GRAEME: As far as I know, John has never been a Buddhist, but I remember looking at him when he was a tiny baby and thinking there was something very Zen about him. He always looked so centred, I could never imagine having to worry about him. That’s not to say I wasn’t worried about being a parent — I was absolutely terrified. Yes, I owned my own house, my own car and The Goodies was doing very well, but once you have children, you realise you have some very serious responsibilities. You have to make sure you hang on to the house, the car and job so your kids have a future. It’s like being hostage to a fortune.
The Goodies did take up the major part of my year and it probably contributed to the break-up of my marriage to John’s mother. I did have a relationship with a woman — who I eventually married — but I don’t think that relationship was the cause of the problem. It was just a symptom of my first marriage being in trouble. When I met my first wife, Liz, I was still at medical school and she expected to be marrying a doctor. It wasn’t that she disliked the life we had, but… there was just a mutual loss of respect. It faded away, which is a great shame.
I remember John asking why we’d split up and finding it an almost impossible question to answer. Both John and his sister, Sally, were puzzled and wary at times. To start with, I tried doing the “divorced dad” thing. Going to Bristol — that’s where Liz and the kids had moved to — for weekends, but I don’t think any of us enjoyed that. Sometimes I stayed there at Christmas and it was terribly uncomfortable. Eventually we settled on Sally and John coming to stay with me for holidays, a bit of Christmas and New Year. It wasn’t ideal, as it meant their mum and me turned into nasty cop and nice cop. Their mum would deal with the horrible day-to-day stuff and I got to lark around with them during holiday time.
Yes, there were problems, but I suppose that whole period went as well as anyone could have expected. Liz and I didn’t make too much of a fuss about getting divorced and John and Sally were terrific about me being with someone else. Very open-minded and mature.
There was always a banjo and a guitar in the corner when John came round, but he didn’t discover his love for music until late — he was about 11 when he started having piano lessons. He quickly made up for lost time, though. I remember showing him a few chords on the guitar and by the end of the day he could play better than me. John’s love of music is very precious. He doesn’t do it to make money… he does it because it makes him truly happy. It’s very easy to spoil something like that.
Normally, I’m a great believer in a university education, but music is one of those talents you learn better as an apprentice than you do as a student. I was always worried that if John got academically involved in music, it would destroy his love of it. John used to love going on these music camps that ran in the summer. For two weeks, the kids would live under canvas and be looked after by a bunch of music teachers. There’d be guitars, drums, saxophones, keyboards and fiddles all over the place, and after two weeks the kids would have to put on a show. Normally, John was a quiet guy, but as they were doing one of these shows, he leapt up onto a table. I thought: “My God! He’s bloody fearless.” I was thinking about that day when I recently saw a picture of the Scissor Sisters. They were playing in Trafalgar Square and John was in the exact same pose as he was in that music camp.
Pride can be a very sinful word because it implies that I want to take some credit for what John’s achieved. I take no credit whatsoever. He’s done it all himself. What I will say, though, is I am terribly pleased for him because I know how much enjoyment he gets out of music. And, er, let’s hope he’s going to make a bit of money for his old dad now that he’s in his later years, eh?
JOHN: I was too young to remember Dad being on TV with The Goodies, but we used to have these really old Betamax videos of the shows and I watched them religiously. The one where Bill Oddie is attacked by the domestic appliances was my favourite: it would get played over and over and over again.
The first time I saw him appearing live on a TV screen was in a show called Bodymatters. I was at secondary school and a few kids started teasing me. “We saw your dad on telly last night.”
It was a strange thing to tease me about, because I was actually quite pleased he was on television.
These days it’s easy to be well known but not well liked. What’s lovely is I’ve only heard people say nice things about my dad. When I started working in radio, someone told me: “Your dad is one of the most patient directors I’ve ever worked with.” That always stuck in my head: the idea you might only work with people for a short time, but those people will automatically form an opinion of you. Dad always seems to have left a good impression. Even now, I get members of the Scissor Sisters’ crew telling me their memories of The Goodies, reciting their favourite sketch.
Because of the divorce, my relationship with my parents wasn’t normal. Divorce is not a normal situation. At the time, my parents splitting up didn’t hit me as this momentous thing. We moved house a couple of times when we were still living together in London and I thought me, Mum and Sally going to Bristol was just another house move. Dad came to see us a lot in Bristol, which probably lessened the blow. It’s only now that I’m older that I’m so thankful that Mum and Dad worked so hard to make sure they were both part of mine and Sally’s life.
When I was at my dad’s house, he was always surrounded by this explosion of activity. He’d get out huge sheets of paper and we’d draw cartoon strips, taking it in turns to create characters. Dad is a very good cartoonist and I loved to see how he’d work. We even started writing a kids’ book together, and we’d both draw pictures to illustrate it.
Dad spotted my love of music before I did. Actually, everyone in the family spotted it before I did. But if I’d known how interested my dad was in me and my music, it probably would have pushed me away even further. I didn’t realise it at the time, but I was jealous of my dad. Jealous of what he’d done professionally. Jealous of how creative he was. Subconsciously, I think I was aware that everyone knew how successful my dad had been and it caused a crisis for me.
This was no fault of anybody else. Dad had never sat down with me and said: “You must achieve that and you have to do this.” It was a purely personal thing. When I was in my twenties, I toyed with the idea of giving up music, but
Dad and me sat down and he said: “It doesn’t matter what you do. We’ll be happy for you.” I got the feeling I could have told him I was going to run off, join the circus and paint my head blue, but he would still have been proud of me.
What we were doing was working out how we viewed each other — something we’d never done before — and we both admitted we were jealous of each other. He acknowledged what I’d achieved, I acknowledged what he’d achieved, and that meant I could put it behind me. It might seem silly, but that chat allowed me to get on with things my own way. I knew the music was there, but until then, I’d been scared of taking it seriously. Scared of failing. Once I stopped arsing around, things started to fall into place. I got a job with Alison Moyet, I started doing some radio stuff, then I got to work with the Scissor Sisters. People seemed to appreciate what I was doing.
I didn’t feel I was there for some spurious reason, like my dad pulling a few favours, or because I’d been lucky. I was there because I could do the job.
One of the things that made me most jealous of Dad was the fact that he’d appeared on Top of the Pops. Luckily, I made it on there with the Scissor Sisters just before the BBC pulled the show
Interviews by Danny Scott.
Photograph by David Poole
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