I just received a call from Neil with the very sad news that one of our former Island colleagues, Rob Partridge had passed away. Rob was one of the finest human beings ever to have graced the music industry and an engine room giant, yet his greatest quality was that he was an ‘all round good bloke.’ There will be many people in many places mourning yet at the same time fondly remembering someone who made an impact on everyone. I’m not alone in saying I was proud to have known him.
Rob had many qualities not least of all his humility. Most of you reading this won’t know who he was and that’s a shame. He was a hugely talented PR blessed with remarkable communication skills and someone adept at identifying and nurturing talent. I can imagine the impact his death will have had on so many artists from U2 to Tom Waits from just reading the tributes Johnny Marr and Marianne Faithful have already offered. Marianne said he was one of the greatest men she had ever met, Billboard referred to him as a PR giant. Words could never serve to do him justice, he was a very special human being.
Rob was the first person to spot the talent that was U2 and gave his employer Island Records the heads up, yet he was never one to gloat over it. I often wonder if U2 would have gone on to become what they are today without Island and especially without Rob Partridge. He had a unique ability when it came to dealing with artists, he took time to understand them and they in turn loved working with him.
The last time I saw him was maybe 10 years ago yet but when I read the tributes and e-mails and see his picture it’s like I’m there in his front room and he’s defending his dedication to Queens Park Rangers like only Rob could……and always there at his side his wonderful and loving wife Tina. A remarkable half of a remarkable whole.
I’m not the only one who will miss him and look forward to the day someone walks on to a stage to receive the Rob Partridge Lifetime Achievement Award.
Filed under: Journey Through The Past, PR, View from the room, Island Records, Johnny Marr, Marianne Faithful, Rob Partridge, U2
Insights From The Engine Room 
I too would like to pass on my respects to the memory of Rob Partridge and my condolences to his family. I only met him a couple of times but I was aware of his standing in the business and would concur with everyone in saying I never heard anyone say other than good about him.
What a long strange trip it’s been
2
In a Rut
When I got my first proper job in Radio I was employed as a researcher by the Religious Broadcasting Department!! Even in those early days I was provoking conflict and being the subject of comments like ‘How can he make a valid contribution to the work of our department when he’s not even a committed Christian?’ Fortunately the department head, a man called Colin Semper, was a smashing man and one of the people I have always regarded as a role model. Colin stood in my corner on more than one occasion, when the guns were out for me and once launched an all-out attack on Radio 1 Controller Derek Chinnery when completely untrue allegations were made about me. Colin said that he thought the very fact that I wasn’t a committed Christian (more a raving hedonist actually) was the very reason why I COULD make a valid contribution, as I would bring some balance to things in a sort of Devil’s Advocate kind of way. I hope I rewarded Colin’s faith in me when I contributed majorly to a series which won the department a very prestigious broadcasting award; their first in many years. I can remember reading a listener letter complimenting the series, which was called ‘God in My Language’ and was all about immigrant religions in the UK. The listener said something like ‘It’s a shame the Religious Broadcasting Department of the BBC can’t put out programmes of this quality’. The fact that he had thought the programme was so much better than the usual output for him not to have realised it’s source, made me feel I was making a difference, even if I wasn’t.
My next programme called ‘On the Square’ was made with a lovely man, now sadly departed, called Robert Foxcroft and was, not surprisingly about Freemasonry. As far as I am aware it was the first radio programme which had to face Review board BEFORE it was transmitted. As the name suggested Review Board usually looked at programmes after they had been broadcast, examining content, balance and structure etc. Senior Producer David Winter told me that the board had said things like ‘Do you really think the public will be interested in such a programme?’ and ‘Do you think it is responsible of you to waste BBC money on such conjecture?’ (in response to a wall of silence from most of the Freemasons to whom we tried to speak). After much wringing of hands they decided to let the programme go out but David told me NEVER to mention I had worked on the programme in any future BBC job application, as Freemasonry was rife amongst BBC upper management and it would have a significantly adverse effect on my job prospects if i did.
