4. Michael HollidayFour Feather Falls

I was mad on anything like Thunderbirds, Supercar, Stingray. I lived for them. And everybody was mad on Westerns at that time, they dominated the screens. I used to sit on the end of the settee and pretend to ride the horses as I watched them. Four Feather Falls was Gerry Anderson’s Western puppet show, but it was a bit fantasy as well. The four feathers are magical, they allow the dog to talk and the horse to fly or something like that. Michael Holliday, who was from Liverpool and was the British Bing Crosby – he sounded just like him – sang all the parts of Tex Tucker, and Nicholas Parsons could you believe was Tex’s [dialogue] voice. According to Elvis Costello, Michael Holliday used to smuggle obscure US jazz records into the UK where Costello’s mother sold them. Mum told me at some point a couple of years later that he’d died of a suspected drug overdose. I don’t know why, but for some reason that dark side made me want to listen to it even more. It’s a funny mix of things, loving the magical puppet cowboy adventures, and also being obsessed with the dark side of things.