Gerry Rafferty – Urban Myth…

Gerry Rafferty – Urban Myth…

By Tommy Boyd The deaths of Pete Postlethwaite and Gerry Rafferty remind us of the nurses tale; that many seriously ill people hang on for one last Christmas.
Rafferty also reminds me of a curious side story in my media life which isn’t high in my mind, but I don’t know what to make of it.
In 1980 I replaced Jeremy Beadle on LBC’s latenight Sunday show. A musician friend called Rod (of Rod Jane and Freddy, the band on Rainbow) offered to make me some jingles. They’d do it as a favour.
Rod is an exceptionally nice man, and he felt sad for me as Magpie had just been axed by ITV.

Rod (With banjo)

Rod brought in some mates, among them Raf Ravenscroft. He played sax on Gerry Rafferty’s “Baker Street”, a song which I used to hum every time I visited my agent in Baker Street.
They recorded a bunch of themes, the highlight of each being Raf’s improvised riffs.  I ended up with a very classy sound.
One of the games on the LBC show was “True or False”, which was fun to write. The False facts needed to be funny, but sufficiently plausible.
This was my second stint at LBC, previously I’d worked for 2 years as a producer there, on Bob Holness’ early morning news show. I’d found Bob brilliant, if infuriatingly fussy. He was still doing the breakfast show at LBC, we often played trailers for him.

 The idea of  someone as neat and tidy as Bob being able to swing out a raunchy sax came easily, and I ran “True or false: Bob Holness played sax on Gerry Rafferty’s Baker Street?” for one  night.
Spool on ten years and I open my Guardian to find a question in “Notes and Queries” – “Is it true that Bob Holness played sax on Gerry Rafferty’s Baker Street – or is it an urban myth.”
I was tickled. Had this “Falsie” as they were called, become something more? So I popped a note to “Notes and Queries” to clear it up.
This is where it gets interesting. They never published my letter. Being a person who takes pride in not giving a stuff about such things I forgot about it.
A few months ago a friend texted me to watch “Have I Got News For You”, as one of the guests – a Radio One DJ – was being questioned by Paul Merton about how he came up with the legendary urban myth that Bob Holness played sax on Baker Street.
It’s mildly interesting to have created an urban myth, but as a student of human nature extremely interesting to watch the sideshows to the sideshow.
I’m guessing this poor DJ laid claim to it way back, and is now stuck with it. I guess the Guardian thought I was some publicity seeker having a laugh. Whatever.
RIP Gerry, that’s the main thing, and thanks for one of the greatest one-off songs ever.