Chronicles of a Failed Wannabe

Part One

It was December 1975, a few days before Christmas, when the boss told us all to go to the Gregsons Well pub at lunchtime. He said that he had a very nice surprise for us all as a thank you for all of our hard work. We presumed that he was going to give us all a well-deserved and much-needed cash bonus.

Myself, Trevor, David, and Marylin, were the only employees in what was basically a family business. The boss's parents, W and J, were involved in the running of the firm, as was his wife, M. However, they were not going to be present at the pub. The only other person who was present was a co-director and company accountant, David.

We all presumed that the cash bonus to come was to be given to us, along with our final salary for the year. We were also all hopeful that the boss, Alan, was going to cover our Christmas lunch. At the allotted time, we were all present and correct sat around a small dining room small table. There was an air of happy expectation of what was to come. We never imagined for one moment that what we were about to receive would be beyond our wildest dreams.

Alan came into the room and stood close to the table we were all sitting at. He appeared even more ebullient than normal, no doubt in anticipation of demonstrating his own generosity.

David the co-director cum accountant rose to stand next to Alan. David bent forward to open his attache case which sat on top of the table. He lifted out four A4 manilla envelopes and handed one to each of us, myself, Trevor, David, and Marylin.

We each tentatively reached inside our envelopes and slid out a single sheet of paper that would change all of our lives forever. As we cast our eyes over the printed details on the sheet our jaws dropped and our eyes widened in a mixed expression of stunned shock and great surprise. This was far more than any of us could have ever expected. And to think that after almost two years of hard work, we were finally being rewarded with…

Before I tell you what the gift was, let me go back a little. I first met Alan sometime in the early seventies after I responded to an announcement in the Liverpool Echo. The short piece stated that the Liverpool Sound Studio was looking for new songwriting talent, and invited young wannabees with stars in their eyes, just like me, to go along to the studio on Stopgate Lane, in Kirby, for an audition. I went and I met the A and R Manager, Alan.

Alan was a portly, avuncular, chummy uncle sort of guy with a big friendly smile. And he immediately put me at my ease and recorded parts of a couple of songs I had written. I parted with my three pound audition fee and then parted company. I never heard any more from Alan nor the Liverpool Sound Studio and set about dealing with the pressing matter of a desperate need to earn a weekly wage as an apprentice motor mechanic in Knotty Ash.

In 1974, wandering around the city center looking for a new job, I found myself ambling along Cook Street and suddenly saw a big window poster advertising Stag Music. Intrigued a little I went inside and was met by none other than Alan. Alan almost immediately offered me a job as a record salesman and I accepted.

The job was based in a place called the Midland Chambers, near Everton, and consisted of me running around the whole of Merseyside in Alan's old green Volvo, trying to sell records to local record shops.

The job also involved doing outside recordings in pubs like the infamous Eagle and Child in Page Moss and running down to a multinational record pressing plant in Walthamstow, London. At other times I was a tea boy cum record sleeve fold and glue boy, and at one time, I was even pressed into wallpapering Alan's father's living room, on Princess Drive.

Stag Music had an excellent start on the local music scene and made many records for local bands, comedians, and cabaret acts. After about two years, the coffers at Stag Music were well and truly full.

One particular local band that made a big impression at Stag was a group of four young lads from the Wirral called 'New Attraction'. These lads were introduced to Ronnie Scott and Steve Wolf, who Alan had gotten to know when he was in London trying to make a name for himself as a pianist and singer-songwriter.

Scott and Wolf recorded New Attraction performing an album full of songs, got them kitted out in fashionable denim jeans and striped shirt outfits, got a load of publicity photographs done, and then sold the group on to the RCA record label.

New Attraction became Buster and went on to enjoy great success in the UK and in Australia, Germany, and Japan. The group had five hit singles and three highly successful albums.

At some point, just before the jerk of the knee that was to catapult Buster to fame and fortune, Alan decided to up sticks and follow Buster to where he thought the big money was. Back at Stag Music headquarters none of us employees were any the wiser as to what was to come next.

Ok, so back to that wonderful, noble act of Christmas generosity on the part of Alan, at the Gregsons Well pub.

When we opened those manilla envelopes and slid out that single sheet of paper, it was to discover that Alan had decided to reward all of our hard work for very little pay, with a share of the company!

