Claims to Fame.
For those who don’t know, this was a running gag on ‘Wake Up to Wogan’, where people with strange names like Mick Sturbs, Norma Stitts, or Rudolph Hart, wrote in with their ‘Claim to Fame’ – like they once had their foot trodden on by Henry Cooper, or had once stood in the next urinal to Frank Sinatra.
In the early sixties Tin Pan Alley hijacked the type of music my contemporaries had to search for a decade earlier, and what they now called Trad Jazz was all over the place like a rash. One of the new bands, following in the furrows originally ploughed by the likes of Ken Collier and Chris Barber, was appearing at Plymouth Guildhall, and nipping into the bar for a pre-concert snifter I was surprised to see the Clarinet player sitting alone at the bar, while the rest of his band were laughing together at the other end of the room.
I felt a bit sorry for him, and years later Terry Wogan informed his millions of Radio 2 listeners that the strangely-named Eddie Stonelight’s Claim to Fame, was that he had once bought Acker Bilk a Gin and Lime.
(There you are Clint, I’ve baited the hook. I wonder if we get any bites?)
For those who don’t know, this was a running gag on ‘Wake Up to Wogan’, where people with strange names like Mick Sturbs, Norma Stitts, or Rudolph Hart, wrote in with their ‘Claim to Fame’ – like they once had their foot trodden on by Henry Cooper, or had once stood in the next urinal to Frank Sinatra.
In the early sixties Tin Pan Alley hijacked the type of music my contemporaries had to search for a decade earlier, and what they now called Trad Jazz was all over the place like a rash. One of the new bands, following in the furrows originally ploughed by the likes of Ken Collier and Chris Barber, was appearing at Plymouth Guildhall, and nipping into the bar for a pre-concert snifter I was surprised to see the Clarinet player sitting alone at the bar, while the rest of his band were laughing together at the other end of the room.
I felt a bit sorry for him, and years later Terry Wogan informed his millions of Radio 2 listeners that the strangely-named Eddie Stonelight’s Claim to Fame, was that he had once bought Acker Bilk a Gin and Lime.
(There you are Clint, I’ve baited the hook. I wonder if we get any bites?)
