Why it's a numbers game for Buddy Greco

Life is something of a numbers game for Buddy Greco. He’s just turned 84 and this is his 60th visit to the UK.

He’s on a run of 33 dates around the UK, on the back of his 70th album.

The big draw is that he’s no tribute act. The Rat Pack of Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis were his best friends in the 60s and a quick search of the internet throws up dozens of images of them all having fun together during those heady days in Vegas.

Frank Sinatra rated his pal highly, saying “Buddy can make anything swing - nobody comes close in that department".

“The originals were my dearest friends in the world and I certainly miss them,” said Buddy.

“I tell stories about my relationship with Frank and Sammy and so on during the evening.”

Buddy Greco is a true legend and has been headlining in Vegas since the 1950s, yet his voice remains mellow and smooth. He started his career as pianist and vocalist for jazz musician Benny Goodman. When Goodman was recruiting for a bebop band, Buddy was one of the musicians he hired. Buddy, of course, went on to become one of America’s most popular entertainers.

He boasts Grammy and Emmy awards along hits including The Lady Is Tramp, Around The World and Girl Talk.

And now he’s taken on this huge UK tour and shows no sign of slowing.
Buddy says: “I’ve been very fortunate. My father lived until he was 99 and I have just turned 84.

“The music business is only a number. I don’t look it and certainly don’t feel it.

“I have always had a very successful career in Britain. This is my 60th trip here over the years.

“I first came with Benny Goodman in 1949. People have been wonderful to me all of my life. At one of the venues this time around a man in his 80s came up to me and asked me to sign a flyer from that Benny Goodman concert.

“Yet we have a whole new audience too. Young kids want to know about what it was like. They want to know about Marilyn Monroe, who was also one of my good friends. I love doing this.

“I do it because I love it. I’m now at that point where I just enjoy it more and more.”

Frank and Buddy
The tour takes in mostly theatres, compared with the cabaret venues of the past.

Buddy takes to the stage and does some numbers from his vast repertoire along with a little bit of chat about his great friends in the Rat Pack and their golden says in Vegas, then the tribute band The Rat Pack Is Back do their stuff, before the intermission. After that, Buddy’s wife of Lezlie Anders - who he is proud to point out is more than a couple of decades younger than he is – comes on for her tribute to Peggy Lee, before the pair combine for the finale. The Goodman Allstars Band and the Flamingo Vegas Showgirls complete the Las Vegas Experience.

While he’s not traveling, he’s settling down in the south-east to tweak his stage musical – a ‘Fever’ tribute to Peggy Lee, which he’s planning to take to the West End next year.

“We’ve found a gorgeous flat in Westcliffe on sea. I sold my house and nightclub in Palm Springs – we’re going to be here for quite a while!”

And there seems to be no stopping the creative talent that already has an impressive pedigree: “I’m a piano player/singer, not the other way around,” he said. “I try to get my hand into as many things as possible.”

“I’ve just finished my 70th album and I’m still writing, and recording and performing. And as long as the good Lord allows that’ I’ll carry on!”

Words by Patrick Astill, first published, and copyright Derby Telegraph

Tales of pilots lured to their deaths

Stroll across the High Peak and you’ll always enjoy some of the country’s finest scenery.

Wander only a few minutes away from the main paths and – if you know where to look – you’ll be rewarded with an awe-inspiring, time-travel moment, where you can see and sometimes feel the ghosts of the past.

For scattered across an area from Glossop to the west and Sheffield’s borders on the east are almost 70 air crash sites, around half with debris still laying on the ground.

A new book, High Peak Air Crash Sites, explains how the sheer height of the national park lured pilots and navigators into believing they were 2,000ft up, rather than just inches above moorland sitting 2,000ft above sea level.

The evidence is there through the tons of metal strewn across 30 individual sites. A further 36 sites, often showing tell-tale craters and crash scars, can also be found. Most date from the Second World War but others are from as recently as 2006.

