Back when Feed the World was the song du jour and Bob Geldof was putting the world to rights, an event was held at the Albert Hall to raise money. My wife Louise and I had been asked by some old friends to join their box for this concert and for some reason, showing off probably, I had decided to wear a bright crimson suit.
When we arrived, there was an ocean of extremely cool people with famous faces pretty much all wearing a uniform of jeans, Band Aid T-shirts and leather bomber jackets and, when we got to our box there were yet more punters dressed in this way but no matter, I thought, a red suit is never a bad thing.
Our hosts were Mike Rutherford and his wife Angie. Mike is and was a very well-known musician not least for being in Genesis. Also there was the late, lamented John Wetton. John had been in a few bands from King Crimson and Roxy Music to Uriah Heap and Asia and he should take some of the blame for my not being able to remember who else was in the box that evening. In those days, neither John nor I were strangers to Dionysian delights and, during the excellent concert, we frolicked at the back of the box and a very merry time was had by us both joining in the choruses and air guitaring. In truth, it was probably only me as I can’t think that either Mike or John would have felt the need to air guitar.
I was just helping myself to another drink when Mike and John came over and asked if I wanted to come to the VIP bar and meet some of the acts. Now, for all my braggadocio, I was extremely shy and found meeting famous people, especially backstage, nerve-racking and embarrassing.
“Yes,” I said. “Why not?”
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The music-biz fixer led us along various passages, through mysterious doors and into the bowels of the Albert Hall. All of a sudden, we found ourselves in a room crowded with people. The vast majority were men and they were nearly all wearing the jeans and T-shirt uniform. Befuddled I looked around for a way out but, wherever I turned, familiar faces swam into view.
Were they friends of mine?
Was this an enormous surprise celebration arranged just for me?
Then the familiarity began to make sense. The first face I recognised was my musical nemesis, Sting, and then I recognised Bob Geldof, Annie Lennox, George Michael . . . What the f***!?
I saw Mike grinning at me.
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“It was Angie’s and Louise’s idea,” he said.
A girl asked me if I wanted a drink while an official-looking figure sidled up to me.
“You OK with the words?” Was this a code?
He was holding a sheaf of printed pages and I must have looked baffled as he thrust one into my hand. I was about to look at it when a drink in a plastic cup appeared in my other hand. I drank the contents quickly and the girl who had handed it to me then snatched the cup out of my hands. I looked around for Mike and John but they had been swept forward by a sudden, human surge of famous people and soon I too was carried along by the undertow.
Bemused, I looked at the sheet of paper but too late, we appeared to have reached our journey’s end and we all came to a halt, pressing up against each other. Printed on the sheet was a poem or a . . . but before I could read it the familiar words “feed the world” began ringing in my ears, then another man, covered in plastic badges and with huge earphones, snapped his fingers and shouted at us, “Three, two, one now GO!” like an American sergeant exhorting novice paratroopers to jump out of a lurching plane.
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I was being pushed forward by the people behind me and a monstrous, rushing noise filled my ears. It was like reaching the top of a giant waterfall in a very flimsy canoe. There was nowhere to go but forward and I was spat out like flotsam onto the stage of the Albert Hall. Famous faces surrounded me, there was a thunder of music behind me, and from the front there was that oddly distant yet immediate sound of applause you hear as a wicket falls when you are stuck behind the stands.
My brain, delicately poised after a few hours’ roistering, was slow to take in that I was among the superstar crowd singing the evening’s finale, Feed the World.
I was among them but not of them and obviously not as I was in my bright red suit. I understood now why the sheet of lyrics was in my hand.
To my horror, I recognised more and more famous faces, surreal in their closeness, leaning confidently into various microphones across the stage as each of them sang a short solo. I looked around despairingly and was relieved to find no microphones too near me but I noticed that, as one star finished their cameo, the one behind would take their place and I had inadvertently got myself into a diminishing queue leading to one of the microphones. I had become only too aware of the nonplussed stares I was getting from the throng of glitterati and I felt like a naked person would feel in the front row of the wrong funeral.
I could sense the man behind me — that one from Status Quo, you know, the one with the . . . well, anyway — begin to jostle me. He was obviously thinking that I was some arsehole who had blagged his way onto the stage and, even worse, the sort that wears a red suit.
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My terror was at least sobering but there was no escape. I had at least avoided the appalling possibility of a solo so I started to reverse myself into the middle of the only-quite-famous people at the back. Even they were giving me sideway looks but being at the back, for some inexplicable reason, gave me the confidence to join in with the chorus. I studied my lyric sheet but we had got to the very end of the song which, you may remember, repeats “Feed the world, don’t they know it’s Christmas time?” ad infinitum. So, like all the seasoned pros around me, I stuffed the lyric sheet in my pocket and stuck a finger in one ear and snapped the fingers of my other hand. I may have even waved to the crowd a bit.
At this moment, the house lights went up and the full, dreadful panorama of a packed Albert Hall auditorium hove into view like a mighty army about to bear down on me. Astonishingly, I could see the box from which I had been kidnapped and I could clearly see Louise holding her head in her hands so I started to wave as she seemed so close. On reflection this was not very cool.
I suddenly registered that people’s names were being called out and they were then walking forward to be met by huge cheers, some louder than others. The stage began to thin out and I realised that Bob and Midge were looking over their shoulders and calling out the name of each heroic figure as they stepped forward, giving them loud thanks and then shouting out their names to the crowd. Each star then raised their arm in modest triumph and, following a thunderous roar, left the stage. I was, incidentally, very proud of the modesty with which my two friends made their exit.
Those of us left were getting fewer and fewer and no one’s name had been a problem for the two MCs up to this stage. Looking back, I cannot understand why I didn’t just walk off with Ringo or Sting or somebody. A bizarre melding of fear, inebriation and vanity is all I have been able to come up with. I was now one of only half a dozen people left on that massive stage in that enormous arena and with the lights up. It was a very conspicuous place to be in a red suit. I could see everyone in our box and the few people I recognised in other seats all appearing, simultaneously, to mouth the same words, “What the f*** is Theo doing there?”
It was obvious that, when my time came, neither of the instigators of this great evening were going to do the decent thing and say, “And, he needs no introduction, thank you,” or something helpful so, with a shamelessness which still makes me blush, I raised my arms like a victorious boxer and began a sort of skipping Ali shuffle backwards towards the exit to almost complete silence.
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You may never have played the Albert Hall but, take it from one who has, the adrenaline burst is huge but the comedown, oh my God, the listlessness. I was in shock and, I have to admit it, so emotionally drained that I was hardly aware I had fulfilled one of my life’s ambitions.
There was an amazing buzz in the underground chamber but none of my co-stars seemed to be sharing my giddy descent into post-gig tristesse.
Everyone was very friendly, generous and, yes, inclusive. I hung around with a few of my fellow artistes for a while discussing the gig and I was in conversation with the bald chap from that band who had a huge hit with the one about the . . . Well anyway, when I was scooped up by a beaming Mike.
“What’s the joke?” the balding star asked, smiling at Mike. “Just that Theo didn’t know anything about going on stage tonight,” grinned Mike.
“Oh, wow,” said the star. “Just like Bob and Midge not to tell you.”
“Yeah, totally,” I said with a casual shrug and wandered off with Mike, and we all went on to Tramp, of course.
Extracted from I Fear for This Boy: Some Chapters of Accidents by Theo Fennell, which is published by Mensch on April 7 at £25
