Book Review: Music, Marigolds and Me – Paul Nicholas (with Douglas Thompson)

MUSIC, MARIGOLDS AND ME – Paul Nicholas with Douglas Thompson (Fantom Publishing).

Star rating: two stars ★ ★ ✩ ✩ ✩

Paul Nicholas has done everything. Without formal training, he has notched up credits and much esteem as a pop star, musical theatre lead, straight actor, director and producer. Now 76, he details his many adventures and achievements in his autobiography Music, Marigolds and Me which hit the bookshops last month.

It’s a flamboyant professional journey. Nicholas, for example created the role of the Rum Tum Tugger in the original cast of Cats. He admits that learning the dance sequences was a challenge and is full of praise for the late much-admired choreographer Gillian Lynne.

In 1976 there were three British Top Twenty hits: ‘Reggae Like It Used to Be’, ‘Dancing With the Captain’ and ‘Grandma’s Party’.

By 1983 he was in BBC TV’s Just Good Friends and later appeared as Gavin Sullivan in EastEnders. Then there was the TV show The Real Marigold Hotel – hence the floral reference in the book’s title.

And much, much more. The multi-talented Paul Nicholas seems to have been enviably, frenetically, sensationally busy for over 65 years.

The book tells us about his many and various achievements in some detail but he cheerfully admits that he simply recorded his memories orally ready for Douglas Thompson to write them up. And Thompson, I’m afraid, has done him few favours in the structure of this book.

There is no chronology and the book leaps confusingly about in time far too much. I read half of it, for instance, wanting to know more about his childhood and how he got involved in performing in the first place.

Then suddenly, for no apparent reason, we get it mid-book along with an account of Nicholas’ father Oscar Beuselinck who became a very successful showbiz lawyer.

There’s a lot of repetition and inconsistency too. I enjoyed, for instance, the anecdote about accompanying on piano a friend who was auditioning for a part, only for the job to be offered to Nicholas himself. But then, elsewhere, he tells us that he grew up playing no musical instruments. So when and how did he learn piano?

It’s an interesting book and Paul Nicholas’ name will sell it but it would have been a great deal better if had been punctiliously edited. As it is, it reads a bit like a verbatim theatre monologue.

Susan Elkin