Consumer Guide / No.134 / Stuart St Paul (Stuart Aikman) with Mark Watkins.
Broadcaster, Cruise Ship Crime Writer, Director, Stuart's represented by:
Book Stuart St. Paul | Speaker Agent (champions-speakers.co.uk)
Stuart St Paul Agent Public Speaking - Kruger Cowne
MW: How did you get cast in televisions Radio Phoenix, and tell me about your part?
SSP: Radio Phoenix - no one asks about that. You have either struck lucky or asked the best question I have ever been asked about my career. That TV show is never brought up. It is dwarfed by other shows, however, it is, as you so cleverly spot, the most important turning point of my career. Not that I knew it then.
I was a "sixties/seventies DJ" and desperate to be on the pirate ships. I loved radio. By about 1970, I was getting known and had spoken with Ken Evans about joining Radio Luxembourg (The Great 208!), but was still too young (16). As the seventies started, I was DJing at the Room At The Top club Ilford and was headhunted to Mecca (who ran nightclubs). By late 1971, I was the DJ at the Lyceum in the Strand and the Empire Leicester Square, probably two of the most important clubs in England back then. I didn’t join Luxembourg because the BBC offered me and a few other DJs the chance to be trained in radio.
I started with a residential course in Evesham (1973). I was meant to sleep in the almost WWII-like dormitory but I was AWOL every night speeding to London in my Mercedes 350SL to DJ for Mecca. After 3 months I was posted to BBC Broadcasting House London. I was 18/19.
As I sat in the backrooms of Radio 1 learning, I can remember Head of Radio 1, Doreen Davies, saying to me, "Don’t worry, you get there one day.” But the station took in two new faces from 208 and I realised that the BBC only employed stars. So I needed to leave to come back to get the breakfast show that both Tony Blackburn and Noel Edmunds had trained me for as I assisted them.
As 1975 broke and Capital started, the DJ’s at the United Biscuits Network (UBN) got poached by the new commercial station. I ended up doing the night shift at UBN after my day shift at Radio 1, and the clubs in the evening.
I started the famous disco pub the Dun Cow in the Old Kent Road. That became my pre-Mecca pub gig. So, my day went, Radio 1 breakfast show, BBC staff shift over to the Dun Cow, 11pm off to Mecca, then after Mecca the night time show at UBN and straight back to Radio 1. Somehow it worked and I slept a bit at weekends.
When Mike Smith got the Radio 1 breakfast show I was gutted. I went from Metro Radio in Newcastle to Radio Orwell in Ipswich to be nearer to London, but I had missed that boat Mike was now sailing.
Then came the call from Television South (TVS) about Radio Phoenix. It was like winning silver or bronze… all I knew was that it was not gold.
I was asked to join as DJ "Dave Farrell" for four episodes over two weeks. It would not disturb my radio career too much so I took the challenge. My job was to be the radio DJ in vision, and teach the actors how to be real DJ’s because series one had failed to be real. I was scripted to be the DJ that Radio Phoenix was going to sack by episode 4.
MW: Was Radio Phoenix based on a current ILR (Independent Local Radio) station at the time, in whole or part?
SSP: They wanted it to be real but the first series was far from it. My job was to show them how to talk over the intro and hit the vocal, how to watch the clock, speak with the news reader while the song played, and take the cartridges out for adverts while filling in a PRS (Performing Rights Society) list as everything was manual.
I guess I did it pretty slickly, but then after ten years in radio with BBC training one would hope so. It appeared the other actors could not get real, so before the two weeks were out I was offered a series contract to be the real DJ that would make Radio Phoenix come to life. The problem was, the show was already dead. The first series had killed it, and series two was only being shown on parts of the network.
MW: Why do you think the series was short lived, apparently only reaching TV audiences in the south and south west of England?
SSP: One thing I hate is when actors in film or TV try to be news presenters, or pretend to be DJ’s. I see straight through it. Series one of Phoenix had killed the second series before it began, and I was there to give it CPR.
