WEEKLY WORD – WHAT A SAD LOSS

publication date: Jul 10, 2007

by John Bailey

I’ve just heard the sad news. George Melly, musician and angler has passed away. Of course, a man as larger than life as George Melly was always going to attract attention. His bohemian lifestyle. His hedonistic bent. His musical genius. His ability to tell a tale. And that face, always a-wrinkled with fun and the pleasure of living. I have my own personal story of George Melly. One, I like to think, that shows what the man was truly, really like. Often it’s the small things that give the true nature of someone away. It’s rather like Steve Coppell, the former England and Manchester United winger and now manager of Reading Football Club. Twenty years or so ago when his career ended I sent a cheque for some ten or twenty pounds – I can’t remember now – to Old Trafford for the guy’s presumed testimonial. But there was no testimonial. Four or five months later I received a letter from my bank with the cheque enclosed uncashed. Along with a two thousand word letter from Coppell himself thanking me for my generosity and saying what a wonderful life he’d had in football. What grace, what dignity, what a decent man.

Just like George Melly. On this occasion I’d been commissioned by Radio Four to produce an hour long special for the Kaleidoscope programme on the life of Isaak Walton. It was a dream job for a week. I got to travel to all Walton’s haunts and talk to some of our present-day heroes who have a special affection for him – Graham Swift author of Waterland, for example, and David Profumo, I seem to remember. It was all an absolute delight. And last up was George Melly. George was to talk about his love for fishing, the fact that he’d sold works of art to pay for Welsh salmon pools and what Walton meant to him.

I arrived at the great man’s house in West London and had my eyes well and truly opened. There was an inordinate amount of laughter, booze and general devilment going on. The house seethed with attractive people, male, female and indeterminate! And at the centre of all this hubbub, George reigned supreme. He welcomed me and my recordist with the utmost of charm. We were plied with booze. We were made to feel totally at home. The interview began and it ran as smoothly as you’d like. For thirty minutes, George waxed lyrical, needing only the fewest, most paltry of prompts from yours truly. I was mesmerised. He transported me. The recordist and I nodded, thumbs-up, job done. A wrap. We went to the door. Only on the steps, on the way out did I realise that something was wrong. The sound recordist, on only his second or third job, had, somehow, neglected to insert a tape!

Heart in mouth, I knocked on the door. George himself opened it. He’d only just retreated down the hallway. Blushing, stammering, we explained our predicament. To huge hilarity. George threw his head back and roared. He embraced us both, took us back to the same room, opened a further bottle of wine and we did the whole thing, a second time, from the top. And, believe it or not, he was even better this time round. He never repeated himself. He never told the same joke. It was all fresh as a daisy. He then made us sit down, replay four or five minutes, confirm that we were satisfied and he bid us farewell a second time.

Since then, it’s been my privilege – if you can call it that – to meet a lot of so-called celebs. Some have been fantastic. Some have been fine. Some have been so-so. A few I would never want to meet again without a gun in my hand!

But George Melly was one of the best of the lot. Bless you wherever you are.