'Fabulously readable' STEPHEN FRY
'Wildly entertaining' DAILY EXPRESS
'Rollicking ... ebullient ... Christmas present problems are instantly solved' MAIL ON SUNDAY
Nominated for the 2025 Association for Recorded Sound Collections Awards for Excellence in Historical Recorded Sound Research
Described variously as a 'polymath', a 'renaissance man' and 'one of the most colourful characters in the music business', Mike Batt has led an extraordinarily vibrant and challenging life that has been full of both glorious victories and bitter failures.
For better or for worse, he is a man who has always lived life on his own terms. Idiosyncratic but mainstream, complicated but compassionate, steadfastly maverick in spirit but avowedly commercial in outlook. He is a man of great contradictions, but even greater talent.
After starting out in the music business as a teenager, Batt shot to fame in the early 1970s for his part in the creation of the Wombles pop group. But this success proved to be just the beginning as he then went on to work with various artists as a songwriter, composer and producer, including Art Garfunkel, George Harrison, Cliff Richard, Andrew Lloyd-Webber and Katie Melua.
Featuring cameos from some of the biggest stars in the business from Paul McCartney to Prince, The Closest Thing to Crazy takes us not only on the rocky (and classical) journey of Mike Batt's life but also on a tour around the inside of his mind. Mike Batt (Author, Narrator)
Mike Batt is a singer, songwriter, producer and composer who has been making hit records for more than fifty years. He was the lead singer and creator of the Wombles pop group in the early 1970s and is a multi-Ivor Novello Award winner, who has written and produced music for many artists, including Art Garfunkel, Cliff Richard, David Essex and Katie Melua, conducted many of the world's great orchestras and worked across many art forms, directing, designing, conducting and engaging in entrepreneurial activities in the entertainment industry.
'I believe that, simplistically, we are all, to varying extents, a mixture of the Bellman and the Baker. Starting with myself; yes, I often behave like the Bellman. Confident, strong and resolute. But does my appetite for risk drive me and my loved ones towards or away from danger and pain? And sometimes I am the sensitive Baker. Too cautious? Too scared? I am both characters at the same time. Which will it be from moment to moment? And it's not just those two-dimensional analyses that apply - it is, in real life, completely three-dimensional and constantly changing in all of us to different degrees.'
Out in the deserts of darkness and dreams
Out through the oceans of sadness we sailed.
Venturing onwards through mystical scenes,
Blown on the whim of the wind that prevailed.
We had no reason to doubt the truth
Driven by danger and discontent
And the drums of youth.
Don't let the memory die
Children of the sky, heroes of the sea;
And as your life passes by,
Remember how it feels to be
Children of the sky. 'Polymath'
'Renaissance man'
'One of the most colourful characters in the music business'
Mike Batt has led an extraordinarily vibrant and challenging life that has been full of both glorious victories and bitter failures.
For better or for worse, he is a man who has always lived life on his own terms. Idiosyncratic but mainstream, complicated but compassionate, steadfastly maverick in spirit but avowedly commercial in outlook. He is a man of great contradictions, but even greater talent.
After starting out in the music business as a teenager, Batt shot to fame in the early 1970s for his part in the creation of the Wombles pop group. But this success proved to be just the beginning as he then went on to work with various artists as a songwriter, composer and producer, including Art Garfunkel, George Harrison, Cliff Richard, Andrew Lloyd-Webber and Katie Melua.
Featuring cameos from s
