6. Fear Of Flying
I’ve got to leave for the airport It’s almost time to catch my plane Time is running out for me I’ve got to leave again Tomorrow I’ll sing for some different people In a town a thousand miles away...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Walking Wounded
My uncles James and Thomas Gratrix, who were both killed in the First World War. James was 20 and Thomas was 24. I wrote the following story during my Creative Writing Masters course at Birkbeck...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Will anyone be learning English after Brexit?
…. but for how long? In his new book The Great British Reboot: How the UK Can Thrive in a Turbulent World, Alex Brummer lists Britain’s ‘remaining and undersung strengths’, the things which will keep...
View ArticleIt’s January!
So here’s a song to help your students remember the months of the year. Sung by Gillian Bartlam, musical arrangement by Richard Vranch. Bass played by Steve Hall. Recorded at Hallmark Studios, Soho...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Ticket Inspector
This is the audio and script of a sketch from the English Teaching Theatre, written by Doug Case and me back in the 1970s. The ETT was a group of actors, teachers and musicians who toured a stage show...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The King of Boonland
Hugh Trethowan as the King of Boonland and Kieran Fogarty as the Buckingham Palace guard The King of Boonland is one of my favourite sketches, partly because it’s one that I performed many times on...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Post Office
Angela Carr and Garry Fox in The Post Office sketch The Post Office sketch was first performed by the English Teaching Theatre in 1989. An old lady goes to a post office with a fish-shaped parcel that...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The story of Mister Monday
Singing with Dede at International House music club in 1970. Cigarettes and beer … what a bad example we were setting! I started work at International House London in the summer of 1969. For those of...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The story of Mister Monday, part 2
The story so far – a Salford lad with limited musical skills and no experience of working in a studio gets a contract to record ten language teaching songs. Now read on… Two weeks before we were due...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Books I wrote…
Since I first became a published author of English Language Teaching materials fifty years ago in 1971, I have contributed in all to more than thirty ELT publications. There are images of some of them...
View Article