We could not believe that we were now all, effectively, co-owners of Stag Music. At the age of just twenty one, I was over the moon at such amazing good fortune. Sadly, my ecstasy was as short-lived as a chocolate fireguard.

As it turned out we never got any cash bonus, nor indeed our last salary cheque. To cap it all, Alan disappeared with his wife M never to be seen again, along with all of the money in the company bank account. Myself, Trevor, David, and David the co-director, were left holding the can, as co-owners, now responsible for all of the missing money and company debts. We had all been well and truly set up as patsies.

Fortunately, the liquidators accepted our story of what had happened and we were let off the hook. However, we were still all out of a job, right at Christmas, and without our final salary cheque.

Before Christmas Day 1975, the doors to Stag Music were closed forever. On the 3rd of September 1977, I got married and that was the very last time I saw Trevor for forty years. I never saw any more of any of the other Stag Music employees ever again.

Many decades later, with the advent of the internet, I came across a piece about Alan with the story stating that he simply closed down Stag Music to spread his wings in London.

Not too many years ago, I did see something on the net about Alan being involved in education, pointing out to hopeful school kids the pitfalls of a music business full of sharks. I did wonder if he felt any sense of irony when he said that.

As for me, well in the aftermath of the Stag Music charade, I took myself to London to work for EMI. In the following years, I joined a theatre group performing operetta as a chorus line tenor (Calamity Jane, Vagabond King) and I formed a Cheshire-based folk duo with my lifelong friend, Andrew Lebeter.

In about 1990, I recorded my first album, Nobodies Pet (out now on Bandcamp).

In the nineties, I became a teacher of music as well as a part-time actor on Tv and in film. I appeared in pretty much all the famous soaps (Coronation Street, Brookside, Emmerdale Farm, etc) and series (Prime Suspect, Between the Lines, To Play a King, Hetty Wainthrop Investigates, etc.) I even managed to play a small part in the Beatles video 'Free as a Bird'. And I played a part in the film 'The Dresser', with Tom Courtney and Albert Finney.

In 2003, I moved to the south of Spain and became very much a part of the live performance and recording music scene, and I even opened my own piano bar, Yesterday. At about this time, I recorded my second album, Live and Unsigned, which is now out of print.

In 2014, I came across Mr. Lance Quinn, an American guitar virtuoso and producer (Bon Jovi, Ramones, Franky Valli, Petula Clark, Englebert Humperdink, Jimi Hendrix, etc, etc). Lance and I became a performing duo and co-producer/songwriter. I also worked as a talent scout and producer on my own account. I managed to tutor and produce one of my discoveries and got him to a standard where he appeared on La Voz (The Voice) on Spanish television, where he got through to the finals.

In 2014–15, I recorded my third album (Lost and Found, out now on Bandcamp) at Linden Recording Studios in Cumbria, UK.

Finally, in 2020, I was forced to retire due to ill health. However, now I am recovered to the point that I can look forward to performing once again in the not-too-distant future.

Part Two

And so I come to the world of entertainment, or to be more precise, the world of theatre, film, and television. In yet another change in my career. In 1995 I went to a private institute in Bubwith, in the north of Yorkshire, called ARTTS International. Now this one got going pretty darn nastily almost from the get-go.

This residential institute was owned and run by a psychopath called John Sichel. He had an impressive record in tv directing according to Wiki, but I was singularly unimpressed with his manner. As far as I was concerned the man could not direct spit into a bucket. I had booked in for a two-week course in film and tv (costing 500 pounds sterling) but after the first week, I was forced to leave due to this man's scarily threatening manner towards me, for absolutely no good reason at all.

I was in a small group of six, consisting of five females and me. And out of those six, by the end of the week, only two remained. Here's why.

I arrived at the institute on a Sunday afternoon and checked in and was shown to my quarters. I met the rest of my group and liked them all right from the very start. They were very friendly and warm and overall good fun.

The next morning we all got up and the ladies told me that they had been cold all night due to it being the back end of winter and very little bedding. They asked me if I would be their spokesperson and ask John Sichel if we could have some extra bedding.

I went outside to go to see John In his office, but just at that moment, I saw him crossing the yard to one of the other residential blocks. I called out to him and he stopped dead in his tracks. As I approached him he seemed to be normal. I told him the ladies in my group had said they had been cold during the night and so could we all have some extra bedding? For some reason, from his expression, I sensed that he was not best pleased with this intrusion.

