The Closest to Madness by Mike Batt: From the Wombles to Windsor! As if writing The Wombling Song wasn’t enough, Mike Batt also wrote one of the Queen’s most loved songs

Closest to crazy

By Mike Batt (Nine Eight Books £22, 368pp)

“Actually, I have a dog named Womble,” said Mike Batt’s biggest fan, the late Queen Elizabeth II. She also loved his song The Closest Thing To Crazy, which Terry Wogan regularly played on Radio Two while Her Majesty was having breakfast.

Batt was invited to compose music for the Queen and Prince Philip’s Golden Wedding Anniversary, which was performed by the massed bands of the Coldstream, Grenadier, Scottish, Irish and Welsh Guards.

Fourteen Wombles marched past the Queen Mother in military dress during her Hundredth Birthday Parade.

Frequently invited to receptions and sleepovers at Buckingham Palace, Batt was eventually appointed a lieutenant of the Royal Victorian Order.

Otherwise it hasn’t always been easy.

As Batt says in his compelling memoir, “I’m too classic for the rock people and too rock for the classic people; too weird for the middle-of-the-road people, too middle-of-the-road for the middle-of-the-road people.”

Yet he is unique, as if Gilbert, Sullivan and D’Oyly Carte were rolled into one.

In 1979, Bright Eyes, Batt’s ballad from Watership Down, sung by Art Garfunkel, was number one in ten countries, selling at a rate of 60,000 discs per day. The albums composed and produced for Katie Melua sold millions, just as Batt spent £10 million on her television advertising.

Batt has worked closely with The Hollies, Steeleye Span, David Essex, Cliff Richard, and he says of Sting, “It was amazing how he would just walk in, pick the prettiest girl in the room and disappear straight upstairs.”

Despite all this activity, Batt remains best known for his Wombles theme song: ‘Underground, aboveground, Wombling free, the Wombles of Wimbledon Common are we!’ It started when he was invited to compose the music for the five-minute stop-frame animated films, which were broadcast before the BBC1 evening news.

Batt refused the £200 fee, saying he wanted the character rights for music-related activities instead.

The Wombles, who “looked like fat mice with hats, scarves and other accessories,” recycled the trash left behind by people and became a national phenomenon thanks to Batt.

In 1976 there were three gold albums and nine top 40 hits.

People loved the sheer silliness. Batt the Womble went on television with Cilla and Bernard Cribbins. Along with a Womble drummer, bassist and guitarist, Batt appeared on Top Of The Pops, lining up backstage with Bowie and the Bay City Rollers. Signed by CBS, Womble records were purchased by teenagers and adults alike. Fred Astaire announced his approval of the song Wombling White Tie And Tails.

It was all ‘very financially lucrative’. Batt bought a Rolls-Royce with a Bakelite telephone inside. He was 25.

Born in Southampton, Batt was a musical prodigy who picked up tunes from the radio and could play them by ear. He read orchestral scores and wrote lyrics, his sources of inspiration being Shakespeare, Keats and George Formby.

Batt’s father, a community civil engineer who, as a lieutenant colonel, rebuilt the port of Tobruk, Libya, during the war, bought his son a wing that dominated the front room.

At age 17, Batt knew he wanted to be a songwriter: “I was going to break into the music business whether the music business liked it or not.”

At 19, Batt was a producer at Liberty/United Artists, with a secretary and a large office. He had a special gift for string and brass arrangements, and he knew how to conduct.

Batt soon teamed up with the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band and organized recording sessions. This period was ‘exciting, frightening, exhilarating and full of joy and energy’, even though everyone smelled of patchouli, this was the 1960s.

On the domestic front, Batt enjoyed numerous affairs and “thought about sex most of the day.”

His first wife was Wendy, second on Opportunity Knocks. They lived on a narrow boat with a chemical toilet in Surrey. The marriage was, Batt says, a mixture of “euphoria and misery.”

In an effort to make more of the former and “escape from the shadow of the Wombles,” Batt, his wife, and their two children embarked on a two-year round-the-world voyage on a 200-ton steam yacht built in 1931 by the man who built Fox’s Glacier Mints invented.

The journey brought “sorrow, danger, dissatisfaction and mystical scenes,” i.e. dolphins and sunsets. It was also an excellent way to burn through savings. “There were uncomfortable calls from the bank every day.”

On his return to Britain, and in between releasing his solo CDs, Batt worked on his masterpiece, writing the melodies, lyrics and orchestrations for a musical concept album inspired by Carroll’s nonsense poem, The Hunting Of The Snark. John Gielgud received £5,000 for a morning’s work as a narrator. John Hurt came in and ate whelks from a bag. He was so drunk that his lines had to be redone weeks later. George Harrison provided guitar solos.

In 1987 there was a live concert version (with Billy Connolly) at the Royal Albert Hall, and four years later a full theatrical adaptation, worth £2.2 million, opened in the West End.

The critics crucified Batt and made “personal attacks with no blows spared.” The performance is closed.

Batt, who lost a fortune, became “severely clinically depressed,” and no wonder.

There’s a lot of catastrophe in The Closest Thing To Crazy. There’s the tempestuous marriage, “which ultimately ended in a bitter and long overdue divorce…constant court hearings and vitriolic legal correspondence.”

Then Batt is almost killed when his car crashes into a concrete wall in Spain and breaks his neck. A brace is screwed into his skull and he is told to remain immobile for four months, except for conducting and directing another music video two weeks later.

When I finished this exuberant autobiography, I found it a wonder that we ever get to hear one note of music, since everyone involved in the business is deeply controversial: dodgy accountants, lawyers who impose unenforceable contracts, fellow artists who copy your concepts. stealing, meddlesome producers (“Every part of me wanted to tell them to get lost,” Batt writes), distributors who wouldn’t distribute (“They ruined our record by running it out of stock”) and companies that promise everything and promptly go bankrupt.

So all praise goes to Batt for his perseverance. He remains a great entertainer. (And he has long been happily married to Sexy Beast actress Julianne White.)

His book should be read in conjunction with the CD Mike Batt: The Penultimate Collection, which contains 34 classic songs. Problems with Christmas gifts are resolved immediately.