The greatest mystery we revealed about the Darkness Visible was that it had no mystery and was basically a conglomerate of overgrown Boy Scouts with too much time on their hands. I’m not sure that is an accurate summary but it was hard to tell when none of them would speak to us.
Anyway I digress
The Head of Admin in the department was a lady called Doris English. Doris was nearing retirement and had the ability to strike fear into the hearts of most people who worked there, in particular the Freelances like me. Doris presided over all matters admin in a similar way to how Maggie Thatcher presided over her Conservative Party. Doris wielded an awful lot of power over us because she signed-off (or didn’t sign-off if you upset her) your expense claims and your work contracts which entitled you to get payment from the BBC Cash Office, for work you had done or were about to do.
For some reason Doris took a real shine to me which was very surprising as I was the department’s resident punk and most people would have thought I was anathema to all Doris stood for. She managed to get me my own desk, which Freelances never got and a permanent BBC ID card with a staff number, even though I wasn’t a paid up member of staff. My contracts and expenses were always immediately authorised on presentation and Doris would frequently have me in her office for a cup of tea. I rewarded her with gifts of band memorabilia and fruitcakes. I will never forget the day I gifted her a t shirt promoting the album ‘The Crack’ by The Ruts,which the gutsy punk rock anthem ‘In a Rut’. I had presumed she would take it home and present it to any young aspiring punk in her family, but much to my surprise when I went back to her office later in the day, she was sat in the middle of her admin domain belligerently wearing a t shirt promoting one of the most arch bands of the period. The other members of her section as well as the rest of the department were quite frankly astonished!
We even invented an imaginary punk group for Doris called ‘Doris and the Germans’ although I can’t for the life of me remember why.
I think that Doris had a bit of a crush on me in a strange sort of way. She had never married and had spent her life as a pillar of the establishment, but I think there was a seriously rebellious and romantic person under the stern exterior and she saw in me, the sort of person she may have liked to be had things been different.
The last time I saw Doris English was on a train back to her beloved Durham. She had retired from the BBC and was going home to see out her autumn years. I was on my way to Glasgow to interview Status Quo (well somebody had to!) and Doris made me promise to get her an autographed album and t shirt. I did and sent them to her but it is to my great shame that I failed to keep in contact. Sometimes you come to miss the most unexpected people.
sorry for typo! should read:
I gifted her a t shirt promoting the album ‘The Crack’ by The Ruts,which contained the gutsy punk rock anthem ‘In a Rut’.
What a Long Strange Trip it’s Been
3.
Suzan takes you down…………………..
Ok on a point of order this particular Suzan is spelt that way!
I first met Suzan Davies in 1974. She was just one of a group of friends I met when I first arrived in London and it was a while before we started to spend time together separately from the group. I hadn’t really noticed at first but Suzan was an extremely attractive woman with dark hair and the most stunning translucent eyes. I think she was made even more attractive by the fact that she was very intelligent and had an opinion on just about everything. She was like a younger version of Germaine Greer, which was quite appropriate as Suzan hailed from Australia. We talked about everything together. I told her things about my relationship (or lack of one) with my parents and she told me about that rather difficult relationship with her mother, whom I met and the even more difficult one with her father, whom I didn’t and whom she never really got to know.
We went out to dinner and the cinema and the theatre quite frequently and once I even allowed myself to be dragged to a tacky, central London disco by this socially complex woman. I remember us going to see David Bowie in ‘The Man Who Fell To Earth’ together, in a cinema just off Leicester Square. When we came out Suzan said she hated the film. I told her it was because she hadn’t understood the underlying cosmic significance of the seemingly disjointed sections of the film, or words to that effect. She got so irate that she started jumping up and down on the spot, shouting at me for being so pretentious. Then she noticed the smirk on my face and realised I had been sending her up. We both fell about in a fit of giggles. To this day I haven’t a clue what that film is about really.
