This interview, focusing on the making of Playing with Nadine, was conducted by Nigel Schofield and published in the June 2024 edition of Tykes’ Stirrings.

 

NIGEL HAS SIX QUESTIONS FOR PAUL

 

Nigel: I started with a confusion. Paul tells us that Nadine was built by Hiroshi Tamura in 1971 and bought by Jake in 1972. Yet, alongside it is a letter of authenticity from Jake claiming to have bought it in Kitchen’s in 1966.First question: why the anomaly?

 

Paul: I think that the answer is straightforward and characteristic of the man: Jake was writing to entertain, so he wasn’t going to let the truth get in the way of a good story. He claims in the letter that Nadine was his first guitar, purchased in 1966, but he will have known that both statements are untrue. By 1966, he had already had a guitar for several years, and Nadine, as the label in her sound hole proves, was made in 1971. (She would also have been much too expensive an instrument for Jake to have bought on his schoolmaster’s modest salary in 1966.) The letter contains other flights of fancy, e.g. he claims to have two daughters, Nancy and Peggy, when in fact he only had sons. I suspect that Nancy Sinatra and Peggy Lee inspired his choice of names!

 

Nigel: How did you come to own Nadine?

 

Paul: At Les Barker’s funeral in 2023, Nadine’s owner, John Eeles, who acquired her at a charity auction forty years ago, bumped into John Watterson, my partner in crime on the Thackray biography, and explained that he was looking to sell her. John Watterson thought that I might be interested and put me in touch. Photos revealed that Nadine was in a sorry state, with cracks and scratches to her body and no machine heads, bridge or nut, but John Eeles assured me that she could be repaired. A few years earlier, I might not have been interested in buying her – I’ve never really been one for collecting memorabilia – but after years spent down the Thackray rabbit hole working on the book, I thought, ‘Why not?’ I was particularly taken by the fact that she came with Jake’s fanciful letter of authenticity. John and I agreed a price and the deal was done in a pub car park at the end of the M50, where Nadine (wrapped in bubble wrap) was exchanged for a wad of used notes. Heaven only knows what anyone watching might have thought!

 

I took Nadine straight to South Wales to Rick Irons, Jake’s brother-in-law, who had generously offered to repair her. He did a fantastic job and when I collected her two months later, I was delighted and relieved to find that she had a sweet voice and plays beautifully.

 

Nigel: What made you decide to go for a generous 26 tracks, rather than, say, the collected Jake obscurities?

 

Paul: Originally the album was only going to have 18 of my own songs on it. Having regularly performed my comic and satirical material alongside classics by Jake, Flanders and Swann, Tom Lehrer and Victoria Wood, last summer I did a show consisting entirely of my own writing, with my friend, Mark Wainwright, on string bass. Mark, who is a big Thackray fan (and great Thackray performer) loved my material; this, together with the audience’s response, gave me the confidence to make the album, which we recorded in his studio. The idea of including Jake’s songs came a little later. For several years I had wanted people to hear eight lost songs which I had unearthed while researching Beware of the Bull, and which have been unheard for decades. These were songs we didn’t even know existed when John Watterson and I recorded our album, The Lost Will and Testament of Jake Thackray. I found most of these ‘new’ lost songs in ITV programmes, languishing on tape in assorted film archives. Technical and licensing barriers mean that Jake’s performances may never see the light of day, despite the best efforts of The Jake Thackray Project. Given that I’d been performing the songs at Thackray events, it struck me that one solution would be to put out my own versions. Initially I was a little nervous at the idea of putting Jake’s songs alongside my own – might I be guilty of hubris? But, given that I’d found these lost songs, I play them all on Nadine, and my writing is influenced by Jake’s, it all somehow seemed appropriate.

 

Mark and I put a lot of thought into the sequencing of the tracks and we hope that it works well as a collection. We knew that we had a LOT of songs, and we could have put out two albums. However, I was keen to get all the material out and I like to give value for money.

 

Nigel: ‘Ode to Randy Newman’ strikes me as different from the rest of the album.

 

Paul: That’ll be the piano. I’m not a pianist, certainly not one good enough to record. I wrote the song after failed attempts to see Mr Newman. I managed to get tickets – twice – but then the shows were cancelled. I wrote the song, and as Newman fans will realise, built in a few song references. I planned to play it on guitar, Nadine, like the other tracks, but Mark, my producer, felt it would work better on piano. Despite my playing, I have to admit he was right!

 

Nigel: ‘The TISWAS Song’ was unexpected.

 

Paul: I don’t know how many people remember Jake being on Saturday morning kids’ TV. The very fact he was is an indication of the level of fame he achieved. I think you can still find the clip on YouTube… He suffers gunk and custard pies bravely, almost losing it at one point as he starts to laugh. His guitar suffers particularly badly in the onslaught, which I must say we were not tempted to replicate when we recorded the song.

 

Nigel: You have the perfect ending song, courtesy of Jake – ‘The Lost Property Song’

 

Paul: It’s both beginning and an end. It’s the last song on the album, as well as being the earliest song on the album. Jake wrote it while he was still teaching at Intake School. It was for a musical performed there called The Golden Ukulele. Luckily, one of his students, Ian Shaw, hung on to the script and remembered the tune. He was kind enough to share it. So, a song that could have been lost, like some of the other Jake songs here, was preserved. Very much a case of handing in lost property, as you say.