JOHN Otway – rock and roll’s self-styled greatest failure – is in chipper mood when he calls the Mercury.
Just a couple of days previously, the BBC had rerun his greatest hit – literally – showing how he misjudged jumping onto an amplifier during a performance on The Old Grey Whistle Test in 1977 and took the full force of the fall on the most tender part of his body.
“It was a really nice piece,” he says of his appearance on BBC4’s special show to mark 30 years since Whistle Test was last broadcast.
He has much to thank the programme for.
His one simple act of recklessness back in ’77 led to a surge in popularity which saw his sixth single, the half spoken love song Really Free, reach number 27 in the charts.
It was not the springboard to international fame and fortune he might have hoped for.
Despite numerous efforts, his only other chart entry came 25 years later, in 2002, when friends and supporters led a campaign to get him a hit for his 50th birthday.
This resulted in the release of disco pastiche Bunsen Burner, which peaked at number nine and gave him a second appearance on Top of The Pops.
During the past four decades he has kept gigging – at least 100 shows a year – and having reached pensionable age, he brings his Cor Baby, I’m an OAP tour to The Witham on Saturday, March 17.
So despite his failure to become a rock and roll superstar, he has never had to resort to a “proper job” to make ends meet.
“I tried acting, but I wasn’t very good at it and I tried being an author (in 2010 he produced an autobiography titled I Did It Otway: Regrets, I've had a few) – but none of them really fitted the category of a proper job.
“I have hit retirement age without ever having to work,” he jokes.
Despite his OAP status, there are no plans to stop.
“I love the attention of getting up on stage. Lots of people buy you drinks and tell you you’re a really good bloke. If I retired I would be really bored if I just went down the local pub,” he says.
“I have done more than 4,000 gigs now and I should live to do 5,000. It is still quite a physical show – I still throw myself around the stage.
“The show is comedy based and I have a very good band which has been together for 25 years without a line-up change.”
That’s more than twice as long as The Beatles, he points out.
He also continues to record.
A successful Kickstarter fundraising campaign gave him the opportunity to record his latest album Montserrat on the Caribbean island – the first international artist to record there since the Rolling Stones in 1989.
“I will carry on until I conk out,” he says. “And enough people keep coming back to allow me to do it.”
Tickets for what promises to be a highly entertaining evening with John Otway and the Big Band at The Witham are £12 in advance and £15 on the door.
Contact the box office on 01833 631107 or go to www. thewitham.org.uk.
For more details on John Otway, go to www.johnotway .com or search for him on Youtube.
