This is a special extra episode of the podcast, not one of the "proper" five hundred. A book I've written, on the TV series The Strange World of Gurney Slade, has just become available for pre-order from Obverse Books, so to publicise that I've done an extra episode, on the pop music career of its star, Anthony Newley. The next normal episode will be up in a day or two. Transcript below the cut.

Erratum: In a previous version of this episode, I mentioned, in passing, my understanding that Newley was an alcoholic. This has been strongly questioned by some fans, who took offence at the suggestion, and as it was utterly irrelevant to the point I was making I have deleted those three words rather than cause further offence.

Transcript

Welcome to a special bonus episode of A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs. This is not this week's normal episode, which will be up in a couple of days, and nor is it the Patreon bonus episode, which will also be up as normal. This is an extra, full-length episode, on a song which didn't make the list of songs I'm covering.

But this week, a book I've written has gone on pre-order, and it'll be out on the first of September. That book is on The Strange World of Gurney Slade, a TV show from the very early 1960s. And the star of that show, Anthony Newley, also had a very successful music career in the late fifties and early sixties -- and a career which had a real influence on many people who will be seen in future episodes. So, in order to promote my book, I'm going to talk today about some of Newley's music. If you're not interested in anything that isn't part of my "official" five hundred songs, then you can skip this episode, but I promise that other than a brief mention at the end, this is not going to be an advert for my book, but just another episode, about the music career of one of Britain's most interesting stars of the pre-Beatles era. So let's look at "Strawberry Fair" by Anthony Newley:

[Excerpt: Anthony Newley, "Strawberry Fair"]

Anthony Newley was someone whose career only came about by what would seem at first to be bad luck. Newley was a child in London during the Blitz, the son of an unmarried mother, which had a great deal of stigma to it in those days. When the Blitz hit, he was evacuated, and felt abandoned by his mother. That sense of abandonment increased when his mother married her new boyfriend and moved to Scotland.

And then Newley was moved into a second foster home, this one in Morecambe, Lancashire. His foster father during the war was one George Pescud, a music hall performer about whom I can discover nothing else, except that he instilled in Newley a great love of the theatre and of the arts, and that as a result of this Newley started writing music, painting, writing, and, especially, acting.

When the war ended, Newley was fourteen, and didn't go back to live with his mother and her new husband, choosing instead to move to London and start living an artistic life.

He saw an advert in the paper for the Italia Conti stage school, and tried to become a student there. When he found out that he couldn't afford the fees, he found another way in -- he got a job there as an office boy, and his tuition was included in his wages. While there, he became friends with another student, Petula Clark, who would herself go on to stardom with records like “Downtown”.

[Excerpt: Petula Clark, "Downtown"]

Clark also encouraged him to start singing -- something that would definitely pay off for him later. Apparently, Clark had a crush on Newley, but he wasn't interested in her.

While at the school, Newley got cast in a couple of roles in low-budget films, which brought him to the attention of David Lean, who was directing his film adaptation of Oliver Twist, and cast Newley in the role of the Artful Dodger. The film, which featured Alec Guinness, became one of the classics of British cinema, and also starred Diana Dors, with whom Newley started an affair, and who managed to get hi