The Closest Thing To Crazy by Mike Batt (Nine Eight Books £22, 368pp)
The Closest Thing to Crazy is available now from the Mail Bookshop
Actually, I’ve got a dog called Womble,’ said Mike Batt’s greatest fan, the late Queen Elizabeth II. She also loved his song The Closest Thing To Crazy, which Terry Wogan regularly played on Radio Two, whilst Her Majesty was eating her breakfast.
Batt was invited to compose music for the Queen and Prince Philip’s Golden Wedding Anniversary, which was performed by the massed bands of the Coldstream, Grenadier, Scots, Irish and Welsh guards.
Fourteen Wombles, in military attire, marched past the Queen Mother during her Hundredth Birthday Parade.
Batt, frequently invited to receptions and sleep-overs at Buckingham Palace, was eventually invested as a Lieutenant of the Royal Victorian Order.
Otherwise, it hasn’t always been easy.
As Batt says in his rollicking memoir, ‘I’m too classical for the rock people and too rock for the classical people; too weird for the middle-of-the-road people, too middle of the road for the weird people.’
Nevertheless, he is unique, as if Gilbert, Sullivan and D’Oyly Carte have been rolled into one.
In 1979, Bright Eyes, Batt’s ballad from Watership Down, sung by Art Garfunkel, was No1 in ten countries, selling at a rate of 60,000 discs a day. Albums composed and produced for Katie Melua sold in their millions – just as well, as Batt spent £10million on her television advertising.
Batt has worked closely with The Hollies, Steeleye Span, David Essex, Cliff Richard, and he says of Sting: ‘It was amazing the way he just walked in, picked the most beautiful girl in the room and immediately disappeared upstairs.’
Despite all this activity, Batt remains best known for his Wombles theme tune: ‘Underground, overground, Wombling free, the Wombles of Wimbledon Common are we!’ It started when he was invited to compose the music for the five-minute stop-frame animated films, which were broadcast prior to the BBC1 evening news.
Refusing the £200 fee, Batt said he instead wanted the character rights for music-related activities.
The Wombles, who ‘resembled big fat mice with hats, scarves and other accessories’, recycled the rubbish left behind by humans, and they became, thanks to Batt, a national phenomenon.
By 1976, there were three gold albums and nine top 40 hits.
People loved the sheer silliness. Batt the Womble went on telly with Cilla and Bernard Cribbins. Joined by a Womble drummer, bassist and guitarist, Batt appeared on Top Of The Pops, queuing up backstage with Bowie and the Bay City Rollers. Signed by CBS, Womble records were bought by teenagers and adults alike. Fred Astaire made it known he approved of the number Wombling White Tie And Tails.
Royal Fan: Queen Elizabeth II was such a fan that she named her dog Womble
It was all ‘very financially lucrative’. Batt bought a Rolls-Royce containing a Bakelite phone. He was 25.
Born in Southampton, Batt was a musical prodigy who picked up tunes from the radio and could play them by ear. He sight-read orchestral scores and wrote lyrics, his inspirations being Shakespeare, Keats and George Formby.
Batt’s father, a borough civil engineer, who as a lieutenant colonel rebuilt Tobruk harbour, Libya, during the war, bought his son a grand piano, which dominated the front room.
By 17, Batt knew he wanted to be a songwriter: ‘I was going to break into the music business, whether the music business liked it or not.’
By the age of 19, Batt was a producer at Liberty/United Artists, with a secretary and a big office. He had a particular gift for string and brass arrangements, and he knew how to conduct.
Batt was soon working with the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band and organising recording sessions. This period was ‘thrilling, scary, exciting, and totally full of joy and energy’, even if everyone smelt of patchouli, this being the Sixties.
On the domestic front, Batt was enjoying numerous flings and ‘thinking about sex most of the day’.
His first wife was Wendy, a runner-up on Opportunity Knocks. They lived on a narrow-boat with a chemical toilet in Surrey. The marriage was, Batt says, a mixture of ‘euphoria and misery’.
To try to make it more of the former and ‘escape from the shadow of the Wombles’, Batt, his wife and their two children went on a two-year global voyage on a 200-ton steam yacht that had been built in 1931 by the man who invented Fox’s Glacier Mints.
The voyage involved ‘sadness, danger, discontent, and mystical scenes,’ ie dolphins and sunsets.
It was also an excellent way of getting through savings. ‘Uncomfortable calls were coming from the bank every day.’
Upon his return to Britain, and in among releasing his solo discs, Batt laboured at his masterpiece, writing the tunes, lyrics and orchestrations for a concept musical album inspired by Carroll’s nonsense poem, The Hunting Of The Snark.
John Gielgud received £5,000 for a morning’s work as the narrator. John Hurt came in eating whelks out of a bag. He was so drunk, his lines had to be re-done weeks later. George Harrison supplied guitar solos.
In 1987, there was a live concert version (with Billy Connolly) at the Royal Albert Hall, and four years later a full theatrical adaptation, costing £2.2million, opened in the West End.
The critics crucified Batt, making ‘personal attacks that spared no punches’. The show closed.
Batt, who lost a fortune, became ‘seriously clinically depressed’, and no wonder.
Pop icons: The Wombles had eight hit records in 1974 and 1975
T here is much catastrophe in The Closest Thing To Crazy. There is the tempestuous marriage, ‘which ultimately ended in an acrimonious and long overdue parting… constant court appearances and vicious legal correspondence.’ Then Batt is nearly killed when his car crashes into a concrete wall in Spain, snapping his neck. A brace is screwed into his skull and he is told he must remain immobile for four months, except two weeks later he is back conducting and directing a music video.
Finishing this ebullient autobiography, I felt it’s a wonder we are ever allowed to hear one note of music, as everyone involved in the business is madly disputatious – dodgy accountants, lawyers imposing unenforceable contracts, fellow artistes who steal your concepts, interfering producers (‘Every part of me wanted to tell them to get lost,’ writes Batt), distributors who won’t distribute (‘They killed our record by letting it go out of stock’) and companies who promise the earth and promptly go into liquidation.
So, all credit to Batt for his persistence. He remains a great entertainer. (And he has long been happily married to Julianne White, the actress from Sexy Beast.)
His book ought to be read in conjunction with the CD Mike Batt: The Penultimate Collection, which contains 34 classic tracks. Christmas present problems are instantly solved.
