The Daily Telegraph - Features

‘I think Jimmy Savile fancied me’

“I’m not gonna read this article, it’ll be f---ing horrible!” So declares Leo Sayer at the end of our time together, bouncing in his chair in the Brentford outpost of Novotel. To be clear: the puckish 76-year-old says that with a smile, not a threat.

Also to be clear: it’s not your interviewe­r who’s been horrible. The bumpy stuff has come from the singer and songwriter’s forensical­ly detailed, cheerfully delivered account of his 50-plus years in music.

If ever a recording artist had a career dogged by financial malfeasanc­e, bad luck and missed opportunit­ies, it is Gerard Hugh Sayer from Shoreham-by-Sea. Sayer, though, is not without success: 1970s earworms You Make Me Feel Like Dancing, More Than I Can Say, When I Need You, Long Tall Glasses (I Can Dance) brought him transatlan­tic Number Ones and a Grammy. He still receives

2.5 million Spotify listeners a month.

“Listen, I’ve had a history. Harvey Weinstein was once my agent! I did gigs with Bill Cosby! I’ve had all the rogues. I think people who are intensely creative – which is what I think I am – and have open imaginatio­ns are easily got to. I make no excuses. I’ve been ripped rotten.” But to quote one of his own songs – something Sayer is fond of doing – “the show must go on” (UK Number Two, 1974).

All of which makes his upcoming UK tour a delicious prospect. It’s titled Still Feel Like Dancing? and is a 19-date celebratio­n of those 50-odd years. “It wasn’t my idea for a title, believe me. I don’t know if I’m a dancer – I don’t know if I’ve ever been. It was one f---ing record in my career and they picked that one. We argued for two weeks, and then my dead body rolled over. It’s the most stupid title of a tour ever.”

So, what words better illustrate those decades? “I was just a boy giving it all away,” says Sayer, quoting the final track from his second album Just A Boy (1974). “I basically signed off power-of-attorney to my manager, [the late musician-turned-actor-turned-svengali] Adam Faith. There were 15 years where I didn’t really make any money, and he and his cohorts did…”

Sayer, a graphic designer, entered the music industry designing album artwork for Island Records before writing songs with fellow Sussex hopeful David Courtney. The pair ended up writing nine of the 11 tracks on Roger Daltrey’s 1973 solo debut Daltrey. Sayer scored his first hit with The Show Must Go On, released later that year, which he memorably promoted on Top of the Pops dressed as Pierrot the clown. But you won’t find the footage online.

“Jimmy Savile would not get off the stage,” says Sayer, still exasperate­d 51 years later. “I think he fancied me. I was quite cute in those days. [It was] terrifying – you’ve got Jimmy Savile whispering in your ear all the way through, ‘You’re really cute...’ How do you concentrat­e on singing the song? But they can’t show it. They wiped the tapes because Jim’s all over it.”

Sayer says he never wanted to be a pop artist – he was following orders from Faith, who, in an early meeting, presented him with an ultimatum. “[He said] ‘we’re not going to go in the studio until you sign this bit of paper…’ I’m on the precipice of [deciding]: ‘Is this guy a shark? A crook?’ I didn’t realise what I’d signed. He then basically took over my life.”

Fast-forward to the 1980s and 90s. Sayer had to battle Faith, and his record label, Chrysalis, for his rights as a recording artist. He prevailed, but of the agreed £640,000, he received only £200,000 – none of it from Faith. “I was a pallbearer at Adam’s funeral [in 2003], hoping some money would fall out of the coffin. He was a rogue. He must have ripped £20 million off me.”

Sayer also had to sue another manager for mismanaged pension funds. And yet another manager “forged my signature on all my contracts, and gave away all of my estate, from my records to my publishing to everything, in a month or so of activity. That’s when I was absolutely broke.”

What did these legal battles do to Sayer’s mental health? “I can’t say I ever contemplat­ed suicide. I did contemplat­e giving it all up and going back to graphics. I remember lawyers advising me to file for bankruptcy.”

An unlikely ally emerged in 1997: a Sun newspaper “Save Leo” campaign, spearheade­d by then-showbiz editor Andy Coulson. “I was doing wall-to-wall club [gigs] for one year. We did gay clubs where they’d get their d---s out in front of me. It was horrible. But I

Ahead of a tour, Leo Sayer talks to Craig McLean about his financial woes, his flat head – and a creepy experience on Top of the Pops

got the money back to pay off my debt.”

One wonders whether these troubles contribute­d to he and his girlfriend Donatella’s decision to leave the UK for Australia in 2005. “Sad to say, yes,” he nods. “I could not look at Wigmore Street or Bond Street [in London] or where all the f---ing lawyers and accountant­s were. Couldn’t walk down there. I’d have killed somebody. Literally.”

The year after he left for Australia, Sayer had an unlikely Number One with the dance remix of his 1977 disco track Thunder In

My Heart, which led to a booking on 2007’s Celebrity Big Brother. His managers suggested the profile would help secure a new record deal.

“I didn’t really have many other answers,” sighs Sayers. “Well, to be honest, I was having an affair with a Japanese stewardess who was in Dubai… so it was a chance for me to leave Australia and spend some time with her – and ask her to marry me, actually. It all went pear-shaped when her mum said no. We’re still friends...”

The drama continued on Celebrity Big Brother. “There was some guy called Donny Tourette from [plastic punk band] Towers of London. Three days before, he had a front-page article in the paper saying ‘I Shagged Leo’s Missus’, meaning Donatella.

“So it’s the first day, and Donny comes in saying: ‘I’m so sorry, Leo, I didn’t shag your missus!’ But I didn’t know anything about that because you have a [media] blackout before you go in.”

How much did the show make him? “I probably got five grand,” he admits. “That’s what the f---king arseholes negotiated for me!”

But Sayer has, against all odds, found his happy ending. He married Donatella in 2023 after 39 years together – his dalliance with the air stewardess seemingly forgiven. Later this year will see the release of his lost album from 1992 called, er, 1992. He’s in talks to make a documentar­y of his life. He continues to agitate for a slot at Glastonbur­y where, surely, he’d be a riot. He has also written a memoir and is already full-steam ahead with the audio version, despite not having secured a book deal.

“I got turned down by loads of publishers because they wanted, in the first chapter, something dramatic happening. I refuse to let any editor near it. But it starts with Joey, our dog, hurling me out of my pram. I ended up with a flat head, which I’ve always covered with his hair, and a short neck. That was my first adventure.”

‘One manager forged my signature on all my contracts, and gave away all of my estate’

Leo Sayer’s ‘Still Feel Like Dancing?’ tour starts on Sept 24. Tickets: leosayer.com