That Close

by Suggs

  So the prospects for the Sunday, the day of the concert, weren’t looking too good. But when we got there in the afternoon it actually stopped raining. It’s a mad phenomenon, but in the last ten years or so every time Madness play, no matter how wet the festival or the occasion, it seems to stop raining when we turn up. People are actually now paying us to turn up at festivals, not to play but just in the hope that the rain will stop.

  It was a very jolly atmosphere backstage, we did our rehearsal, and then the day drew on without anything really dramatic happening. We just sat around waiting. The call came just as it was starting to get dark, about half eight, and we basically followed the same procedure as before. We got in the golf buggies, went up the staff entrance, as it were, so to speak, and once again up the rickety ladder. But of course it was a completely different view when we got out on the night for the concert itself. To be greeted by the sight of I don’t know how many people. They’d built an auditorium around the Victoria Monument, and you could see right down the Mall and it was the most extraordinary sight. That’s when it really hit home what the hell we were doing: standing on the roof of Buckingham Palace.

  I remember there was an audible gasp when the graphics we’d arranged were beamed onto the palace, via seventy-five projectors, which made it look like it had fallen down and been replaced by a block of flats. It was more than a little ironic, seeing as how we’d all spent a considerable proportion of our lives standing on the roofs of blocks of flats. In fact it was a similar view up there from the top of the flats I used to live in in Clerkenwell. The reaction to our performance was incredible, and the whole thing went in a flash, as things of this enormity seem to do. The next thing we were piling down the stairs and they told us they wanted the band to join the finale with Paul McCartney, singing ‘Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da’, not anyone’s favourite of all The Beatles songs, but at least the lyrics weren’t too challenging.

  Then it got even more bizarre because we were ushered into a tent where we were due to meet the Queen, and it was at that point our keyboard player, Mike, started having a bit of a moment. He was going, ‘Look, there’s Stevie Wonder. There’s Paul McCartney. And there’s the Queen. What are we doing here?’ It all started to get a bit much.

  ‘Hang on in there, we’re nearly there.’ The surrealism was becoming overwhelming for all of us, and then the Queen came along the line and was suddenly standing in front of me. I didn’t really have a clue what I was going to say. I just spontaneously said: ‘’Scuse me, ma’am, but are you still into football?’ She said, ‘Not particularly,’ and I replied, ‘Can I have your Cup Final tickets then?’ Quick as a flash she said, ‘That’s Tommy Cooper.’ Although it’s a famous moment from an old Royal Variety performance, it was extraordinary that she could remember, it must have been fifty-odd years ago. I refrained from sticking a tea bag in her top pocket and saying, ‘Have a drink on me.’

  Then Charles came along and he was very nice. I’ve seen him around a few times, at various Prince’s Trust dos. And then Camilla came along and she was very charming indeed. I said to her that in all honesty I thought Charles made a great speech about how proud he was to be British and how proud he was of his mum.

  In fact I had dinner with Prince Charles shortly after that – it’s like I’ve suddenly become a friend of the royal family. I was doing a bit of my one-man show and giving out some awards for Business in the Community which Prince Charles is involved in and I got a missive asking whether I’d like to have dinner with him afterwards. A most bizarre situation. It was during the meal that he asked how I prepare for my one-man show, and I asked how he prepares for a speech like the one he gave at the Jubilee concert. He said people give him miles of notes and he just throws them all away. He goes on a walk or has a bath and it all comes to him instinctively, which inspired me on stage to tell the story about when Madness played at the first-ever Prince’s Trust Awards, and our saxophonist, Lee, was dressed as Gary Glitter. Prince Charles came down the line and Kid Jensen was before me. Kid Jensen?

  Anyway, Charles got to Lee and he said, ‘I say, you look great. Who have you come as? Batman?’ Of course this was a time when you still could dress as Gary Glitter, silver cape and all, amongst a group of kids.

