Down, Down, Down to St Helier

This week I would like to introduce you to the late singer, composer, author and tutor Bob Anthony. I am hugely indebted to Richard Heath and the Jersey Evening Post for a good chunk of what follows.

 

Born in South Africa as Thomas Coleman-Gloss, Bob Anthony, the man behind the 1975 classic Jersey… Ile d’Amour, was a regular in the Johannesburg club scene and was a member of the army’s Entertainment Corps, under the stewardship of sitcom and Carry On… legend Sid James.

 

In the early 1960s he moved to London to find fame and fortune. He changed his name by deed poll to Robert Anthony, and met his second wife, Marie, who was working in a club. ‘We aren’t 100 per cent sure why he changed his name,’ his daughter Angela told Richard Heath, a reporter from the Jersey Evening Post, in 2017. ‘But he probably thought Tommy Gloss was a bit cheesy. Robert Anthony had much more class about it, although he did become known as Bob.’

 

Bob became a regular on the capital’s club circuit, and in 1962 he began to teach singing to other hopefuls. By the end of the 1960s he was running a training school for singers, the London School of Modern Singing, which had its own Singers Variety Club attached. Bob and members of his school made their first appearance on TV in May 1970, on the London Weekend show Do Your Own London (presented by Eric Thompson, father of Sophie and Emma, and producer of the UK version of the Magic Roundabout) and they held regular Sunday afternoon sessions at the Horseshoe Hotel on Tottenham Court Road. He also penned a guidebook for people hoping to break into showbiz, Singing to Stardom.

 

In 1973 Bob issued his first album, We’d Like to Teach You to Sing. Yearning to go back on stage, he also came up with the rather clever idea of accompanying himself via remote control: performing with Mary the Magic Organ - an ingenious set-up where his pre-programmed Yamaha organ was happily playing away on stage - Bob would walk around the audience, using a home-made device to switch between himself, the organ and a tape deck. He became a favourite at Butlins in Bognor Regis, and soon moved his family there.

 

Bob and the family travelled a lot, and in the summer of 1974 he first went to perform on Jersey. ‘I remember when I was six or seven we went to Jersey on holiday as dad was playing there,’ Angela told Richard Heath. ‘He was playing at a hotel called the Woodlands. He loved the Island so much and spent a few summer seasons performing there. It was long enough for him to fall in love with the Island and write an album about it. He was very enthusiastic about it and put his heart and soul into it. He always spoke very fondly of Jersey and you only have to listen to the lyrics to see how much research he did about the Island.’

 

Bob was Woodlands’ resident singer for the summer season of 1975, and despite the hotel keeping him busy he clearly had enough free time to explore the island, penning songs about the sights (and sites) he saw along the way. The resulting album was the self-produced, self-funded and self-released classic that is Jersey… Ile d’Amour. Recorded at Basing Street Studio, in London, Jersey… Ile d’Amour is a 12-track song of love to the island, and Bob had a hand in everything, right down to the cover art.

 

Bob had planned two albums to follow the success of Jersey… Ile d’Amour, and in April 1976 the Stage reported that he had been working on material for one LP about the other major Channel Island, Guernsey, and one about London. The Guernsey album does not appear to have materialised, but around 1977 he issued his third album, The Magic of London. Half of the tracks were Bob’s own songs, with the rest of the album made up of traditional cockney singalongs and pub standards. the back of the sleeve boasted that Bob was a Guinness World Record holder, having twice held the World Non-Stop Singing record, first in 1969 (over 24 hours) and again in 1973, when he more than doubled his previous record at 50 hours.

 

In 1978 he released his last record, a 45 on the Bognor-based independent label Regis Rose Records, Mama Light a Candle for Me backed with Christmas in London. The A-side, composed by Bob, was apparently the winner of the 1978 Nice Song Festival. The following year, he finished an epic 153-hour and ten minutes continuous solo singing marathon – beating the world record he had set twice previously.

 

After a period working as a timeshare salesman in the Canary Islands, Bob retired from the stage to spend more time with his family. He died on 13 December 2008, aged 87. For years he had suffered from a degenerative brain disorder that left him with progressively less movement and speech, and during the final year of his life, he hardly moved or said a word.

 

One day, a nurse at his care home put on Frank Sinatra’s My Way, the same song Bob had chosen as the closer for the Magic of London. ‘Dad suddenly stood up and sang along and then just sat back down again,’ Angela recalled. It was the perfect ending for a man who had done it his way his entire life. In 2017 Jersey theatre group Plays Rough wrote and performed several pieces inspired by Bob’s masterwork.

 

Here are a couple of tracks from the utterly wonderful Jersey… Ile d’Amour: Down to St Hellier and Au Revoir Ile d'Amour. Enjoy!

Download Helier HERE

Download Au Revoir HERE