Tommy’s not planning to Steele the show

Nov 16 2007 by Philip Key, Liverpool Daily Post

Philip Key talks to one of the greatest troupers in showbusiness as he prepares to star in Dr Dolittle

THAT cheeky grin has never left him, the eyes shine brightly, and he looks two decades short of his official 70 years. Tommy Steele seems to have discovered the secret of eternal youth.

Maybe it’s just his capability for always finding something new in his career, pop star, musicals, films, one-man shows, even sailor – he has tried them all.

His latest assignment is as star of the stage version of the film musical Doctor Dolittle – although, as he quickly points out, his stage show is nothing like the film.

Indeed, it has been rewritten by the original writer, Leslie Bricusse, with Steele in mind.

There are new songs and some of the old ones have been cut.

Tommy was back in Liverpool to do a spot of tub-thumping before the arrival of the musical at the Liverpool Empire on December 6 for a Christmas season.

He was delighted to be back in a city which he loves and which has loved him back. Most famously, he donated his statue of Eleanor Rigby to the city, and it is now one of the most visited and photographed of all the Beatle tourist spots.

Well, Tommy has a lot to thank Liverpool for.

For the Bermondsey-born lad, it was the city where he had has first job in the Merchant Navy, sailing out of the Mersey for overseas adventures.

He still visits the friends he made on those voyages every time he returns.

“There was a time when I thought ships had all-Liverpool crews,” he laughs. Every ship he sailed on had a predominance of Liverpool sailors “and maybe the odd Scot”.

He was like a duck out of water when he did his first training, he recalls. He was the only Londoner and there was a farmer’s boy from Norfolk. “We were the only two people who spoke normally,” he says.

“The rest were Scousers from Liverpool or Mushes from Southampton. That’s what we called them, a Scot was a Jock, Irish a Mick and there was nothing for a Londoner. No, hold on, we were called Smokies.”

He reckons he became so expert on the Liverpool accent he could tell which part of Liverpool each Scouser he met came from.

Although it was while singing in a London coffee bar that he was discovered, Liverpool certainly played an important role in two different parts of his career. “I never had a career plan, I had career luck,” he says. The first came in 1956, the year of his first hit, Rock With the Caveman. “That was written by Lionel Bart and we did it as a comedy song.”

In Christmas of that year, he rolled up at Liverpool’s Royal Court Theatre to appear in his first pantomime, Goldilocks and the Three Bears. “It was my introduction to musical theatre which is what pantomime really is,” he explains. “It is story, music, songs, dances and spectacle.”

Tommy was just 19 and had arrived as a pop singer.

“It was my first rehearsal, I had never had a rehearsal before. I remember the director, Freddie Carpenter, standing there telling me the first thing I was going to do was sing show tunes. ‘You are going to dance, you are going to kiss the princess in the second act and you won’t need THAT’ pointing at the guitar I was holding on to for dear life. So I did the show without a guitar, got to dance, I did kiss the princess in the second act, and I sang show tunes.”

It was some years later that another major event in his life occurred in Liverpool. The year was 1962 and Tommy was in pantomime again, Humpty Dumpty, this time at the Empire. He was informed that there were two gentlemen and a lady at the stage door who had an appointment with him. “If they had, I did not remember it. But I went to see them.”

They turned out to be songwriter David Heneker, scriptwriter Beverley Cross and his girlfriend, actress Maggie Smith, and they told him they had come to audition a show for him.

They went to the Adelphi Hotel where Tommy was staying and, at 11.30pm, Heneker started playing the songs from the show they wanted Steele to do. An irate manager descended on them to explain that the piano could not be played after 11pm.

A helpful doorman suggested a “nightclub” in Mathew Street that stayed open until 3am, and they did have a piano. The trio turned up at The Cavern just as The Beatles had finished their set.

“We promised the drummer we were not going to use his drums, and Ringo said they had put half a crown in the meter for the laughs and we owed them a shilling.”