  So we got to meet the Queen, and then we got invited to a party in what they call the Bow Room. There were lots of princes wandering around, and princesses with slightly more hair. And as I say, Stevie Wonder, Paul McCartney, Elton John, Grace Jones and all those iconic figures. Our families, my wife and kids. It was big enough, but not too big to feel like a crush. Fantastic champagne and canapés were flowing and flying. But it was a roomful of people all being elbowed by their wives to go and say hello to other people being elbowed by their wives to go and say hello to other people being elbowed by their wives. A room full of people saying hello and not much else.

  And who have you come as? Kid Jensen?

  My two daughters, Scarlett and Viva, spotted will.i.am and said, ‘Dad, you’ve got to go and say hello to will.i.am.’ He was talking to William, so I strolled over there. Prince William turned on his heels and walked straight away, so I flapped around trying to chat to will.i.am, not knowing a huge amount about what he does. I looked round to see my daughters had also run away. I don’t think he was particularly chuffed that I’d ruined his conversation with Prince William. I skulked away.

  I had a plastic cup I’d brought from the dressing room and I unconsciously dropped it on the floor, completely oblivious to the fact I wasn’t in my dressing room. Princess Beatrice picked it up and said, ‘You can’t do that. This is my granny’s house.’ I was dropping litter in Buckingham Palace. The party was over by half twelve. It was a very jolly occasion.

  The impact of our performance was immense and the next day my record company said, ‘Suggs, we’d like you to go back and do some interviews while the media is still there.’ My management were worried none of the other artists would turn up, it would be a bit quiet and I’d be on my own. The BBC had arranged to meet me outside Marks & Spencer’s on Piccadilly. When I arrived I realised the ridiculousness of what had been said. We’re going to meet somewhere quiet, I know, Piccadilly Circus! What they also forgot was that the Queen actually had another parade down the Mall, so in fact there were thousands of people there.

  I ended up in this rather strange situation of trying to get across the Mall to where the BBC’s outside broadcast was situated. The police made a break in the fencing and the crowd let me through and burst into a spontaneous chorus of ‘Our House’. As I tried to cross the road suddenly the Household Cavalry appeared careering down the Mall, so I was stuck in the middle of one’s street. They had closed the gates behind me and I had the cavalry charging towards me with thousands of people singing ‘Our House’ on either side. What an unassuming and subtle entrance.

  Our performance on the roof of Buckingham Palace had a weirdly strong effect on people and seemed to have more impact on the general public than almost anything else we’d done. I think it was the combination of singing ‘Our House’ and turning the palace into a block of flats, and maybe because we sang ‘It Must Be Love’. I mean, nothing more, nothing less, love is the best. Who’s gonna go for that? And yes, the lead is still intact.

  CLOSING CEREMONY

  Shortly before we’d been asked to play at the Jubilee we got a call asking if we’d like to play at the closing ceremony of the Olympics, whatever next? We went down for a meeting at Three Mill Studios in Hackney. It was all top secret and hush-hush, and we had to sign all sorts of bits of paper saying we wouldn’t divulge any of the things that we’d learnt. And in their office was a huge mock-up of the set of the closing ceremony, which was a sort of wonky version of London.

  They explained to us there’d be a huge traffic jam involving lorries and Minis and vintage cars, and then Michael Caine would go ‘I only told you to blow the bloody doors off,’ at which point there’d be a huge explosion with trucks blowing up and people flying in all direction
s, and street parties emanating out of the backs of all these lorries, and on one of these trucks would be us and we’d be playing ‘Our House’.

  They wanted this song because of the street-party vibe: they were keen to create the notion that the whole world had been invited into our house. It all seemed terribly exciting, although we weren’t sure what was happening before or after our bit, cos it was secret, as I say. So that was all great, and it was about two months before the ceremony itself.

  But we’d already agreed that we’d play ‘Our House’ at the Jubilee. What other song would you be singing on the top of Buckingham Palace? We tried to proffer the idea of doing ‘House of Fun’, but the fact that it’s about a teenage kid buying Durex in a chemist’s probably wasn’t the best celebration to the end of the Queen’s party.