One night we were out to eat somewhere near Oxford Street. We were just going for a nightcap when we were passed by a gang of about six young men who proceeded to lay into a blind man and knock him to the ground. I’m pretty foolhardy bravado wise, but even I was sensible enough to realise that six against one did not suggest an heroic outcome for yours truly. Both myself and Suzan went to the aid of the man who was more shaken than badly hurt but I would imagine when you are blind, something like that must be even more terrifying than if you’re sighted. I waited until the thugs were out of sight; it later transpired they were now busy turning over a hot-dog stand and beating up its owner and his girlfriend. When I thought it was relatively safe I told Suzan, that I was going to look for a policeman. This was life before the mobile phone, so the only real hope was to find a call-box that worked or a beat copper. Strange as it may seem there were a lot more policemen on the beat in those days so the latter transpired before I found the need to vainly search for the former. The policeman radioed in a description of the thugs and their perceived direction, before accompanying me back to the scene of the crime. Within minutes a police van screeched to a halt and I was beckoned inside. We went off, lights flashing and siren blazing, screaming down the streets of Soho in the rain and we weren’t looking for a place called ‘Lee Ho Fooks’!. I felt like I was in an episode of ‘The Sweeney’. We didn’t find the perps but fortunately we knew a man who did! Another van had spotted and arrested the six men as they were in the process of beating up a third victim. I was taken off to Vine Street police station, where I identified the culprits whilst they languished in the cells. I am pleased to say that i was a witness at their trial and helped the police get custodial sentences for three of them.
Suzan had made her way home to Seymour Street and I duly followed. When I got there she was looking frazzled, but stunning in a Chinese silk gown. We had a drink and I filled her in on the parts of the story she had missed, afterwhich I snuggled down in her spare room trying hard to sleep but mostly wondering how those lowlifes and myself could possibly be the same species.
Sometime after the above events, Suzan got a job as a radio producer at the BBC. She had already had broadcast experience, working as a researcher on ‘Monty Python’s Flying Circus’. We were still friends, but by now she had a new man in her life, an American academic called Jim Moore. Jim and I had an uneasy relationship. In short I found him patronising and sooooo……….American and he probably found me verging on obnoxious, which was probably accurate. Suzan offered me a job as a researcher on a Radio 1 show she was producing which I duly accepted and we worked together for about 18 months. In truth I was jealous of Jim and I set about collecting attractive girlfriends, in a ridiculous effort to show her what she was missing! During the time we worked together I became more and more the shallow, egocentric hedonist I stayed throughout most of my twenties. I really was the epitome of the George Harrison song ‘I Me Mine’. I think Suzan began to despise the monster she had helped create as I slashed and burned, in a highly ambitious attempt to make a big impact on the media. Towards the end of my time in radio, we were barely speaking. We met a couple of times after that, but didn’t really meet again properly until 1989, when she invited me to her house in Hackney for dinner. I was at an all-time low both professionally and socially. I was in a state where I felt unable to function until I’d had a skinful. I turned up, smelling of drink and nearly two hours late. Suzan was far from impressed. She had had a daughter Jessica, during her time with Jim who was by now long gone and she told me she had kept Jessica up way past her bedtime in order that she see me, but that she was now in bed. At the time I wondered why she had done that, but I was still, after all that time, too self-absorbed to ask.
I went home in a cab and when I tried to phone her after that she didn’t return my calls. I last saw her at a friend’s 40th birthday party at Jackson’s Lane Community Centre, in Highgate. By this time I had met Kate again (see elsewhere) and told Suzan we were getting married. She was pretty scornful and told me that she hoped I was doing the right thing. I have made the odd attempt to contact her since but she still doesn’t return my calls.
Suzan Davies was a major influence in my life and it pains me to think that I lost such a valuable friend by being stupid and irresponsible and pretending to be something I really wasn’t. Perhaps I was never really honest with her. Perhaps I found her more intimidating than I cared to admit and was scared if I revealed my true feelings she would put me down like some old boxer who’d had one fight too many. Perhaps I didn’t really know what my true feelings were. Perhaps I just wasn’t brave enough. As it says in the well-known song ‘Perhaps Perhaps Perhaps’.
What’s gone is gone but I wish she would read this and then pick up the phone so that I could once again be friends with a woman who means an awful lot to me.
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