It was also in a 5pm kids TV slot, but with adult themes, smoking and a complex entertainment industry which was neither kids nor adult. It needed more than CPR, the show needed a make-over.
However, I was learning fast about TV.
MW: Did Radio Phoenix try to rival the BBC TVs detective fiction drama, Shoestring (based on a fictional radio station in Bristol)?
SSP: No, that might have been nice, but we were on just after school. Grange Hill not Shoestring! Radio Phoenix was a confusing show and I was learning what it was like to produce for the ITV Network.
MW: Aside from Radio Phoenix, did you have/have you had any other involvement, specifically with TVS?
SSP: Whilst at TVS I had approaches from some of the best acting agents, and I joined one. I was up for parts from Brush Strokes to presenting Basil Brush and Blue Peter. I played loads of parts on TV from Minder to period dramas but I hated acting, and I did not like the system of waiting to be called for work. That was never going to work for me.
MW: Next...your radio times at Metro Radio and Radio Orwell... including playing the music...
SSP: I had joined Capitol Records at EMI in Manchester Square after leaving BBC Radio 1 & 2. Capitol wanted me to promote their artists around the country on the radio. I wanted to promote myself to new expanding radio stations growing around the country. The job expanded fast as I broke Mink DeVille with 'Spanish Stroll' and had six Radio 1 Records Of The Week in less months.
I joined Metro early 1978 to take over the breakfast show. That was part of my plan - to end up at Radio 1 on the breakfast show, but it failed. Newcastle was too far from London, and although I did tests to present a new TV show that was to be called The Tube, I was not right for that. I was breakfast not gritty. They made the right choice.
So I moved from Metro to Radio Orwell to get back south. I was into Motown, soft rock, and pop.
A breakfast show DJ has to play popular hit records. I loved all music, but you don’t get to play album tracks or The Eagles in the morning. Plus, as soon as that record is playing you are working, talking with traffic & travel, news or the person from ‘traffic’ changing the advertising cassettes. I joined Orwell in 1979 and was probably there in some form for about three years.
Going back to the band, Mink DeVille, I spoke on the phone to Willy DeVille in New York shortly before he died. What a loss. I wanted to use a track of his in one of my movies. I had got a track from Bryan Adams and an REM song. He agreed and we chatted about the old days, but the co-writer, a German, tried to hold me to a financial ransom that I would not accept so it never got used. A huge talent, lost. My grand children were watching The Princess Bride and I said, "the guy singing that was a friend of mine". They just see me as granddad and have no conception how that would connect.
MW: You’re a man of many roles and much experience in the entertainment business, but what does a Stunt Arranger do?
SSP: Most people, including (unfortunately) many in the film industry, have no idea what Stunt Arrangers or Coordinators do. It would be a huge answer. From taking the script's ambition, explaining what the budget and location will allow, engaging the rewrite, then planning, booking safety, performers, having tech built, then producing the paperwork for the producer to show to insurers and lawyers. They design the stunt, the action. The Production designer then budgets and builds what they need, the insurers approve or disapprove, the employer chooses to take or not the risk and expense. All of this needs to be courtroom proof.
MW: What are your Top 5 memories/experiences that instantly come to mind…
1. Radio Phoenix because it changed my career. As friends said, "Video Killed the Radio Star". Mike Smith was not leaving the breakfast show so I needed a TV plan.
2. Juliet Bravo… a sleepy BBC TV show that I very quickly became a head of department on, Stunt Arranger, and I learned how BBC TV worked. When that detective show was canceled, the team, me included, just became the makers of a new show called Casualty.
3. The plane crash on Emmerdale. I was part of the bricks and mortar at Casualty and had a premium position as a Stunt Arranger at the BBC, but Emmerdale needed to destroy the village and have a huge event to change the show. They called me and I left Casualty and went north. I stayed as a consultant to Emmerdale for 26 years.