  So then we had a bit of a problem. The people at the Olympics were getting really fed up because they’d already got us to do ‘Our House’, and they were a bit worried that the Jubilee was going to upstage the final ceremony of the Olympics – would people want to hear us playing it twice? We ended up compromising by playing half of ‘Our House’, going into ‘It Must Be Love’ on the roof of Buckingham Palace, and we agreed that we’d do the whole of ‘Our House’ on the back of a lorry, driving in and out of this traffic jam.

  The next thing, we actually had the dress rehearsal. We presumed it wasn’t going to be in the Olympic Stadium, cos by now the Olympics were already in full flow, unlike the opening ceremony, where obviously the events hadn’t begun – it would be very difficult to sneak in and out of the main stadium whilst the games were in progress.

  We were given an address in Dagenham which turned out to be the old Ford factory. It was a bit like a scene from The Avengers. We got down there, and there were lots of circus tents and marquees approximating the kind of buildings that would be utilised for the backstage area. In the middle of the car park of the old factory they’d marked out an exact scale replica of the Olympic Stadium and the running track.

  We had the most bizarre experience of pretending that we were in what might possibly be the most glamorous setting in the world rather than in the car park of a disused car factory, with a motorway running along beside us. So we just wobbled round the outer perimeter on the open truck singing ‘Our House’. The only thing we did know was that we were going to come right past the Queen and, Lee, our sax player, was going to take off and fly, à la ‘Baggy Trousers’ all those years ago. He was threatening to wear a kilt.

  We knew the Grenadier Guards were going to play ‘Park Life’, The Pet Shop Boys were going to play and there was to be a top-secret, superstellar guest before the whole thing transferred to an enormous concert that was going to take place in Hyde Park. We also knew there would be some sort of formality in handing over the Olympics to the Brazilians, but we weren’t sure what form that would take. So the whole thing was a rather intriguing and exciting affair.

  We were all discussing what we were going to wear, which seemed a rather important thing considering 75 billion, or something, people were going to be watching us, and there was a thought that we should all wear grey suits and black turtleneck jumpers as we had on one of our album covers. That obviously fell to pieces, as it always does with the band trying to organise anything collectively. I thought: Yes, I would like a grey suit. I’d like a really nice grey mohair suit. I thought: Yes! what I’d like to do is represent the best of British tailoring.

  I went to see Gresham Blake the tailor, and they had this fantastic three-ply grey mohair, and there I was again, wearing a mohair suit. Not aquamarine this time, but paired with a fantastic Vivienne Westwood tie with a very subtle sort of punk exploding Union Jack on it. Then I waited to hear what the hell the rest of the band were going to wear.

  TELEVISION CENTRE

  The closing of the Queen’s Jubilee party, the closing of the Olympic Ceremony and now the closing of the BBC, well, Television Centre. Jesus.

  ‘It Must Be Love’ recently replaced Whitney Houston’s ‘I Will Always Love You’, as the song of choice at weddings and indeed funerals, and it would now seem Madness are the band of choice when it comes to the closing of institutions.

  We’ve been described recently as ‘National Treasures’ and, more incredibly, as a ‘National Institution’. Acceptance, you may think, might have alerted us to the fact, now very obvious to the naked eye, that we are in the business of closing ‘National Institutions’. Your local hospital, the post office, Cyprus, the EU. What have you got? We’re cheap, and open to offers.

  When the BBC in their wisdom, started moving huge chunks of radio and TV from the greatest city on the planet, much to the consternation of most of its ten million inhabitants, to Manchester, the writing was on the wall for TV Centre in White City.

  With the announcement finally made, the inevitable Mad sign appeared over the skies of North London. We got a call from Mark Cooper, the head of music, a jolly nice chap we’d worked with over the years on a number of shows, including the best music show on TV: Later with Jools.

  We liked Mark, and more importantly, unlike a lot of execs at the BBC, he liked us. He phoned to ask if we would be interested in playing at TV centre, on the night they (the men in grey) came to close the place down.

