Malcolm Roberts
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Malcolm James Roberts (31 March 1944–February 7, 2003) was born at Blackley, Manchester, England. He was the second child of Doris and Jim Roberts. As a junior he attended Crosslee School before moving to Moss House Secondary School, and at the age of thirteen passed the entrance exam to attend Manchester School of Art. He was always interested in the music and arts and became a member of Blackley Brass Band playing the trumpet and soon joined the local operatic societies and made his first appearance in “Showboat” when he was only thirteen. When he became a full time student at Manchester College of Art he studied interior design and architecture; drawings and painting became a hobby to him in later life. Acting and singing began to be a very important part of Malcolm’s early days, he said in an early interview that he first started taking an interest in singing at junior school when he used to compete with another boy in assembly every morning to see who could sing the hymns the loudest. Soon he had progressed to taking the lead roles in musicals such as “ South Pacific” and “ West Side Story”, and had made appearances with the National Youth Theatre in productions of Henry V and Julius Caesar along with other up and coming young actors including Simon Ward, Timothy Dalton, and Hywell Bennett.
Football was another hobby of Malcolm’s and he played regularly with the Manchester Northern team, and was invited to join the Manchester City Colts. He also had a couple of games with the City’s reserve team, but decided that his music was to take first place in his life. However Malcolm never lost the support for Manchester City and continued to give it to the end of his life.
It was while he was taking the role of Tony in West Side Story that he was hand picked by Lionel Bart to appear in his West End production of “Maggie May” at The Adelphi Theatre. He understudied five of the lead roles in the show. This was in 1964 and around this time Malcolm was also doing walk on parts in various TV shows, including Coronation Street. After Maggie May ended Malcolm found himself working as a bouncer in some of the clubs in Soho, was an ice cream sales man and managed a nightclub called The Zebra. It was while he was here that he met and became friendly with Kenny Clayton, who was pianist to Shirley Bassey, and he introduced Malcolm to Tony Lewis who was manager to Shirley and soon became Malcolm’s first manager. Within months Malcolm had recorded his first record entitled “ Time Alone Will Tell,” and on April 23rd 1967 Malcolm made his first appearance on Sunday Night at The London Palladium. In one year Malcolm appeared on some 65 television shows and then in 1968 Malcolm had a great success with a record called “May I have the Next Dream with you”. It was in the charts for 14 weeks and Malcolm was appearing most weeks in cabaret clubs up and down the country and gathering quite a following of female fans. His first LP was also released entitled “Mr Roberts.” He also attended the Malta Song Festival as a special guest and other cabaret dates and TV on the continent soon followed. Royal Gala Shows and Showbiz Football matches were all part of the early days of 1969 and during the summer months Malcolm was in the Ronnie Corbett Show at The Palace Pier Brighton. It was a great time for Malcolm who made friends with the Life Boat Crew who had their station just by the pier and Malcolm could be found most afternoons spending time with them and getting a good tan at the same time. By now Malcolm knew he had been selected to be the British representative at the International Song Festival in Rio de Janeiro and would be singing a song especially written for him by Les Reed and Barry Mason called “ Love is All”. The Festival was taking place in October and Malcolm was amazed at the reception he got during the rehearsals for the big night. The Brazilian girls went wild for his blonde hair and handsome looks. He was made favourite to win the competition which had singers from many other countries, but on the final night, watched by a 40,000 strong audience in the Maracanazinho Stadium and thousands more on TV there was a mistake in the voting system by the Japanese judge, and when the points were added it made Malcolm third place. The whole stadium erupted with chanting for Malcolm, and he received a 20 minute standing ovation before there was some sort of order and eventually Malcolm went forward and draped the Union Flag around the shoulders of Bill Medley to quieten the audience, so that he could sing his song. The winner of the contest was infact the Brazilian singer Evie, who the audience did not consider to be the outright winner. After such a night Malcolm was hailed as a truly international star and “ Love is All” became a huge success in South America. To this day people still hold the song dear to their hearts and it is played at weddings and even funerals. Malcolm was invited back to South America to appear on TV and to have his own shows. It was a very busy few months because Malcolm was also booked to appear at Torquay in his first pantomime at The Princess Theatre. In February Malcolm was again globe trotting, this time to appear at The Hilton Hotel in Hong Kong in a month long booking. Further records were released but none came up to the success he had with “Love is All”. Malcolm was now in demand world wide, and in July he went over to Las Vegas to appear with Jack Benny at The Sahara Hotel. This turned out to be a wonderful booking and opened up another world to Malcolm. He made TV appearances on The Johnny Carson Show and The David Frost Show in New York and met some of the legendary stars in Las Vegas like Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra. He also appeared in Miami, Florida at the Diplomat Hotel