Suggs

May 2012

FOR the second time in my life, Chelsea have got to the Champions League final and I was once again on holiday with my wife.

This time we were in Spain. Actually, it was brilliant because I was sitting a bar full of crazed Spaniards who all wanted Chelsea to win. Probably because we’d knocked out Barcelona in the semi-final. It’s that mentality where if we go on and win it, that means they would have won it if they’d beaten us.

When it went to penalties everyone was going berserk. To beat the Germans (Bayern Munich) on penalties in Germany was possibly the greatest thing that ever happened in my life.

My mates were all texting like mad. A lot of them were at the game in Munich. I would have been there if the wife hadn’t booked this holiday. But in another sense I was better off. I’ve been to cup finals with my mates before and the last thing I’ve seen is the football; because it all starts at ten in the morning with a couple of drinks. There have cup finals where I’ve got home and I genuinely couldn’t remember the result.

My wife was across the road ranting and raving because she was with friends who were all waiting to have their dinner. There were daggers flying through the windows at me.

But I wasn’t about to leave the game during the penalty shoot-out. By the time it finished all the food had gone cold but I didn’t care. I was behaving like an idiot, running around the car park.

Actually the last time we were playing United in the Cup Final and I was in Rome. And because there were no Italian teams in the final I couldn’t find a bar that would show it. I had to bribe this guy in a Chinese restaurant 20 Euros to put it on his small black and white TV. And that’s how I watched it, with an American family that had absolutely no idea what was going on.

We’ve just announced a new tour for the end of the year and called it The Charge of the Mad Brigade, because we’re still charging about. People of our age should probably be tucked up in bed with cocoa. For whatever, peculiar genetic reason, we still have this youthful vigour that makes us want to charge about the country.

We start with The House of Fun Weekender at Butlins in Minehead. We did it last year and it reminded me of the soul weekenders that we used to go to at Camber Sands. We had the Madness Olympics, which involved crazy golf, darts, pool and a swim in the sea at 10 o’clock in the morning in November.

It was a fun way of starting the tour, so we’re doing that again. We’ll be in Nottingham in December and there will be some festivities, of course. We’re probably the only British band of any consequence that hasn’t recorded a Christmas single. We’ve always talked about it. But by the time Christmas is coming round we realise we haven’t written or recorded it. Then by the time the summer comes back round again, when we should be doing it, it’s the last thing we want to think about. I’m sure that one day we will.

But yes, Nottingham has always been good to us ever since we first played Rock City over 30 years ago. We prefer those smaller gigs to be honest. Places like Rock City have the best vibe. But we’ve got lots of big stuff going on. We’ve the new album coming out, we’ve got the Butlins thing, we’re doing the Queen’s Jubilee. We’re playing at Buckingham Palace with Sir Elton and Sir Paul... we’re hoping for a group Knighthood. Sir Madness will be fine.

So we’re going to the arenas this time. It’ll be equally fantastic but in a different kind of way.

The new album will be out in October and we will be playing some of that on the tour but we’re not about to launch our jazz fusion album on an unsuspecting Nottingham audience. You’ll get all the songs you want to hear. You pay your money and you get a great night out seeing Madness is what it boils down to.

We have fun and we appreciate that people pay to see us having fun... and have fun themselves.

Madness play the Capital FM Arena on Thursday December 6. Tickets are £35/£45 from the venue, call 08444 124 624 or go to www.gigsandtours.com.

Donovan

December 2010

What is the first thing you do when you wake up?

Meditate.

What have you done today to make you feel proud?

Given final approval on the poster for my Royal Albert Hall concert June 3 2011, where I will perform my classic 1966 album Sunshine Superman with full orchestra. This album opened so many doors for songwriters to experiment. The lyrics announced my generation’s need for free speech and the re-discovery of meditation for the West. I will sing some of these songs in Skegness.

What have you done lately that you're ashamed of?

Only I know and you can’t.

What's your guiltiest pleasure?

Plum tomatoes, cooked for my delicious pasta sauce that I occasionally make. I really should not eat them.

What's your earliest memory?

The poetry my father read me and the man in the street singing songs outside my Glasgow window.

Whose career do you envy?

No-one’s. I have enough of a career for three lifetimes.

If you had to be stuck in a lift with someone, who would it be?

Houdini.

What is your biggest fear?

That the ‘Meanies' will win and all the brainwashed people on the planet let them.

Do you have any superstitions?

