of times worldwide. The donations came pouring in and before I knew it we had raised over £150,000 for the charity to help other families like us.
Now I was about to go onstage to receive a Pride of Britain Award for raising dementia awareness. It was one of the most surreal moments of my life as Sir Cliff Richard and Dame Joan Collins appeared to present me with the award. ‘I can’t believe your dad sells more records than I do,’ said Cliff.
For Dad, his one true passion has always been music. He’s been singing since he was a young boy, growing up in a noisy house with thirteen brothers and sisters, and his musical ability was always encouraged. Although my grandparents didn’t have a lot, the family never went short. My grandad was hard-working, with a job in the forge and lots of friends down at the local pub, while my grandmother was a strong and loving mother who knew everyone on the estate where she lived. Dad had a typical childhood for the time – his younger years were about football or playing out in the woods at the back of the estate. Once he left school, one of his many jobs was as a Butlin’s Redcoat, where he travelled the country singing in clubs. He earned himself the nickname ‘The Songaminute Man’ because of the many different songs he could perform by heart.
Dad had just turned 65 when we started to notice his memory going. Mum picked up on it first – he would forget what he was doing, forget names and faces. Next came the aggression, the frustration and finally the realization that the person we knew was slowly fading away.
I’d always hoped Dad would write his own book one day – not least because he was a legendary storyteller when I was a kid. At family parties he’d often be found with a group of my cousins at his feet, enthralled by his stories. The tales would be greatly embellished, dramatic and over the top, but to young kids they were mesmerizing. One Christmas years ago, I bought him a blank notebook in which to write everything down, but dementia came and took away his past before he had a chance.
And now it’s my job, as his son, to capture as much as I can about Dad before he’s lost to us for ever. This book documents his life growing up as the eldest of fourteen children, his life onstage, his loves, and then later the devastating effects of dementia on him and his family – as well as how we pulled together to help him finally receive the recognition for his singing that he always deserved. Things are very mixed up for Dad – he can no longer tell his story without it becoming confused – so this is his story as told by others. I spoke to those people who knew him best: his remaining brothers and sisters, his friends, his teenage sweetheart and my mum, his wife of more than forty years. Where possible, these interviews have been used fully, alongside first-hand stories that Dad told me over the years. I’ve done my best to recreate them as best as I can, though I know some stories will be for ever lost in time.
I so desperately miss my dad. Even though he’s still around and I see him all the time, he’s very much in his own world, and it’s painful to watch Mum look after the man she loves. The thing is, when he was well I never really understood him for what he was. To me he was just Dad – the guy at home who would tell me off, get in the occasional mood, go out singing, love being the centre of attention, fly off the handle, care too much and be embarrassingly quirky. This book has become not only the story of my dad’s life but my story, too. I’ve been given the gift of finally discovering the person my father is, why he behaves the way he does, his flaws, his weaknesses and his hidden strengths, which has, in turn, revealed to me who I am.
When I was a young kid I thought my dad was the greatest man in the world. I lost that feeling for a while. But now I can say I’m the proudest man on the planet to have Ted McDermott as my father – the kind, the moody, the sensitive, the egotistical, the complicated, the brilliant, Songaminute Man.
This is his story.
Wednesbury is a small town right between Birmingham and Wolverhampton. It’s part of the Black Country – so-called, according to Ted, by Queen Victoria in the 1800s. The story goes that Victoria was on a train being driven around the country when she looked out of the window to see the air thick with smoke from the many thousands of factories. ‘This is such a black country,’ she said, and the name stuck.
Ted McDermott was born in Wednesbury on 14 August 1936 to Hilda and Maurice McDermott. He was the first of fourteen children and a cheeky, chatty kid who wasn’t afraid to talk to anyone. You could say his childhood was unremarkable in many ways, although, despite being punctuated by war and hardship, it was loving, with a strong sense of family and a determination to make the best of what they had.
Back in the Thirties, Wednesbury was a junction of goods yards, railways and factories. In the evening, the glow from the metal manufacturing lit up the sky for miles around. During the Industrial Revolution, hundreds of Irish settlers arrived in Wednesbury to do the digging – new roads, new railways, new everything.
The McDermotts were such settlers – the majority coming from Sligo on the west coast of Ireland. Legend has it that Dermot was one of the kings of Ireland before it was taken over by the English. Years later, Ted would sit and reimagine this history, telling his son that Dermot was merely the poet to the King of Ireland. ‘You’re from a family of poets!’ he would say.
It was against this industrial backdrop that Ted’s parents were born and raised. Ted’s mum, Hilda Carter, was born with warm red hair and a personality to match. Ted’s father, Maurice McDermott, worked in the forge most of his life. He was a quiet, small, thickset Black Country man, but he lacked the strong accent of his friends and colleagues. He worked hard during the day, and would sing down the local pubs at the weekends whenever he could, often wearing a suit, like most of the other men on the estate. It was clear where Ted inherited his love of singing.
Like most young couples of the time, Hilda and Maurice met locally and married quickly. Ted, their first child, was born soon after, followed with precise regularity by Maurice, Ernie, Fred and Colin. The young family were growing fast and in 1942 they all moved across town to the newly built 18 Kent Road in Friar Park – a council estate to the east of Wednesbury. It was the first time that a generation of McDermotts had moved away from Brickkiln Street, where Maurice had been brought up.
There was nothing lavish or luxurious about Maurice and Hilda’s new house – it was small and red brick with a tiny garden at the front and a back kitchen leading out on to a simple back garden. It was spartan inside but the young couple soon made it their own, relying on hand-me-downs from family members and Hilda’s thrifty eye. She could spot a good piece of material at 50 yards, barter over the price until it was within the weekly budget, and then manage to knock together two sets of curtains. No one had a clue how she could make so little stretch so far, but it was just as well given how many mouths there would eventually be to feed.
Hilda’s shrewd money skills really came into their own during the war – while the McDermotts were entitled to more rationing coupons than most because of their swelling numbers, Hilda cut herself deals with the smaller, richer families, who would pay extra for the food the McDermotts got for less. Mrs Cook, who lived up the road and was a keen baker, would take Hilda’s butter vouchers and happily give her back double the amount of margarine. Even without the food that was traded away, Hilda knew how to feed a family of sixteen and would always have a pot on the go in the kitchen. She was friendly with all the local milkmen, bread men and grocers, doing deals with everyone and swapping her ration coupons like a pro.
The house changed very little over the years: there were three bedrooms upstairs – one master bedroom, a smaller back bedroom and a tiny single bedroom to the side. The toilet was out the back, to the side of the kitchen. The house might have been small, but it was their home and Hilda kept it as clean as she could. She was bright and entrepreneurial, and poured all of that skill into running a house and large family like clockwork.
It was the same routine every day, beginning with making sure Maurice had a proper breakfast to set him up for his day as a drop forger at the forge – a job he kept most of his life. Once he had gone to work, Hilda would turn her attention to the house and family. The kids were washed and fed, then she would prepare a pot of food for lunch and dinner,