Jake Thackray

Sometimes people slip out of your life for a lot of years. This happened with me and Jake Thackray. I remembered him from the early 70's with his appearances on That's Life, the bad company bashing, consumer help programme. The particular shows went out late on Saturday nights, after Match Of The Day, and Jake Thackray would have a three or four minute slot in which he sang a song. And Jake Thackray songs were like nothing else before or since.

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I have often mentioned Jake Thackray to other people of a similar age to me and drawn a complete blank. His fame, in truth, was more deeply rooted in places other than TV...........folk clubs, civic halls and pubs. As a man of Leeds, he was very popular and well known in Yorkshire and in the 60's this spread nationwide thanks to his appearances in shows such as The Frost Report, Braden's Beat (which I also remember watching late on Saturday nights so it might well have been here I first caught up with JT), and Beryl Reid Says Good Evening. His mix of satire, attitude and irreverence was not to everyone's taste. In fact, I think it safe to say you either loved him or hated him. He had the most unique delivery ; a truly down to earth bloke singing in a chanson style (that is, a song with French words and strong on lyrics) but in English. And most of his songs contained big dollops of innuendo and sometimes were simply rude and provocative. Class, sex, family relationships, religion, animals and observations of the odd world in which we live were his lyrical targets.

Jake Thackray was born in 1938, grew up as a Roman Catholic, and was a clever man who graduated from Durham University and looked destined for a teaching career. In fact, he used his musical talents on his kids in class as an aid to educating them. He subsequently spent four years living in France, hence the Gallic influence of his later work. He went on to make over 1000 TV and radio appearances and numerous albums. He had a significant following, though his style did go out of favour. In his later life he was disillusioned with 'showbiz', and crippling nerves disallowed performing in public. He moved to South Wales and became increasingly more religious. Jake died on Christmas Eve 2002, news of which led to a revival of interest in his work.

As I said, Jake Thackray disappeared from my life for a long time. But his clever wit and inimitable material is still funny and I am very pleased to have caught up with him again. A brilliant performer, of that I have no doubt.

An example of the great man's work can be found on the post Jake Thackray - I Stayed Off Work Today March 27th 2010.