By superstition you mean perhaps 'saying a magic word' or crossing one’s fingers. Well I do say what one might call a magic word, its called a Mantra. It is used to lead the mind deep inside when we meditate. It is not spoken aloud but inside you. It is a meaningless sound, and allows one to watch one's thoughts, to view them passing and the use of the ‘word’ allows us to experience a deep level within us all, a level which teaches us to deal with fear, anger, frustration and doubt - all the ills that beset the world .

All this is in many of my lyrics and also The Beatles’ songs, as we five journeyed to India back in 1968 to discover this for ourselves.

When was the last time you cried and why?

On a small town street, back in January, when I felt helpless. I had to be cruel to be kind, and the tears came tumbling down .

Who is the most famous name in your mobile

phonebook?

My cell phone has the famous and the infamous and each for different reasons. The one I will choose is famous for excellence in music, Nigel Kennedy.

What item could you not live without?

It has always been a well-made acoustic guitar but now it seems like it’s a laptop.

 The Great British Folk Festival at Butlin’s, Skegness runs until Sunday. For details call 0845 070 4730 or visit www.bigweekends.com/folk

Butlins, Skegness

April 2010

THERE was a gun metal grey monorail. That’s the only memory I have of Butlins, Skegness, which I lasted visited 25 years ago.

That’s gone. I can’t even recall where it was, such is the change to Billy’s place. No longer is it a tired throwback to the holiday camps of the fifties, the Hi-de-Hi-style rows of chalets and knobbly knees contests, Miss Wet T-shirt competitions and yawping Red Coats.

Well, the Red Coats are still heading up the entertainment, in red blazers but they’re now called Reds.

The chalets are still there but have been vastly improved. In addition there are two-storey, wooden apartments, given that Floridian-twang with names like The Keys.

We were in the Gold apartment, a bright and modern three-bed apartment with a kitchenette off the lounge, leather sofas, flat-screen telly and complimentary bottle of Asti.

Some things haven’t changed.

For the two hour drive east it rained.

And downtown Skegness -- “probably named after a Viking commander... Skeggi meaning the bearded one” -- is pretty much as I remember: Vulgar lollies on sticks, sticks of rock and bags of fudge, fruit machines, a bracing wind carries a whiff of candy and fish and chips....

Past the clock tower there are tired looking pedalos, two remarkably un-crazy golf courses, donkey rides, mini-raft ride, ghost train, pirate ship, dodgems and the like.

But what’s with the yellow footprints all over the pavement? And the wind turbines out at sea that dominate the horizon?

The pier is remarkably short these days. Did it collapse? Nice to see the 2p slot machines in the arcade on the pier still going strong a quarter of a century on.

No-one was swimming. Well, it is April, it’s raining and Skegness is bracing even during the height of summer. Just ask the iconic Jolly Fisherman.

That said, there was some beach activity: A teenager flying a kite -- near a grumpy sign that insisted that not only did we not feed the donkeys but “In the Interests of Safety Please refrain from Flying Kites and Playing Ball Games on the Designated Routes”.

A nod to the Jolly Fisherman statue and that was enough of that. Back to the relative luxury of Butlins for an evening of reality TV stars, including Chico and Britain’s Got Talent’s George Sampson and Stavros Flatley.

Although the queues were ridiculous.

There are four venues for live entertainment.

The Red Bar is a huge room where tribute bands and the Reds entertain. Even by 9pm there are little people racing around, hyped on the freedom to play after bedtime. It’s not for grown-ups. Not without earplugs and a sedative anyway.

There is a new spa designed to give parents somewhere to escape from the madness but it seemed to be closed during our visit.

Old school seaside entertainment includes a large room of slot machines, bowling alley, a cinema, pool room, camel racing and food outlets which dish up some surprisingly decent nosh, particularly The Yacht Inn.

To remind you of the history of the place there’s a Grade II listed chalet on site, an example of the 600 identical chalets designed by Billy Butlin on a cigarette packet and opened here in 1936.

Skegness is one of just three Butlins in the UK these days and since 2003 more than £110m has been invested to bring them in to this century.

Obviously they can’t survive year round on holidaymakers so a lot of the weekends are targeted at adults to relive the sixties, seventies or eighties, with original bands performing.

But some things never change. As we walked in for another night of shouting in Reds, one of the crimson creatures greeting at the door nodded to the missus: “All right love”. It amused her greatly. Particularly as she was convinced it was that geordie Ant’nee off Big Brother.

Prices at Butlins Skegness start from around £47 per person per break based on a family of four sharing a Silver self-catering apartment on a four night break in May. To book a Butlins break call 0845 070 4730 or visit www.butlins.com (The maximum call charge is 2p per minute from a BT landline. Calls from other networks may vary)