The author, Pat Cunningham, is a former RAF and British Midland aviator of 40 years standing, with more than 20,000 hours of operational and commercial flying under his belt.

The book tells the moving story behind each crash, discovered using coroner’s reports and researching official investigations as well as talking to the people involved and people who know the land today.

Inevitably they are stories of tragedy. One, from 1948, recalls how a US Air Force Boeing F-13A perished along with its 13-man crew on a local delivery flight between Scampton, in Lincolnshire, and Burtonwood, Liverpool, after a successful mission over Russia during the blockade of Berlin. It was their final flight and the crew would have been on their way back to the US a few days later.

Cloud conditions led the pilot, Captain Landon Tanner, to use Visual Flight Rules for the 86-mile trip. But he never completed the 22-minute journey.

Pat, getting to the human story behind the tragedies, records that the aircraft wreckage was found in line with the direct route it would have taken, and just three miles north.

The book records: “There had been no witnesses and no recorded emergency transmissions. Beyond this, a crew member’s watch had been smashed while reading 1050 hours. Taking this as the time of impact, and calculating from the known take-off time to obtain the planned estimate for Burtonwood – around 1037 hours – they might well have reasoned that the crew has done some sightseeing before entering the cloud belt; a reasonable assumption in view of their imminent departure from the United Kingdom.”

Pat, who lives in central Derby, said: “I’m a flier and a walker and I take an interest from both points of view.

“Many walkers are only interested if there is a lot of metal about but I find the stories fascinating.

“It’s the human side that’s important. A lot of people would have said in the 40s, for instance, that a crew should have known better. But you have to realise these were young chaps who were floating around in a very darkened landscape and with communications silence, so they were on a hiding to nothing.

“And very, very few were flying in anger. Of the 300 crashes in the wider area, we have about four with battle damage.

“Most were simply getting lost thinking they were over low ground and thinking they had flown higher.”

High Peak Air Crash Sites is illustrated with photographs on almost every page, as well as map references to allow walkers and sightseers to pinpoint these historic and fascinating monuments to the past.

High Peak Air Crashes (Central), [ISBN 978 1 84674 219 4] is by Pat Cunningham and published in paperback by Countryside Books, priced £12.99.

(Words by Patrick Astill; First published and copyright Derby Telegraph 27-8-2010)

Author Wendy took on 'bad boy' persona for tale of art, sex and money

Chick-lit author Wendy Holden has hit on an unusual marketing ploy for her latest novel, Gallery Girl.

It's set in the "high-octane world of art, sex and money" – wonderful ingredients to transform into her latest page-turner.

Wendy made time to take on the persona of her bad-boy artist character and launched an art exhibition which opened in London for a single night earlier this week.

It showcased 12 contemporary artworks, with Wendy doing the creative work to help her get into the mindset of Zeb Spaw, the villain of Gallery Girl, which came out yesterday.

She's not without a track record for being artistic.

As well as being a journalist on The Sunday Times, Tatler and The Mail on Sunday before becoming a full-time author, she's also dabbled professionally at drawing and painting, and loves sculpture and galleries.

The spoof show, angry_with_britain, by Zeb/Wendy includes Fifteen Metres of Fame, his homage to Warhol, a 15m rope hung with pictures of celebrities mounted on cardboard (mostly from All Bran boxes).

There is also Tripetych, three panels featuring blown-up images of offal.

The exhibition is trailed as "spoof and a bit of fun", and Wendy's character is "angry".

"He's not so much an angry young man as an angry middle-aged man," she said.

"I had to get inside his angry mind and also those people surrounding him. There are so many satellites of people, dealers and those who surround him, like the owner of the gallery, patrons, a predatory female nymphomaniac collector…

"In the middle of this is my heroine. She doesn't particularly like the world she has been thrown into but has to get to know it more.

"What I'm always looking for is something behind the scenes of a glamorous world, and it's got to be funny.

"The very fact of being a glamorous person is inherently funny, because it's so difficult for them to keep their façade. There's a gap between what we see and what actually goes on.

