Xmas No.1

XMAS NUMBER ONE

Death's door is swinging open for Lenny Mance. He knows he only has one last shot at the big one: the Christmas Number One. And this time he has it - he has it in the bag. Nobody is going to stop his final glorious assault on the pop charts, his swan song. Because Lenny really believes that he has saved the best till last. Throughout 55 years of professional songwriting, the Christmas Number One has eluded him - in fact, a number one has eluded him in general, or any sort of hit at all, for that matter. 

Lenny might be the only one who knows it, but he knows perfectly well that he has simply had bad luck and nothing else. Bad luck has been the distinguishing mark of his songwriting career: the near misses and failed breakthroughs, the sudden twists of fate.

 The first time he nearly made it was when Lopsy Lopez almost recorded Lenny's Coconut Melodies in 1957, complete with sumptuous orchestral arrangement. The musicians - horns and strings and all - were just striking up the opening bars when the police raided the recording studio and arrested Lopsy for serial bigamy. The session was abandoned. When Coconut Melodies was finally picked up by American singer Vonda Nelly, and the record pressed, Lenny was shocked to discover that the last two letters of his first name were typeset wrong: they had been swapped so that his name read "Lenyn Mance". They didn't like the look of this in Cold War USA; radio stations were concerned about his name in case the songwriter was some sort of Leninist commie agitator spreading a coded message. As a consequence the record received no airplay, and bombed.

 The next major hitch came a few years later when his pacy number How Now? was deemed fit for track one, side one of Pete Jack's new record - a guaranteed seller, home and abroad.  Alas, the track listing sent to press mysteriously omitted the first track due to some oversight at the pressing plant, and the record was issued starting with the second track. Since the LP was such an instantaneous smash, nobody but Lenny noticed the fault - why meddle with something that's going well? 

Then there was, of course, the time Lenny turned on the radio and recognised the tune to Tie A Yellow Ribbon as virtually the identical one he had written a year previously for an Austrian children's cartoon that failed to make it beyond the pilot episode. Indignant, he went to court and staked his fortune on the outcome, only for the judge to dismiss his case at the first hearing, deeming the tune far too obscure even for any plagiarist to have possibly heard. 

When he almost made it onto the disco bandwagon by penning an A-side for a hotly-tipped young band called Funkture, his raunchy number Dirty Debbie was pulled from the shelves within hours after a little schoolgirl called Debbie Driscoll was abducted and brutally murdered, causing nationwide outrage and despair. 

So Lenny Mance has learnt to wait. He knows from past experiences it's pointless grinding away. He knows he's owed one stroke of fortune, and he knows he'll recognise the opportunity when it arrives. 

What he didn't know was that it would arrive thanks to Grotes Disease. Everyone close to him seems to understand exactly what Grotes is, but as far as he's concerned all it is is a sharp feeling that starts in his balls and eventually affects every part of his body capable of feeling extreme pain. It's his insides at war with him, attempting mutiny. He doesn't want to know what it is nor how it works or how it may be cured: he has never wanted to know a thing about Grotes Disease, not for the fifteen years he's been putting up with it - not until Princess Anne's husband becomes ill with it. Suddenly Grotes is in the spotlight: a charity foundation with Royal approval is launched to raise money for treatment and research, a media-savvy Tory MP its spokesman. A Grotes Awareness Campaign is set to culminate in a live pre-Christmas TV Charity Fundraiser Special featuring, among others, Damon Albarn of Blur. Damon is keen to create a musical project with sufferers of Grotes Disease, and places an advert in Grotes Notes for musicians, arrangers, songwriters... 

Lenny knows what he has to do. He is not unprepared. He has been preparing for this moment for the best part of 55 years. He wrote the first line the very night after Lopsy Lopez was busted all those years ago, after his first major disappointment. Each setback added another line or tweak in arrangement, until at last the private puzzle was complete, the puzzle too precious to waste on chance. Not a day passes that Lenny doesn't think of his song - his pop masterpiece, for young and old, for a family Christmas. For dancing, for reminiscing, for a strong chart position going into Christmas week. Like a secret agent, he has memorised the entire score in order to be certain no one can steal his winning ticket. Now it takes him no time to write out. He has already made a date with Damon Albarn's people in order to work on material and to get to know one another.

Damon doesn't make it on the day, but no matter, because his assistant is a charming and competent young lady who is very interested and enthusiastic about talking to Lenny, and asks him lots of questions about himself. She is so interested, she asks whether he would agree to appear on the very same live TV Charity Special talking about Grotes Disease and Damon's involvement in the awareness campaign. Lenny gladly agrees to it; he even speaks a short personal introduction into her smartphone, to check whether his voice is television-friendly. She assures Lenny that the important musical scores he hands her will be passed on to Damon directly. She understands how much music means to old people: her grandfather played the piano, or perhaps it was the flute. She is very excited about his contribution to this intergenerational project, these hands across the ages. She is sure to be in touch soon - after all, it's only three weeks until showtime.

