My Exciting Life in ROCK (part 2): 19/12/2004 - BBC 6Music

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Ah, the Glamorous Life Of ROCK In That London: sometimes you get a telephone call and it's a Radio Producer asking you to write a Christmas Song, to be performed live on the BBC in a couple of weeks.

When I say "sometimes" I mean "one time", but when that call came for me I said "YES PLEASE!" and got straight to work. The producer was Henry The Producer who worked on Steve Lamacq's old Sunday Show on 6Music. He gave me a couple of weeks' notice so, being the STEELY EYED PROFESSIONAL that I am I got STRAIGHT to work.

Not straight to work writing - straight to work WORRYING. After several days worth of FEAR I finally sat down for had my first attempt, a song called "The Day After Boxing Day" which I remember NOTHING of now, except that I had about FOUR different attempts at writing it. The only representation of Christmas that I had to hand was my advent calendar, which my Mum always gets me, so I GLARED at it, DEMANDING it bring me some Festive Inspiration. With nothing forthcoming I had another cup of TEA and tried to write an ACTUAL CAROL, but as this was so crap that I defaulted to my usual method of not writing songs - dolefully strumming JAZZ CHORDS and looking out of the window.

Nothing was sounding good, but time was marching on. I'd already asked a load of PALS to come in and sing the song with me, but with nothing for them TO sing I was going to be in trouble. I knew what I DIDN'T want - every year there are LOADS of ANTI-Christmas songs written that are always smug, cynical and CRAP - but I wanted something that was proper Christmassy, but also TRUE. I wanted to sing about the Christmases I knew, and to do it using a big crowd of sing-along friends. But HOW?

All the while my Advent Calendar hung nearby, casually waiting for me to notice it again. If my life was a film there would have been a succession of FAST ZOOMS from me looking PAINED across to the Calendar, looking... well, Calendary. I'd keep saying "I'll NEVER think of something to write!" and every time there'd be an HILARIOUS swoop over to the calendar, accompanied by SWANEE WHISTLE.

Eventually I began to suspect that maybe I could use the twenty four doors of the Advent Calendar for my STRUCTURE and was happily explaining this to my sister-in-law over the washing up when suddenly INSPIRATION struck. I was just saying "I want to have something TRUE like and Advent Calendar Of... " and MEANT to say "An Advent Calendar Of FACT! Of course!" but what came out was "WHAAA! OOOH! ZANG! WHOO!!" as I leapt up and down and ran out of the room at HIGH SPEED, leaving a trail of SUDS behind me.

With the song written and the CHOIR recruited all we needed to do was practice, and we got together WELL in advance to do this. About two hours in advance, in fact, in the pub down the road from the BBC. I printed out song sheets and we started with a QUIET version of the song which, over the two hours, built up to a ROUSING/DRUNKENLY SHOUTED version as we strode off down the street to meet our destiny.

Once we arrived at the BBC there was a chap in the foyer who recognised me. I saw nothing unusual in this - I am an INTERNATIONAL RADIO STAR, so of COURSE this is going to happen! He'd just popped in for a drink of water, he said, but COINCIDENTALLY had read about our appearance on the show on my blog. Full of the festive spirit of love to all men, also beer, I asked if he'd like to come upstairs and sing the song with us. He did! HOW GROOVY!

We were ushered into the tiny studio where my small group of pals suddenly felt like a MASSIVE CHOIR packed into the corner. I did a quick interview about the events of the past year, performing "Rock And Roll Mayhem" (the song I'd written on tour) to illustrate my POINTS, and then Mr Lamacq said "And I believe you've written a Christmas song for us?"

"Yes," I said, "I have" and we LAUNCHED into "The Advent Calendar Of FACT". I believe the spirit of SANTA CLAUS HIMSELF was amongst us as we FLEW through the song, and JOLLITY was transmitted across the nation.

This jollity almost ground to a HALT, however, when the chap who'd been downstairs turned out to be a RADIO PLUGGER who had CYNICALLY USED me just to get in and place some CDs in the hands of Mr Lamacq and Henry The Producer! As we shuffled out again he went over to BADGER them, and it was only when we got outside when I realised what had happened - he'd been WAITING for us to turn up JUST so he could get into the studio. He probably didn't want a glass of water at ALL!!

The CHEEK! But also: how COOL! It almost felt like a mark of RESPECT that people from the sordid evil music industry saw MY little escapade as a fit subject for attempted CORRUPTION!

He cleared off after that, and we were joined by Steve and Henry in the pub where they reassured me that everything was fine and that this sort of thing often happens - especially, I assumed, for INTERNATIONAL RADIO STARS - and we gathered round to look at Dermot O'Leary (sat on the other side of the room) and to toast CHRISTMAS!


The song itself was to live on in many formats. I loved it so much that we recorded a Validators Version and released it on an Artists Against Success Christmas Album the following year. It then popped up on a Cherryade Records compilation and, this year, we've finally made it available to DOWNLOAD as our Christmas Single. SUCH is the GRATE love I have for the song we even made a video for it, which is HERE:



And on that festive note, let us draw a close on My Exciting Life In ROCK for 2008. I'll be back next year with many MANY more tales of daftness and ROCK, but until then do have a LOVELY Christmas, a BOOZY New Year, and see you in 2009!

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