A Job for Hale & Pace – The Official Report – Vision, The OGAE (UK) Magazine

On Tuesday, 20th January 1998 a group of invited OGAE-UK members, primarily from the London area, joined a celebrity audience at the BBC Radio Theatre in the heart of the capital for the recording of an episode from the forthcoming series Jobs for the Boys, featuring well known comedians Gareth Hale and Norman Pace. For those unfamiliar with the series, Hale & Pace are given a variety of jobs to complete, and this particular task was to write a song for the 1998 Great British Song Contest.

Aided by music maestros Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber and Rick Wakeman their composition, More than enough for one life, was performed by rising West End musical star, David Shannon. So what type of song did Hale & Pace compose, and was it as bad as some people were expecting?

Well, the answer is a resounding NO! The song was a strong ballad which could easily have brought Eurovision back to the UK for a successive year (and had it been the Irish entry there is little doubt of a victory!). David performed extremely well and surely has a great career ahead of him. Maybe he will even sing on the Eurovision stage in future years!

At the end of the filming Katrina (GB97), one of the special guests, had the unenviable task of announcing that, while the song had successfully reached the final 30, it had failed to reach the final eight. Hale & Pace, not forgetting David, were clearly disappointed at this but, as another guest in the form of Lynsey de Paul (GB77) promptly said, some of the biggest hits have failed to reach the ESC!

Among those gathered were also Don Black (songwriter), Katie Boyle, Ken Bruce, Bjorn Again, Cheryl Baker (of Bucks Fizz GB81), Lee Sheridan and Nicky Stephens (of Brotherhood of Man GB76), Bruce Welsh (of The Shadows GB75) and none other than Johnny Logan (IR80 & 87) – who was in no hurry to leave and spent nearly two hours talking to ESC fans. Special applause was given to Pearl Carr & Teddy Johnson (GB59) who sang for the United Kingdom 39 years ago with the infamous Sing little birdie.

The show was presented by Ulrika Jonsson who was able to demonstrate that she is more than capable of presenting Eurovision live, while David Shannon was backed by Frizzy (guitar), Pete Adams (piano), Tracy Ackerman, Emma Kershaw and Nick Wilson (vocals). David hopes that the song will be released as a single, and hopefully this will coincide with transmission of the programme either in June/July or September/October this year. Keep watching those television schedules!

Regrettably Sonia (GB93), Terry Wogan, Jonathan King, Peter Andre and Louise were unable to be present, although each of them had been expected.

On behalf of those who were fortunate to attend this one-off event, Vision would like to extend a word of thanks to the BBC and in particular to producer Nick Handel and co-producer Liz Ekberg.