Tommy Steele

Oh, it was a film and I taped it off the telly and I taped it for Adam so I knew he liked it.

It was Tommy Steele in a film called Where's Jack?

It's

gone back a while.

Yeah.

It was on telly so I taped it.

Is he dead? Tommy Steele's dead, yeah.

How

Did he do the Blitz and stuff? Did he do the other stuff?

Blitz was, he was involved with, he wrote all the Tommy Steele songs, Rock with the Caveman, a handful of songs, Little White Ball.

He was probably the guy that was saying, I think what you're after is this, you know.

He said these semitonal kind of things.

Yeah, it was at the piano then.

My dad was playing it.

There's a nice link because Lionel Bart obviously, you know, wrote for Cliff Richard in those early days, Living Dole and Tommy Steele as well with Guy's dad.

But the other guy who wrote for Cliff Richard and wrote the first, it was Ian Samuel who wrote the first ever British rock and roll record.

in, uh, 19- about 1975.

In 1983 I went to the London Palladium to see Singing in the Rain and it had Sir Tommy Steele in it.

He must be getting up to nearly 90, wouldn't he?

Uh, half a sixpence?

Did he?

And performed in the Tivoli and that's the last time I heard of him was when he was in Australia back in the 1980s and he had to go back to England for family reasons and I haven't heard of him for years.

How old would he be now, Sir Tommy Steele?

Oh, you've gotta say he's gotta be well and truly, you would imagine, into his 80s as well.

So obviously the guitarist is not...

Johnny Marr but it's a really good band and they've been fucking coining it for years and actually I don't want to but we know a guy who's in a Billy Joel tribute act that tours the States and elsewhere and I reckon he must be coining it in because in America everyone loves Billy Joel don't they he's basically America's the closest thing you could compare it to is he's America's Tommy Steele isn't he

Yeah, even if he's not coining it in, he's making a decent living out of it, probably.

And to make a decent living out of going around pretending to be Billy Joel, can't argue with that at all.

And when you see Georgie coming out of this kind of a show business, world his aunts and uncles would gather around they had this little hook up around a radio where they connected a microphone to the radio and they would be pretending to sing over the radio fantastic but you get a sense of how being a performer and uh for your friends locally was just sort of embedded in who he was

And Parnes, the guy who christens Tommy Steele and Billy Fury and all these great punchy,

Showbiz.

It was showbiz.

we're gonna get it uptight yeah everything is gonna be all right got to have a good time now

come on So, we've got Tommy Steele and the Steelmen.

1957.

With a little song called Shiralee.

with me.

Cha-cha-cha.

Yeah, Tommy Steele with The Steelmen and one entitled Shirley.

So we're back into the 60s next.

No one's good as limericks as I am.

[laughs] Steve said he did get all the mechanical music pretty much the same time as you did spookily, but when you were singing the songs, he thought you sounded like Tommy Steele.

He's then said-

All right then

... because we're younger than him, we might not know who Tommy Steele is.

I know who Tommy Steele is.

But of course we do.

Did he do Dizzy?

Three songs in the British chart this week, or today, in 1961.

Gary US Bonds and Quarter to Three, The Temperance Seven and Pasadena, and Tommy Steele and a song called The Writing on the Wall.

Now, on the subject of this...

Well done to Stuart in Cornwall, Susie in Southampton, David H, Richard G, all have the right answer.

reckon.

33 for Tommy Steele.

We need Matty Hill here to call the race.

Who's in front, him or O'Sullivan? Could be a nose hair, isn't it? Bryce is on the road.