4. Being the Queen Alien for James Cameron in Aliens. I never studied my career, or thought the people I worked with were different, or had any idea how lucky I was or even time to count the spoils. It was how I grew up in the pop music industry and I went from job to job. Working with Micky Most as his brother David was my best buddy. Doing million dollar pop videos for Duran Duran or Elton John. I was just rushing between many, many jobs. Now I sit back I can see how crazy it was and how the dots joined up, but my insane work in 'Wild Boys' got me the A gig on Aliens.
5. The Krays - music and film again. I had met with a lot of villains (as you do working in west end night clubs) such as working at south London’s first disco pub, the Dun Cow in the Old Kent Road, and I met them all again while making this great movie.
I repeated my pop music and film combination with Bula Quo thirty years on. (Re-meeting them on Coronation Street was written in the cosmos, meant to happen. I was seconded by ITV to join "Corrie" from the sister soap in Leeds to handle the rock stars action performance in the soap and make them feel at home).
… and my career hadn’t even really started yet!
MW: You’ve worked with so many people, but tell me about just this one, comedian Alexei Sayle…
SSP: Wow, that’s left of field. I walked into BBC Light Entertainment as a Stunt Arranger on several comedy shows. I was a member of the Russ Abbott team, then Les Dennis, The Fast Show, and Alexei Sayle was another live TV comedy show (a show recorded with a live audience - I was used to working live having done ten years radio and presenting). More recently I went back and did two series of Mrs Brown's Boys for the BBC.
Alexei was tough. Funny and tough. He was a physical comedian that would walk through a door, crash a window and bounce. Few do… most read the script then look at me with an expression that says ….’and?’
He, like so many who make it, knew what worked and what he wanted.
MW: Record collector/radio producer Phil Swern has sadly passed away. Did you know him? If so, any particular memories…
SSP: Very much so. The first connection would have been at Bell Records, next door to RAK in Charles Street. After I joined the BBC he was producing Alan Freeman in the smoke filled studio Fluff had. I occasionally assisted on that show, and like working with all the masters, I was lucky to have had that one to one experience.
MW: How did you meet your wife, Jean Heard?
SSP: While at Metro, I was cast as a guest in the local Panto (1978). She was the fairy. When she was heading back to London after the run, there was no way I was staying in Newcastle, as much as I loved it. We have been married 44 years and have two children, and now Luke has given us two grandchildren.
MW: After 50 years in TV & film, what does retirement look like to you and your wife Jean? Your daughter Laura is in the spotlight now, how?
SSP: I don’t miss the stress of the movie industry. I have always missed old-school radio and I now present shows in theaters talking about how to work consistently for fifty years plus in this mad industry and do it on your own terms. Remember, I have chosen the films I have made and chosen topics that stretched me. The sex trade, incest, body part smuggling (although that got rewritten into a comedy)…
Both my kids have become stars. Luke left acting to go into the business world, and Laura is currently filming with my mate Sean Bean in a crime series. You will see a lot of her this autumn.
I am lucky. I have learned to slow down and I now have seven crime novels out and am writing the eighth. I tour the world on cruise ships, invited to talk about my first book, Cruise Ship Heist, and a career in A-list entertainment.
On the ships I sometimes fill a theatre akin to a modern West End Theatre with 1000+. I work theatres and conference venues where corporates talk health and safety and all sorts go on.
I love meeting people, talking of the old days as they all remember a favourite show. I am treated very well, fed lavishly, and occasionally drink Carling Black Label.
Cruise Ship Heist will be a series or a movie one day.
Cruise Ship Heist: Cruise Ship Crime Investigators (CSCI Cruise Ship Crime Investigators Book 1) eBook : St Paul, Stuart, Withington, David, Heard, Jean, Aikman, Laura: Amazon.co.uk: Kindle Store
I've just celebrated my 70th birthday with friends and family. In fact, I interviewed The New Seekers at The Party In The Park at the Tyneside Summer Exhibition in 1978, and here I am, in 2024, still great friends with Marty Kristian.
Where did it all go wrong?! LOL
Stuart St Paul - was the Queen Alien in Aliens - Cruise Doris Visits
Stuart St Paul (@stuartstpaul) / X
(c) Mark Watkins / September 2024
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