Mike Batt is known for raising the popularity of one of the most well-known British novelty pop acts of the 1970s, The Wombles. Batt wrote and composed the theme song to the children’s TV series, which led to the rising popularity of ‘The Wombling Song’. Batt has also worked with artists such as Katie Melua and others on his Dramatico Label, and co-wrote 'The Phantom of The Opera’. He sits down with Georgina Godwin to discuss his memoir, ‘The Closest Thing to Crazy: My Life of Musical Adventures’. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Hello, welcome to Meet the Writers.
I'm Georgina Godwin.
My guest today is a singer songwriter, although one could call him many, many things.
A talented man with many albums and singles under his belt.
But to many he's known as the orchestrator of the Wumbles.
The Wumbles are a fictional pointy nosed furry creature.
They were created by Elizabeth Beresford and originally appeared in a series of children's novels from 1968 before taking centre stage on TV shows such as Top of the Pops.
British hit singles and albums jokingly referred to them as the furriest and possibly the tidiest act.
And in 2011, the band played at the Glastonbury Festival.
All the tales of the Furry band and his other avenues in the music industry abound into the Closest Thing to Crazy, which reveals the rocky and classical journey of his life, but also a tour around the inside of His Mind.
It's a biography of one of the most talented men in music and an entertaining read for all music and Womble fans alike.
Mike Batt.
Welcome to meet the writers.
Hello, Georgina.
Very nice to be here.
It's really wonderful to have you here and I've heard you talk about this book before and of course I've heard you sing and it's just really uplifting.
I think the Wumble song is ingrained in everybody's childhood.
It's funny, we did a little bit of a mini comeback in the 90s because the whole thing really happened in the 70s, but in the 90s we had two re entries with the first Womble song, the Underground Overground, otherwise known as the Wombling Song.
The second one was remember, you're a Womble, and that came back into the charts as well.
It was very funny because I did a TV thing, a London television thing or whatever it was, and they had gone to lots of vox pops, you know, headshots into the camera, with lots and lots of people all over the country and everyone knew all the lyrics.