STANLEY UNWIN: MASTER OF THE SPROKEN WORD!
J.H. How did the famous Unwinese language come about?
S.U. You call it Unwinese, I'm glad you do, John. A BBC producer was at my house and he heard me telling my children some fairy stories in a different way. They weren't listening anyway, except the youngest one who said that's not quite right, Dad, it's not Goldiloppers and it doesn't begin with polytyto. As i said the girls weren't really listening. This producer said to me after the girls had gone to bed "I want to use that, it's different, I like it". I said, "No, I don't think we should use it as we were mucking about with the English language and we'll get things thrown at us". "Oh no, you don't understand" he said and he was the first one to use it. He was a nice man, fresh out of a German prison camp. His name was Peter Caerns. There was another chap called Gerald Nethercott, he was a BBC public relations officer and it was he who said let's call it Unwinese, which i rather favoured as opposed to Gobbledegook or Double Talk. By the way, Freddie Starr and Jim Davidson speak Unwinese as good as I, they're excellent. So that was the original, John. Deep joy!
J.H. How and by whom were you approached to do Ogden's?
S.U. I'd had a call via my agent and I considered it a compliment to be asked. My agent said that this group called the Small Faces were recording somewhere in London and if they gave you a straight script would you transfer it to Unwinese. I thought I'd give it a go and I drove down to Barnes in South West London. When I arrived I first met Ronnie Lane with their producer, a chap called Glyn Johns, and they gave me the script. I read it through once and I suggested that they give me some phrases. They gave me "Where at man" and "Stay cool" and things like that, so I popped them into the dialogue. It was about this rather mad character that lived in a cage and thought the moon was made of half cheese or something. It was such fun to do but it was all over pretty quickly, you know, and then the album came out with the tobacco tin motif. I remember getting a lovely card from Ronnie Lane saying something like "Thanks for being such a groove, we're not knocked out with it, hope you like it". Yeah, that was the first pop group thing that I got involved with. Ronnie said that he heard me saying Sunnyglow and Purimost on a TV advertisement for Gales Honey. He said that they had cottoned onto that. It was fairytale stuff and that's what they liked. Happy Days!
J.H. What can you remember about doing the Colour Me Pop TV special with the Small Faces?
S.U. Yes, we went down to the BBC studios in Lime Grove. You know what, John, I was amazed at that video you gave me, I was so please to get it 'cos here I have a visual record of the time I spent with the Small Faces. I can hardly recall doing the show really. I can't remember how I done the dialogue, I can't remember having an autocue, but when I saw the video I was tickled pink. My only positive memories are of doing the recording not the TV part. Whether they borrowed the cloak from the pantomime I had just done I don't know but the crown that I was wearing definitely came from that. That was made especially for me because the original crown was made of brass. It was heavy and hurt my head so the director for the panto said we'll make you another. It was very comfortable and it looked nice to, in fact the crown is still in my possession.
J.H. What was your relationship like with the Small Faces and which member were you closest to?
S.U. It was a very warm relationship. Everyone was in tune with what was going on. There was lots of chuckling, laughter and replacing of words. Lot's of ad-libbing going on, I couldn't understand all of what they were saying as they had their own sort of language themselves. You see I'm very interested in communication of all sorts, any languages. I can speak quite a bit of Russian but I can't do any Chinese. Chinese is a language of sound. If you rise up at the end of a sentence that means something positive and if you go down at the end of a sentence something not very happy is going on. Deep Folly! Anyway, I suppose Steve was the one I was closest to. We didn't correspond or anything like that but I met up with him a couple of times. I remember we worked on a TV thing called The Tube together at Tyne Tees. It was there that I met Jools Holland, he asked me to comment on all the equipment in my customary Unwinese. What a wonderful feed he was. I've always been interested in Jazz and the way they improvise. In fact, some Jazz musicians think that the way I talk is improvisation on language almost the same way as Jazz. Because they are conveying musical ideas in sound it gives this little hep feeling. With language it's quite a different feel but its still communication.
J.H. What did you think of the finished album?
S.U. Well, it was done in one quick take. The producer was quite superb, John Glyns. I mean Glyn Johns. Deep Folly! Well, of course, I was chuckled. It was a new thing for a start, it flowed and was continual. It was a good story, a little weird story which one has to listen to again and again to get the best out of it. I still don't know whether it was worked out by any individual or whether it was all of them cooking up the story. Ronnie was the one who seemed to jump about a bit more than anyone else. It was an awful shock to hear of him going the way he did, Steve as well.
J.H Have you kept in touch with any of the band members over the years?
S.U. Well Kenney Jones sporadically. He's now running a Polo club in Surrey. We appeared together recently at Tyne Tees studio on the Doctor Rock Show. It was great to see him again and have a chin wag and tilty elbow (drink), he suddenly gave the interviewer short burst of Unwinese. He's on the wave length! Yes, just Kenney. Steve and Ronnie are gone. It would be nice to meet up with Mac one day.
J.H. Ogden's is a legendary album in Rock circles. Are you aware of that?
S.U. Well you know i'm getting old, 88 next year! At that age there's a diminishing awareness of what's going on around you but every now and then you get a feeling that something rather special has happened and I have that feeling with this album. It's 30 years old and still around. I only done a little bit on the record and was paid a set fee. I don't get royalties, only needle time on the air. That doesn't worry me unduly I am just happy to be associated with it. May the Small Faces be long remembered? Deep Joy!
J.H. The Small Faces regret not having put the story of Happiness Stan on the stage. Apparently Pete Townsend has confessed that Tommy was indeed influenced by Ogden's Nut Gone Flake. What do you think of that?
S.U. It would have been fun on stage, with the clock and crown, eh? We would have added a few things to it and dramatised it a bit.
J.H. What have you been doing since Ogden's?
S.U. Lots of things, John, chat shows, radio and TV work, films, local charitable work and I used to do quite a bit of after-dinner speaking, not so much these days as I do find it very tiring. After doing Chitty Chitty Bang Bang my agent introduced me to Gerry Anderson (of Joe 90, Thunderbirds Are Go fame) who said that he would like to use me as a live Parson in his Secret Services series, wearing a dog-collar, in with his puppets. I got very involved with that. There were 13 episodes and it was great fun to do. I met all of the people that made the puppets and I remember driving a lovely old Model T Ford around London. The Model T only had brakes on the rear wheels and just two gears. I was chased at one point and nearly turned the damn thing over! The Gerry Anderson people hold regular conventions and exhibitions, there's one on at the moment in Eastbourne. They've got a puppet of me on the door. I did some dialogue to put into the puppets mouths welcoming people to the exhibition. When I first went into show business one of the first people I worked with was Ted Ray and I'll always remember one of Ted's lines about me, he used to tell people "Don't give Stanley too much to drink or he'll start talking straight!" Deep Joy!
J.H. Well thanks for your time, Stanley, you're a true gentleman.
