from me, apart from a showstopping bid with my Wes Sands song “Make Believe Love” which completely failed. It was much upstaged by an outfit called Twinkle and the Trekkers, Twinkle being a rather posh girl in a wafty dress who had been drafted in by one of the boys to front his house band. She had written a death motorcycle epic called “Terry” with incisive lyrics like: “He rode into the night / Accelerated his motorbike / I cried to him in fright / Don’t do it, / Don’t do it.” A motorbike was an essential part of the staging but we couldn’t find one. Nonetheless “Terry” went fine. Shortly afterwards Twinkle had a big UK hit with it on Decca Records. I think somewhere along the line Tim Rice had a short association with Twinkle, but I may be misinformed.
A huge array of lower echelon radio and TV producers turned out to see the first show I had masterminded. So it was as a producer rather than composer that these guys first heard of me. Nothing like this had happened at Westminster before and I was very proud of it. Even masters mouthed “Well done.” I had promoted the show, cast it, found the technicians, found someone to light it, sorted the sound system, chosen the music and created a decent running order out of a ragtag potpourri of bands who ranged from hormonal teenage girl sulkbags to a rough North London mob oddly named Peter and the Wolves who wanted to smash the Merseyside boys. Their songs were pretty dire, but their cover versions had the whole school rocking and Compline (evening prayers) was abandoned in St Faith’s that night. All those episodes of Jack Good’s Oh Boy! had rubbed off on me. Soon, I presumed, someone would take me on as an apprentice at a TV company and I could leave Westminster just like that! It’s nice to dream.
THE SUMMER TERM WAS when we took A levels. The results of these determined whether you tried for a university. At Westminster there were a series of “closed” places to Oxford and Cambridge, i.e. scholarships and the like which are charitably funded and only open to Westminster boys. I don’t know if this monstrously unfair system applies today, but in my day these “closed” places siphoned off the best Westminster talent. Rarely did a Westminster boy enter the “open” exams that pitted you against all comers.
My A-level results were appalling. I had only two passes, a D grade in History and E in English; the worst ever result by any Westminster Scholar. My songwriting and producing activities had finally caught up with me. I sat the Christ Church exam along with everyone else, but knew I had no hope of getting a place. I went to the interview like a zombie. Needless to say, I was told to try again next year. Suddenly it hit me. All my friends would be leaving for Oxford and I would be left skulking behind, trapped in a school I was bursting to get out of. Now all my friends seemed to be talking in groups about what would happen when they left. Should they travel round Europe together? What about a trip to New York before Oxford term starts? They were talking about New York, the home of musicals! And they were talking without me. I had blown it big time and it was all my fault.
There was only one tenuous hope. Talk about Last Gasp Saloon time but I realized that the “open” exam for entrance to all the Oxford colleges took place a fortnight later and there was still time for me to enter. Dear Jim Woodhouse took pity on me and the entry forms were signed and dispatched, but not without a resigned look from both Jim and my history master Charles Keeley. I resolved to take myself on a kamikaze crash course of the medieval history I loved and to pray that I got an exam paper with the right questions for me to heroically bluff my way through.
It was coming up to the end of term and the other boys were already university bound so lessons were token. I asked permission to skip them. I threw myself into book after book for twelve hours a day and spent the remaining hours dreaming up historical theories that were so ludicrously at odds to accepted academic thinking that at least I might interest an examiner. Perhaps, if I backed my outrageous ideas up with enough facts, I might stand a chance of blagging my way into one of the smaller colleges. But it all depended on the questions in the exam paper and whether I could twist them my way.
The college you chose as a preference was another major consideration. I chose Magdalen College as my number one. I knew a lot about its architecture, it had a Pre-Raphaelite connection through Holman Hunt and its Senior History professor was the medievalist K.B. McFarlane whose books I had read. My number two choice was Brasenose College because I liked its name.
IT WAS MID-NOVEMBER WHEN I sat the exam, all alone as I was the only Westminster boy to enter the “open” exam. The paper was a dream. I waffled on about how Edward II was a far better king than Edward I, how the Victorian additions improve the medieval original at Cardiff Castle (I can personally vouch that this view is not shared by HM The Queen), that Keble College, for years wrongly considered a red brick Victorian eyesore, is in the top three of Oxford’s best buildings; that the classicist Christopher Wren had advised that Westminster Abbey’s tower be finished in the Gothic style (it is still an unfinished ugly stump by the way), etc. I doubt if such an outpouring of muddled factual diarrhoea has ever hit an examiner. At least I had given it my best shot.
Three days later I got a letter from Magdalen inviting me for an interview. It said that I might need to have a second one and to come prepared to stay overnight at the college. I pitched up late morning at the porter’s lodge and was shown to a rather nice Victorian bedroom and told my interview would be at 3 pm. I didn’t know Oxford that well, but I had time to check out that I was right about Keble College and, importantly, that Gene Pitney was top of the bill at the Oxford New Theatre that night. That was my evening sorted out.
After lunch with a lot of nervous young men who for some reason didn’t want to make conversation about Gene Pitney’s “Town Without Pity,” I joined a small group of the about to be interviewed outside a sort of common room and took a seat. It was then I noticed the Siamese cat. Or to be accurate, the Siamese cat noticed me. Now it takes two to know one and the cat was in no doubt. It jumped on my knee, purring loudly, and butted against my fist whilst engaging in the sort of intelligent conversation and occasional rub against the face that only proper Siamese cats do. After a while it settled down and kneaded my leg for Thailand.
When the door opened and someone said, “Mr Lloyd Webber, will you come in please?” I obviously couldn’t put the cat down. So I carried it in. I was invited to sit down and my new best friend settled contentedly on my knee. Facing me across the centre of a medium sized dining table was Professor McFarlane, flanked by various dons one of whom asked an easily answered trick question about the date of the nave of Westminster Abbey. I am to this day a genuine fan of McFarlane’s books and it was actually a joy to be interviewed by this great medievalist. It took a while but eventually he got around to serious questioning.
“Mr Lloyd Webber, do you like cats?”
I didn’t reply “how long have you got?” but the nub of my answer caused him to end the interview by saying that that would be all and that I didn’t need to stay overnight for another interview.
I was a bit alarmed, but on balance I thought things had gone pretty well. I bade farewell to the cat who followed me back to the little room I had been given. The big issue now was that I was told I wasn’t needed the next day and I wanted to see Gene Pitney. What if they wanted the room for some poor blighter who had to go through the hoop a second time? I decided to wing it. That night I heard “I’m Gonna Be Strong” for the first time.
I took the train next morning and went straight to my parents’ flat. Granny really wanted to know how I had got on. I explained about the cat. She looked exasperated and muttered something about how one day cats would be my undoing. I naturally took a different view. But I was masking huge jitters about the outcome of my interview. It wasn’t exactly textbook. So I phoned Magdalen College and asked if there was by any chance a list yet of new undergraduates for next year. Eventually I got through to a very important-sounding woman who said she was the bursar’s secretary. I asked her if the list of next year’s undergraduates was ready yet.
“I am afraid we only have the list of scholarship winners but the list of the names of the new undergraduates will be published in two days’ time.”
Two days was a long time to wait. “By the way to whom am I talking?”
I mumbled my name.
“Oh wait a second,” she said, “you are Mr Lloyd Webber, just let