  It was a beautiful, typically British spring evening, at the end of March, as we shot from the Mad Cave under our waterfall, headed for the Westway.

  Our branded, pimped up Bedford van, sailing above the smoking chimney pots of Notting Hill, up and over the three-lane overpass to the west.

  The rain and sleet lashing horizontally across the windscreen as the swirling wind buffeted our over-loaded van in and out of the oncoming traffic.

  Hilarity, fear, bravado?

  We had fortunately just handbrake turned off the Westway, skidding to a halt in the desolation of what was once the Blue Peter garden. We piled out the back of the Mad Mobile, mad, ready for retributional action, the wind slamming both van doors behind us.

  We fanned out across the car park ready for anything. Anything.

  No discernible enemy approached.

  But, as we unlink our arms and begin to relax …

  … our stage has not been erected in the Later with Jools studio as presumed, but in the car park in front of us.

  Jesus Christ! The whole thing is about to take off.

  From a gaggle of cameramen and crew done up like eskimos, Mark enthusiastically bounds towards us. ‘What do you reckon, lads?’ His words barely audible as the wind whips them away, ‘Great, eh? looks like a spaceship.’

  Which, we had to admit, it did. The only problem with our space rocket stage, was it looked like it was really about to take off. With us on it.

  At six o’clock The One Show was going live. A series of interviews from the great and the good, past and present with tales of the old goings on at TV Centre down the years, in which Cathal and I were to be included. The set was laid out in the faux-living-room format beloved of all teatime TV. Potted plants, shelves with comedy nick-nacks. A coffee table set with newspapers and empty branded mugs. Around which, two sofas were placed at right angles. One for the hosts, Chris Evans and the Welsh girl, Alex, and one for the guests.

  And yes, if you haven’t already guessed, the whole thing was outside. Brilliant! Pot plants flying about all over the gaff, script pages whirling about in a mini tornado. The Welsh girl’s hair at right angles. Chris manfully shouting at the wobbling camera.

  Cathal and I were in the corridor, taking off our coats, ready to weather the storm. Standing in front of Sir Michael Grade and behind Sir Terence Wogan in the queue of anecdotalists. Terry was not best pleased, to say the least, as he was plunged out through the swing doors and onto the disintegrating set, his hair blowing about like a horse-hair mattress on a bonfire.

  On the set the only thing we managed to hear was the Welsh girl shouting, ‘Will you shut up!’ Terry and I grumbled cheerfully at the ridiculousness of it all. Amongst the flying nick-nacks.
<
br />   Sir Tel was still ranting off script, oblivious to any questions, at the stupidity of closing Television Centre, as Cathal and I were ushered toward the stage to perform our first number over the closing credits of the, now completely out of control, One Show. ‘The night they closed the old BBC down, all the people were singing …’

  On stage it could not have been any colder. (Well, that’s not completely accurate, we did play at Edinburgh Castle on New Year’s Eve once, up to our ears in snow. As the bells heralding the new year rang, the first words heard on live radio in 2009 were, ‘Fuck me!’)

  The last band ever to play at the BBC Television Centre!

  Flashbacks a go-go, the stuff which hummed through school playgrounds for the entire lunch break. Bob Marley, with mini locks and Peter Tosh and them bug-eyed specs and bobble hat; ‘Concrete Jungle’, The Sensational Alex Harvey Band, Next, Roxy Music, more bug-eyed specs: What’s her name? Virginia Plain! With Whispering Bob’s horrified face appearing in the middle of the frame, whispering, ‘If this is the future of rock and roll, then I’m off.’ We all cheered. David Bowie, Star Man, indeed. Slade, blow-up banana drum sticks. Cum on feel the noize! Cockney Rebel, bowler hat, Judie Teen. Dexys with the back drop of ‘Jocky Wilson’. The Jesus and Mary Chain, backs to camera. Millions of the things all colliding together like a technicolour steam train. Almost every thing that ever meant anything to me, happened here. Tommy Cooper, Max Wall, Krapp’s Last Tape, Match of the Day, for Christ’s sake!