A pizza destroyed Mike Batt's planned collaboration with Beatles star George Harrison
The 75-year-old conductor-and-songwriter was the musical brains behind children's group The Wombles - which swamped the British charts during the '70s with hits including 'The Wombling Song' and 'Remember You're A Womble' - and was a close friend of the legendary Liverpool group's late guitarist
26 October 2024
During one visit to the Harrison household - a Victorian neo-Gothic mansion in Henley-on-Thames in England - the pair were playing around with some song ideas after George was gifted a guitar by Everly Brothers star Phil Everly.
Unfortunately, they never got to finish their track after getting distracted by having a pizza and drinks with their wives, Julianne White and Olivia Harrison, a huge regret for Mike.
The musician - who has just published his autobiography 'The Closest Thing to Crazy' - told BANG Showbiz Managing Director Rick Sky exclusively: "We had a session where I went over there and it was such fun doing it, I had a few beers, I have to say, but not so it was affecting my work or anything I just enjoyed it.
"And he had a guitar, he had this lovely guitar given to him by Phil Everly, and I was sitting there at the piano and I had this bass line, and he came up with a few ideas as well. We had this rhythm.
"And in the end, it was dinner time, teatime, and I think Olivia had made a pizza or something.
"Julianne, my wife, was there and she and Olivia had been going around the gardens and they'd got a moat underneath the house. They'd done all that. Two girls having a great time.
"We thought it would be much more fun to go and have a pizza with the girls downstairs in the kitchen.
"So we went downstairs and had dinner in the kitchen and they said, 'Shall we watch the Everly brothers' special on a DVD.'
We watched this thing and had a few drinks and one of us mustn't have because we drove home. And we never went back to the song. I had it written down on paper, but I never got to finish it."
Asked if he recorded it, he replied: "No. And I should have gone back and finished it, just because it would have been nice to have George Harrison like that on song."
George sadly died in 2001 at the age of 58 after a battle with lung cancer.
As Womble Orinoco, Mike earned four Top 10 hits in the UK in 1974, and The Wombles even got to play the world-famous Glastonbury festival in 2011.
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