"Go to my office and wait for me there," he ordered. I had no idea what was to come next, it was truly shocking.

I went to his office and sat on a low sofa at the back of what seemed like a waiting area. Within a few minutes the enormous monster of a man, much taller than me at over six feet tall. He slammed the door and strode over to me in what I can only describe as an aggressive manner. Then he started to boom at me with a thunderous vexed voice.

"Right!" he said. "I know what you are up to, I know your sort, and I am here to tell you that I will NOT tolerate it, not for one moment."

At that moment he was being so scary I looked down at the floor like a guilty, chided schoolboy.

"Will you look at me boy, I want to see those eyes. How dare you look at the floor when I am speaking to you."

I slowly raised my gaze upwards and found myself looking into a pair of hard, unfeeling eyes that looked like they were about to kill me. It was a chilling moment

"Now you get out of my office right now, and let me hear no more from you during your stay here," he ordered angrily.

I stood to leave. However, he suddenly blocked my path out of his office. He grabbed a side door and swung it wide open. It was a little side office with some middle-aged blond woman sitting at a desk.

"Now here's my witness…." he said as he looked at the woman. Lord only knows what she thought of all this, or maybe she was used to it.

To her, he said, "….you heard him didn't you, you heard what he said, did you not?" The woman meekly nodded. "Now get out!" he snarled. Then he stepped to one side to let me pass. I could not get away quickly enough.

I had not said a single word for that blond woman to hear, not a word passed my lips. Indeed, I'm not sure if even so much as a soft breath had come from my mouth. What in the hell was this sick idiot on about?

I was in such shock I could not even go back to the girls. I just took myself for a long walk down some lane at the side of the campus. Later on, I met up with the girls and told them what had happened. They were as shocked as I was. What in tarnation was the man's problem? What sort of person did he think I was? What was he going to say to somebody, anybody, about what I was supposed to have said? Who knows what goes on in a sick narcissistic mind?

One of the girls told us that she had done some research on John Sichel and that he had been blackballed by the BBC, as well as by other tv companies around the world. What for, we could only guess.

At this point, I was all for walking away from this horror, but the girls pleaded with me to stay, so stay I did, more is the pity. As the week wore on, things just did not seem right. There was a very subdued atmosphere around the place, as if everyone was in fear of the man.

Two other things began to bother me. First, the man began to stalk me. In the mornings I would go for an early morning walk to clear my head. The second day I suddenly felt I was being secretly watched, I was.

After turning around the corner of one block I stopped and looked back. John Sichel suddenly appeared behind me and just as suddenly dived back around the corner out of sight, like he had been caught doing something he should not have been doing. This went on every morning for the rest of the week.

Another strange thing that happened was things began to disappear from my room. Then they mysteriously reappeared two days later. What the hell this was all about I really do not know. Who took them and what for I don't know. If it was theft, why put them back two days later? Pretty weird stuff if you ask me.

In the end, I could take no more. I told the girls the following Sunday evening I was going and they fully understood. As we stood there chatting in the carpark somebody from somewhere in the darkness began to throw rocks at us, or maybe it was just at me. It was time to go.

On Monday morning I called John Sichel from the safe distance of my home to tell him I had left, and he did not sound very pleased.

"Well if you demand your money back, I will report you to your sponsor and tell them exactly what sort of a person you are and what you got up to, I've got my witnesses."

What the hell was this fool on, I wondered. I had asked a perfectly civilised question about extra blankets, and that was all I did. I was in such shock with the horrendous verbal on-slaught and Kafka-esque false accusations, the worrying stalking, and things going missing out of my room…I couldn't even concentrate on the course activities required of me. I was on high alert the whole time I was there.

To this day I did not know what the devil that was all about. It was as if I had stumbled into some mental institution and bumped into its most seriously mentally ill, bull goose loony, patient. And to think, he was running the show! This was far beyond narcissism, this was bona fide, off the bloody scale, scary as hell mental breakdown.

A few months later I found myself chatting to a retired BBC programme editor and asked if he knew anything about John Sichel. The elderly man said softly, almost tremulously, for fear of being overheard "Yes, a very bad lot I'm afraid. I remember him well. I can't say too much, but he is somebody who we speak of very little and only in hushed tones, and it is not out of respect or reverence." All I could come up with was that John Sichel was a troubled, scary, narcissistic, psychopath. And I genuinely felt at the time that my life was at risk if I stayed one day more.