"The world of contemporary art is so terribly po-faced, it's ripe for comedy.

"Contemporary art is a perfect subject, full of money and fame. There's so much potential humour."

It was when Wendy created the character of Zeb for Gallery Girl that she decided she wanted to do some of his awful work for herself. His masterpieces included spraying crisps gold and labelling them Golden Wonder, or making a Barbie doll's toilet gold and calling it Flash in the Pan.

"I really did enjoy writing it," she said. "I've gone further than ever before with a character, not just in creating him but realising some of his artwork too."

She'd already written about the film world and glossy magazines, all with those vital ingredients of money, power and people, often pretending they are something they're not.

Of course, in the narrative of Gallery Girl, Zeb lives up to the pretence, and learns that nailing a pair of pants to chipboard will get him more headlines and interest than the traditional styles. So that's the direction he goes off in. He is drawn as a very clever person who markets his own art.

Not a career path that Wendy, now 45, saw through. "When I first started out in the late 80s my first career was as a cartoonist for all sorts of people. I realised I probably wasn't going to make a career out of that and it fell by the wayside," she said.

But she's doing just fine without that particular string to her bow. Away from the fiction, she still writes for newspapers and magazines on social and lifestyle topics and you might catch her on the radio as a contributor to debates.

She's currently finishing a new book – as yet untitled – about a social climber, set in the south of France, and is tossing around a few ideas for her next.

Wendy, whose previous best-selling novels include Filthy Rich and Fame Fatale, lives in Two Dales near Matlock with husband, Jon McLeod, and their two children.

She's had success with nine novels so far, every one a top-ten bestseller.

Gallery Girl by Wendy Holden, published by Headline (Trade Paperback), £12.99.

Words by Patrick Astill, first published in the Derby Telegraph

Playing safe or falling prey to the nanny state?

How long is a piece of string?

More importantly, how long are those apron strings that you should keep the kids attached to during the summer holidays?

I had an unusually liberating experience recently. I sent my kids off on a nature trail – and out of sight for ten minutes – at an open day at a local attraction.

Normally this might set palpitations in motion, as they are only six and four. There were lots of strangers about, hundreds in fact.

And yet this time it felt right. It was on home ground, a venue they were comfortable with. No chance of them wandering off into the street. Just a circular trail within the confines of a big, noisy, friendly and busy family open day.

What WAS I thinking of? A walk alone to the end of our (long) street wouldn't normally be on the cards. But then that's a through route with lots of naughty drivers ready to draw up alongside and pounce. But only maybe.

So what are we really protecting them against?

When I was a lad we lived at the coast, and we were allowed out on our bikes for half a day at a time and our parents would expect us home when we got there, often late in the day, hungry and grubby. We could only have been nine or ten, but if a ten-year-old was left to fend for themselves for half a day with an eight-year-old sibling they would no doubt be castigated by the so-called liberal press for child neglect.

While aged 11, we were invited up into the quiet signal box at our remote village level crossing. Perhaps there was a greater trust of strangers in those days. He'd let us put coins on the line and then rush back to see how they'd been flattened after the excursion had rattled by. Today he would most probably be prosecuted.

What has changed in the intervening 30-odd years?

Even now, as parents ourselves, we take risks with the children. Who hasn't, for instance, left a sleeping baby in a locked car so as not to disturb them? After all, they're only outside the house, so what could go wrong?

You've got the pair of them in the bath, only three or four inches of water. The phone rings, you nip out to answer it.

But this is safety at home rather than an issue of freedom. Is the risk of letting them explore, perhaps fall on the rocks at the beach, or perhaps get stuck up a tree, the same kind of risk?

Is it more about letting them find themselves in the real world? Have an adventure? Are we guilty of being sucked into a 24-hour rolling news agenda of tragedy, disaster, child neglect and paedophilia?

So back to my original question. The answer, of course, is "How long is a piece of string?"