Tom Caine awakes one morning to discover that he can't stop singing at
inappropriate moments. As a result he loses his job and his girlfriend. In I
think I've Got A Problem, beginning on Radio 4 this week, Suggs stars as the
vocally incontinent man. Jo Morris met him to find out more and ask, "Who
are the strange bunch of musicians following him around?" "Why can't
anyone else see them?" And "Will Tom reach the high notes?"
Suggs regretted his decision to star in I Think I've Got A Problem only once.
It was on the first day of recording and the part required him to sing Village
People's gay epic, In The Navy, whilst passionately making love to his
girlfriend. A little different, I imagine, from his days spent nutting about
with the boys from Madness?
"Yeah I was very nervous! " he laughs recalling the memory, " I
don't know if the writers did it on purpose but they bloody well threw me in at
the deep end with that lovemaking scene. It was hugely embarrassing and not
something I'm prone to do in public!"
Blimey! Does he serenade his wife, Anne, to Village People in private then?
"Nah!" he laughs raucously, "it's never got that bad! But we
enjoy a good sing-a-long in the family."
We're sitting in a dingy meeting room at the BBC and he is rolling a cigarette.
Apart from one or two white hairs and a bit more flesh around his jowls, he
looks gratifyingly close to the Suggs you remember and acts like the Suggs
character you'd imagine: nice London bloke, a bit of a Leftie, naturally funny
and always interrupting himself and then flipping back to his original topic.
"Another aspect of it is.."or an "I remember talking to
someone.."
He's full of enthusiasm for his part in the new comedy for Radio 4. He plays Tom
Caine, a man it seems with everything - a beautiful girlfriend, great job, good
mates - only he is a man with a problem. He awakes one morning to discover that
he can't stop himself singing in a big musical style and at inopportune moments
- a kind of musical Tourette's syndrome.. What's more Tom is accompanied by a
classy hardboiled New York Jazz band - a kind of cross between the Marx Brothers
and Sergeant Bilko - that only he can see and hear.
The writers, Andrew
McGibbon and Nick Romero, penned the part with him in mind. McGibbon and Suggs
having already met when they worked on Morrissey's album Bona Drag. " I
just thought it was a fantastic idea," he says, " I thought it could
be very funny, you know the idea of this bloke being controlled by factors
nobody else could see."
Tom relates his story in flashback to a psychiatrist played by Bob Monkhouse.
Suggs thought it, "an inspired piece of casting" and the two of them
got on well. "I don't know if he's mad, Bob, but I think he could certainly
understand what being mad is…let's put it that way…" he says erupting
into laughter.
Both having been recent subjects of
This Is Your Life, they enjoyed one tea-break comparing notes. For Suggs the
vision of Michael Aspel clutching the infamous red book - at the end of a
marathon recording session of A Question of Pop - was not a welcome one.
"It was a complete shock" he tells me, "and quite odd as I'd
always said to my wife, Anne: 'If they ever ask say 'NO!' I've always thought
there was something slightly embarrassing about the whole process although it
would be churlish to say it wasn't…" he searches for the words -
"flattering or charming!"
Fortunately after a few swift vodkas on route to the studio, (courtesy of Noddy
Holder) he began to enjoy the show. "But we didn't start filming until one
in the morning and one of the biggest problems for the producers was keeping my
family away from the drink," he guffaws. "And of course the big worry
is they'll bring somebody in you knew from twenty years ago, and the reason you
haven't kept in touch is deliberate. HA HA!"
Suggs laughs a lot: big, enthusiastic guffaws that make him sit right back in
his chair and roll his eyes up to the ceiling. He also makes little jerky
movements reminiscent of his Top of the Pop appearances a decade earlier.
When Madness began
life in 1977 - a gang of white teenagers united by membership of a North London
youth club and a love of Jamaican music - it would have been hard to predict
they'd notch up 20 hits. "We used to rehearse in Mike's bedroom, with a
blanket on the drumkit, an out-of- tune piano and Lee blowing away in a
completely different key. People would go, ' what the fxxx is this?'"
What it actually was, at that point, was more a gang than a band - a bunch of
schoolmates having a laugh. But it grew from there. "Madness became my
family," recalls Suggs, whose upbringing - including being sent for three
years to an aunt in Wales - had always been pretty lonely up to then.
The rest, of course
is chart history. Over the next ten years Madness turned into an irrepressible
hit machine. Not even Ray Davies from the Kinks had dared to sound as defiantly
British as Suggs singing about his house, his car, his baggy trousers. Best of
all Madness sounded as if they were doing it purely for fun.
When the split came, however, Suggs found it traumatic. The pork pie hats and
doc martens were shoved to the back of the cupboard, and he was lost as to what
to do next. "I was really confused and pretty depressed. I'd been in the
band for so long, I didn't really feel I was a singer and musician in my own
right. It's so intense being in a band and no-one can really explain how you
will feel when it ends." He pauses, takes a drag of his roll-up and laughs
a little ruefully, "You know, I would have loved to have asked George
Harrison for advice but I haven't got his number."
Apparently, it was when he started discussing the meaning of life with his
milkman that Suggs realized he needed help. And so like his character, Tom Caine,
he sought the help of a psychiatrist. "I went to see a very nice man about
eight times and without wanting to be toooooooooo deeeeeep, " he says
drawing the words out almost reluctantly, "I think sometimes in your life
it's useful to have an objective opinion…. I mean I never had a father for
instance."
He blurts this last fact out suddenly - the conversation seemingly touching a
nerve. His father, a photographer with a heroin habit left home when Suggs was
just three. The last he heard of him was back in 1977 and today he believes he
is probably dead. If there had been a relationship between father and son, Suggs
thinks his dad might have provided the independent voice he needed. "Maybe
he could have fulfilled that role," he says, "it's very difficult when
you're famous to find an objective person, because you're always judged by your
persona on the telly."
The time spent with his psychiatrist, he found incredibly useful. "It was
just a matter of getting a bit of confidence…all I needed to do was realize
that once the band split up life hadn't ended." Was his psychiatrist
anything like Bob Monkhouse? He laughs loudly at this, the idea clearly tickles
him, "well he certainly wasn't as tanned but he was definitely a funny
bloke!"
Today, Suggs is approaching the status of Renaissance man, with a finger in all
sorts of cultural pies. There is his successful karaoke programme, Night Fever,
for Channel Five, a history of SKA for Radio 2, his career as an independent
artist and then of course there will always be the boys from Madness.
He saw the band only yesterday and there are plans afoot for a new musical using
the Madness songs. "What with Mamma Mia and the Pet Shop Boys, soon you
won't be able to move for bands doing musicals," he laughs with a wry
smile. Will they be calling it The Nutty Boys I wonder? "Nah," he
laughs "but we do own a dog called Nutty Boy." They race it every week
at Walthamstow dog track, but Suggs hasn't been up there recently, what with all
his commitments. "It's probably a good thing," he says, "I'd
probably have a heart attack betting all my money on him in the
excitement."
Is he is ever surprised the band came through it with their lives and minds
intact? After all he seems remarkably unscathed, having spent over twenty years
in a business notorious for its casualties. He pauses for a moment, another drag
of his ciggie. "MMm yes and no. Sure we all did some very naughty things,
but we were always very protective of each other. It's a terrible cliché but we
were a bit like a gang. And we all had families, too. Looking back, Madness was
built on strong foundations."