where Liza Minnelli was appearing in one of the other cabaret rooms. He also did shows in Puerto Rico, Bermuda and more dates in Germany and Belgium. By the Autumn Malcolm was preparing for his appearance in The London Palladium pantomime “Cinderella” where he took the role of Prince Charming. It was a great success and the run was extended almost until Easter! Another trip to South America followed, and not long after his return to England another song festival, this time in Knokke in Belgium. July ’74 saw Malcolm with a month long booking at the famous Talk of the Town in London . While here he made the live recording which is now available on CD. Over the next few years Malcolm made many trips to South America and in 1978 Malcolm returned from America having moved there some time before. He found the life style very different from England and the music scene was not as he had expected. He had been concentrating on his song writing and by the time he was back in the Uk the cabaret scene was very different from when he was here before. Malcolm did appear in a Royal Gala at The Dominion Theatre in London and also took to playing cricket with the Showbiz team raising money for various charities. Daytime TV was about the only shows that Malcolm appeared on but theatre appearances began happening and this gave the devoted followers the chance to hear Malcolm again. We also had the chance of having Malcolm appear at the local cabaret club in Chesterfield and were able to have a gathering for him with fans coming from all over the country. In 1982 Malcolm went out to Hawaii to appear in yet another song festival, again with a Les Reed song called “I never thought I’d cry,” but without success; it was a long way to go for just five days. Another pantomime this time in Eastbourne and then Malcolm had the chance of appearing on some of the Scandinavian cruise ships performing cabaret. This was certainly a change and one, which Malcolm quite enjoyed for a time. Pantomime at Bournemouth was the order of the day for winter 1984, and then in May ’85 Malcolm joined up with 5 other singers to represent Luxembourg in the Eurovision Song Contest in Gothenburg. The song was called “Children Kinder Enfants”, but sadly was unplaced. In Sept ‘85 the next big event in Malcolm’s career was starring in a new musical at The Birmingham Repertory Theatre called “Jeanne” based on the life of Joan of Arc. It got really good reviews and there was some lovely songs in the show. It ran there for several weeks and then moved to the Sadler’s Wells Theatre in London in Feb.’86. Unfortunately with the change of cast members and also some alterations to the show it wasn’t met with good reviews from the theatre critics and it only had a short run. After appearing on more cruise ships in the latter part of the year Malcolm decided to return to South America to see if he could still attract the crowds he had done during earlier visits. Due to lots of managerial problems Malcolm found himself in a position that he was not happy with, however for the following four years Malcolm remained in Brazil. He did quite a lot of song writing and did some shows in the stadiums around the country. In 1990 he returned to the UK and began to pick up the pieces back here, however the music scene had again changed a lot and Malcolm found it increasingly difficult to get re-established. In 1991 with the song writing taking up quite a lot of time Malcolm entered one of his songs, called “ One Love”, as the British entry into the Eurovision Song Festival singing it himself. It got through to the last eight but no further. However it did give the fans a chance to see Malcolm on TV after such a long absence. Malcolm also had a month long booking at the Pizza on the Park in London which is one of the few places left for cabaret. Malcolm’s popularity on the continent was still very strong and he began to make frequent trips to do TV shows and theatre bookings in Belgium and released a CD of songs by Will Tura. Also during this time Malcolm began to produce some of the managers of the boy bands and had some success with his songs being recorded by other artists. In Malcolm’s private life he was thrilled to become a father for the first time and Oliver was born in April ’95. In 1996 he took part in a very different theatrical show at The Café Royal in London. It was an American idea and it was called “ Joey & Gina’s Wedding”. The audience became the guests at the wedding and reception and Malcolm took the part of the Irish priest who was officiating at the ceremony. The evening was certainly a fun night out and Malcolm slipped easily back into an acting role. The show ran for a few months but the British audience were more inhibited than the American audiences. Before long Malcolm had a recording company interested in him again, and they decided to release the earlier recordings on CD. Promotion of the CD’s was very important and Malcolm did many interviews on local and national radio and also appeared at The Brighton 60’s revival weekend where he was very well received. In 2001 Malcolm started to appear in more shows on stage but because of the need for a new hip had to curtail several other shows that he had lined up. The operation took place in May 2002 and by July Malcolm was back on stage at Blackpool, and thrilling the audience once more with his beautiful voice. Work was underway on a brand new CD that contained songs that Malcolm had written himself when the very sad news came that Malcolm had suffered a heart attack and had died on Friday, February 7, 2003. His funeral took place at Henley on Thames and he was buried at Remenham Cemetery near Henley on February 20. The CD, titled “Rio” was released in October 2003. EMI also released a new CD titled “The Very Best of Malcolm Roberts – May I have the next dream with you?” in October 2003.
