Magazine


Flying picket chips in with a Manchester musical treat

by George Dodds
23/ 6/2005

YOU might think that G4 were breaking new ground when they took a perfectly fine song (Bohemian Rhapsody) and turned it into an unaccompanied dirge but you would be wrong ... the Flying Pickets were doing it in 1983 only with conspicuously more success.

The self-proclaimed leading pop a-cappella group - well they certainly knocked spots off Darts to my mind so the title is theirs - spent five weeks at number one with a cover of Yazoo's Only You and so was launched a career which churns out albums and tours Europe to this day.

For 13 years Tees-sider Hereward Kaye was one of the band's most visible ba-da-be-da-dar-ers, neatly dovetailing his harmony singing by collaborating with some of the biggest names in theatre and film such as Alan Bleasedale (Are you Lonesome tonight?), Willy Russell (Dancing Through the Dark) and John Godber (Cramp).

While he ploughed his furrow in 2000 the streets of Rochdale and Salford were being transported back to 1960s Eccles as the BBC filmed a major Sunday night serial around the rise of the Ice Cubes - tipped as the next big thing - and the effect of stardom on teenage twins Ellie and Arden.

But, despite the stellar talents of Sue Johnson, Phil Daniels and David Threlfall, Sex, Chips and Rock 'n' Roll turned into a bit of a clunker.

Undeterred Debbie Horsfield (who went on to write Cutting It and Making Out) teamed up with Kaye to turn the show into a musical which gets its premiere at the Royal Exchange next week.

A live band and original score will back Tracie Bennett (Sharon Gaskell in Coronation Street), Elaine Glover (Footballers Wives) and Emma Williams (fresh from playing Truly Scrumptious in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang).

So dust off the drainpipes, pull on your blue suede shoes and roll back to 1965.


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