Tony Hawks: Playing the fool

You have to be a certain age to remember Tony Hawks' brief but glorious career as a pop idol. Unlikely as it may seem to those who know him for his bestselling comic travelogues Round Ireland with a Fridge and Playing the Moldovans at Tennis, in the 1980s Hawks conquered "Top of the Pops" as frontman of his band, Morris Minor and the Majors. He is still receiving royalties for the comedy song, "Stutter Rap". At his house in Wimbledon, he proudly displays the latest royalty statement--all of 0.05p--and confides: "In London, it's hard to live on that."

Hawks' latest offering, One Hit Wonderland (Ebury, 1st August, £10.99, 0091882087) is a quest to recapture his former glories. This time the bet around which the book is written was rasher than ever: that Hawks could make it twice lucky in the music business, and succeed in getting another chart hit.

Off he went on his self-appointed task: trying to conquer Nashville with his country and western ballad, "You Broke My Heart Like a Bird's Egg (But Now the Yolk's On You)"; attempting to win over Holland with a novelty song, dressed as a green pixie; and finally striking it lucky in Albania with "Big in Albania", a ditty written by Sir Tim Rice, set to Hawks' music and sung by veteran comedian Norman Wisdom. Oddly enough Wisdom has a huge following in the eastern European country, and is revered for cheering them all up during the dark days of the Enver Hodja regime.

Hawks, for whom the words "laid-back" and "unfussed" might have been invented, says he wasn't keen on the hugely competitive, commercial climate of the current music scene as he encountered it in the USA and Europe. When he travelled to Nashville, he found the constant pressure to network and sell himself a bit of a drag: "Generalisations are unfair, but I do find that in America people are so career minded. I definitely notice the difference, having a career myself to some extent in the entertainment business; there's a point where even the most driven people will switch off, even a little bit--and most people, quite a lot. They don't switch off in America.

"It isn't really the life for me, I don't think. I do like dabbling around a bit, and there just isn't enough fun to be had with it. There must come a point when people wake up in wide houses with wide fridges and wide gardens, and think, 'Well, what's the point of it all?'"

Hawks also had an abrasive meeting with a British A&R man, who told him he was "too ugly" to have another hit record in the UK. It will come as no surprise to "Pop Idol" viewers that this outspoken judge was none other than Simon Cowell. "It wasn't a stunt, he was just an A&R man willing to have a chat with me, and a few months later he was all over the tabloids. I didn't watch any of 'Pop Idol' so I've never seen what he was like on that, but I can imagine he was pretty horrible. There's a bit of tongue in cheek about it though--he plays a character. And he was very camp as well, I thought."

By contrast to all this aggro and hassle, the Albania adventure--completed only two months ago, so Hawks is still finishing the book--turned out to be an unmitigated joy. In this least commercial of environments, and with "hit single" status judged on airplay, not sales, there was opportunity for Hawks' love of silliness to have full rein. It culminated in Norman Wisdom doing a stadium gig with "Big in Albania" at a football match, while Sir Tim Rice played along on a toy saxophone.

"It felt much more in the spirit of the first two books, having this ludicrous ending where there was nothing to be gained financially--it was daft, but also worthwhile in a funny sort of way. To see Norman Wisdom being mobbed by Albanian people while Tim Rice played a plastic saxophone--you think, 'I created this, hurrah!' Tim Rice said it was the best overseas trip he'd ever had."

He thinks of a sentence he ought to add into the book and wanders off to put it in. Then it's time to play some of the music: Hawks has a piano in his living room and guitars on the wall of his little music studio, and clearly loves dabbling with his old trade. He plays the songs on his sound system and sings along, wondering whether the percussion is right on one track, pleased with the brass section on another. If people are keen, he expects the music to go on sale, either through his Website (www.tony-hawks.com), or even distributed. "Maybe I'll have 10 hit singles," he says optimistically.

A nice element to all this is that Hawks keeps in touch with the countries he has visited for the books. He has used half the royalties from Playing the Moldovans at Tennis to set up a children's health centre in Moldova, and is quietly pleased about it: "I thought, 'I've used this country as my source material for something which is effectively a commercial venture, I'll put something back in.' I'm quite proud--it's a little project." He'd like to do something similar in Albania, if the latest book takes off: "But I didn't want to go down the charity book route. It's not a gimmick to sell more copies, it's a personal decision, and I'd rather people just bought the book if they wanted to buy it."

Benedicte Page

lRound Ireland with a Fridge and Playing the Moldovans at Tennis have sold over 500,000 copies in the British Commonwealth. (Source: Random House).

lTony Hawks will do a 15-city book-signing tour in October.