ISBN 0 7206 1153 9
Music/Biography
240pp
cased
£18.95
available

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All the Moves (But None of the Licks)

Foreword - John Peel

It wasn’t all that long ago that I sat in a BBC theatre and listened as a man told a simply hilarious story about the late John Walters and myself. Members of the audience rocked in their seats at the telling of the tale. I even laughed myself. It was a really good story. The trouble was that it was almost completely untrue. Did the teller, I wondered as I chortled unattractively, know that the story was untrue? Had he decided to sacrifice veracity in the search for a winning anecdote – something Walters himself might, on occasion, have done? I wanted to leap to my feet, to tell the truth, to let the other people in the room know that I had never, ever in all of my life dressed as Tom the cat, although Walters and I did spend an evening in mouse costumes at a party at which we were the only people in fancy dress. But who would have believed me?

I don’t know what stories Clive is about to tell you in this, his book. Perhaps it is better that I don’t. But if he tells you anything other than that I am kind and generous and good and, in certain lights, not unattractive, I should treat what he has written with a pinch of salt. I have asked him to underplay my heroism on the banks of the Imjin River all those years ago, though.

I understand, too, that there are sections of Clive’s narrative that contain no mention of me at all. I have asked him to ensure that the book will appear in the shops with these sections clearly marked so that you can hurry by them.

Clive and his Shurley have, for thirty-five years now, encouraged me in most of the correct decisions I have made and attempted to persuade me against making most of the incorrect decisions. It is because of them that I declined the chance to play a role in a production of The Rocky Horror Show in Stoke-on-Trent.

I owe them much more than this foreword.

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