempt to write his own pop rock tunes. There is nothing remarkable about this, many actors and comedians of the era attempted a pop career, as this site testifies. What is remarkable is the direction that Ray’s rock album took. Not for Ray the traditional route of covering some jolly hits chosen by a record company committee or a quick run through of a string of annoyingly catch novelty comedy numbers. No, for Ray only a genuine self-penned melodic pop rock album would do.

The songs are almost all downbeat and melancholy, reflecting Ray’s state of mind and the prevailing taste of the era for introspection and intelligent composition. The title track Lend Me Some Of Your Time is a pleasing psych-folk tune which demonstrates immediately Ray’s ear for a tune and his adept ability to craft solemn meaningful lyrics. The song fits perfectly into the early 1970’s scene of earnest singer songwriters and Ray’s gravelly yet refined vocals demonstrate a competent musical ability lurking in the jobbing actor with pop aspirations. The song was released as a single in the US and its upbeat drive is atypical of what follows.

The opening track aside, there are but a few rare un-melancholic moments on the album. One notable example is the closing track of side one, Oh Carol. A love song with an up tempo beat, Ray really lets his hair down and grooves away to the accompanying electric guitars and horns. With some great lyrics that includes phrases such as ‘legs like sparrows’, it is a cheery end to the first side.

The upbeat feel doesn’t last long though. Elsewhere it is very much gloom and earnestness. The folk rock sound of the opener continues into the second track Without You. Here though the folksiness is used to conjure a mournful, snowy winter of a ballad. It is slow and sorrowful, largely acoustic and led by accomplished harmonies. It is this elegiac tone which sets the pace for much of the rest of the album. Sweet Emma, an autobiographical tale inspired by Ray’s young daughter, seems set in the same bleak wintery landscape of frost and despair. The task of dragging a moody cantankerous child around, undertaken by a downbeat, slightly depressed father, through funfairs and joyless circuses must be a familiar one to many parents. Well, to downbeat parents who wander seaside resorts in winter at any rate.

Similarly, Wish You Were Here is set in the dismal drabness of an out-of-season seaside resort, a desolate landscape lit by fading lights, the growing darkness settling over the sea. It is a scene no doubt redolent of Ray’s own Sussex childhood. The only faint hope in the song is offered by the rainbow at the end of the pier forming amidst the rain. Winter again seems to cast a shadow over Mary Loved Me, a reflection on a summer romance that is far removed from the upbeat world of Grease. There is no romantic reunion for Ray and Mary, predictably Mary is forgotten and lost forever.  Hush, Hush I’m Dying, as the title suggests is really really mournful, not just gloomy but quite hopelessly dejected. A sigh drifting unheralded into the swirling mists of time…

There is much to love amongst all the angst though. Only once does the album feel bitter, and that on the final track Guttersnipe, a portrayal of a scheming showbiz deviant, whose real identity I would be willing to guess would be fairly familiar.

Ray Brooks’ despondent lyrics though are not all the album has to offer. It wouldn’t be much of an album if it were. On tracks such as There’ll Be A Time, Ray’s angelic sounding vocals prove what true talent he possessed. Ray warbles and harmonises amidst some soaring plodding strings, with a sorrowful chorus reminiscent of early Bee Gees.  The music is spot on as well. Under the watchful eye of producer Ray Cameron (fresh from his success with Clive Dunn), a solid group of top session players back Ray’s vocal and interprets his creations to perfection.

Lend Me Some Of Your Time is an album that deserves a lot of playing and thoughtful gentle nodding. It has great introspective lyrics which demand many a contemplative listen.  It is so far removed from the usual slew of celebrity fronted albums of the period that it really does stand out. The sound of the album is suspiciously contemporary, it has stood the test of time well and with a CD re-release available from Ray’s shop, it deserves to sell well.

Here then is a taster for you. If you like it, or want to know more about this remarkable record by a remarkable actor (and singer) then get over to Ray’s site now:

Ray’s web site:
http://www.raybrooksbooks.com/