Three weeks:

Week one is encouraging to begin with. Lenny's symptoms aren't too bad, save the odd blinding stab in the balls. He manages to speak to Damon himself on the phone. Damon has seen the score but hasn't had time to sit down with it yet. He's very excited about the collaboration with an old pro like Lenny. He can be relied upon to do his utmost to spread awareness of Grotes. Damon doesn't return Lenny's call on the Friday, and now the Grotes pains are not good. He's too woozy to remember to call Damon over the weekend. 

Week two is a feverish dream in wavy codeine brown. Waking from his drugged stupor to cough and convulse and scribble out superfluous arrangements for piccolos, harps and timpani, he is temporarily unaware of time. He thinks that someone who isn't Damon tells him it's a little late in the day to be adding new arrangements to anything, but they're sure Damon is busy working on the song.

Week three is too painful to feel drowsy, the drugs have stopped working. When he can bear to stop clenching his teeth for a moment, he manages to speak to Damon in person, the intensity of pain adding weight to the urgency of Lenny's call. Yes, the song is fine, a recording was made and the musicians have the scores and are ready to go. There will be a dress rehearsal the day before broadcast. It's sounding great! He is thrilled to have collaborated, and it's been an honour to speak up for Grotes sufferers. He'll see him at the after-show party. 

Lenny is so excited and wired, he can't even sleep through a double dose of the walrus tranquilizers he's been prescribed to stop his insides from beating him up. The slicing pains eventually exhaust his brain to melt into a nonstop, multicoloured hit parade countdown, with Damon Albarn sitting pretty on top, singing the Lenny Mance composition Yule Be Mine…

He doesn't remember being taken to hospital, he doesn't really know what's happening at all. But he does know when the countdown is due to finish: he's up to number 395 and counting. Things must be happening around him, but he's got his inner eye fixed on the pop chart. When the countdown reaches 100, he suddenly realises that wherever he is, he's not at the show, and he must get there in a taxi straight away. He sits up, swings his legs out of the hospital bed and falls smack into a wall of knives, the hurt so profound it paralyses his thoughts, even the Hot Top 100 freezes for a moment. He must be gasping for breath, because now he's somewhere else with an oxygen mask over his face...doctors, people....number 38 - we're into the Top 40!  Is he there at the gig? Who are all these people? Down two places this week to number 30...A microphone, an interview....an interview! The one he agreed to do live; they've tracked him down to the hospital, they've come to interview him on live national TV...hot new entry at number 19....a man with an earpiece talks to him about how the interview will go. He seems to be answering between gasps; the oxygen mask is coming on and off. He has his mind firmly on the chart as we break into the Top Ten...the white pain is leaving parts of his body, being replaced by nothing; he feels as though he is vanishing like the Cheshire Cat. His balls will be the last thing to stop hurting, courtesy of good old Grotes Disease. Number 5....are these operating lights or camera lights? It's so bright. Oh no! It's Neil and Christine Hamilton, they must be on the Grotes publicity train, they're wearing Grotes awareness ribbons, they're standing by his bed for the interview...is he at the show? It's number 2......everybody shut up now, hear comes this year's Xmas Number One, Yule Be Mine...words and music by Lenny Mance! Listen: 

"And now for a very special guest, please welcome Damon Albarn performing his song Beautiful Pain on behalf of the Royal Grotes Disease Foundation and Grotes Action UK." What's happening? His internal hit parade countdown must be out of sync - he is gaga, after all. We must still be at number 2, since this is nothing but tinkly background music to a preprogrammed drum machine. It never starts, no melody, no structure - the work of amateurs!  But what's this? Is that his own voice? "My name's Lenny. I've lived with Grotes for 15 years." It's the recording he made on Damon's assistant's phone - his mind is suddenly sharp now in the race against time: they took his voice and made it sound like a synthesizer, and stuck it over this rubbish, this dreck! That's his contribution? Where's his song, his masterstroke?? As the pain around his balls begins to numb he sees flashes of his music score lying in a waste paper basket at Damon's assistant's office, then in a bin bag, then in a dump-bound truck going off to die on a heap....That's not the right song! He gasps. They've got the wrong song!  There's Neil Hamilton looking confused, and a man with a furry microphone anxiously trying to ask him something. There's the bloke with the earpiece - is it a surgeon? Are they operating on him on live TV? They want him to speak, he'd better let them know once and for all that they've got the wrong song…I wrote a family singalong...for the kids...and the grandparents...but with a beat you can really— he can barely rasp out the words, his vanishing act almost complete. He's thumping the bedside table to muster his final gasp for air. The microphone leans right in to catch his last words, and to wrap up the interview as soon as possible. His pulse monitor is beeping like crazy, getting faster —dance to....with a beat you can really...dance to...

There is silence, bar the sound of flatline. The interviewer looks at the producer, who looks at Neil and Christine Hamilton and the doctor. Without uttering a word, they know what they've heard. They've just heard the next number one hit sensation, and they know people watching at home have heard it too: the hardcore beep beep beep of the heart machine, that old-school table thump percussion, those catchy lyrics: "Dance to...With a beat you can really ...dance to", so infectious, so toe-tappingly irresistible. Within hours it's all over Youtube, by the next afternoon it's on the One Show, and by the evening the News at Ten is reporting on the remarkable musical death gone viral of a Grotes Disease legend, and the dance craze it spawned now sweeping the nation.

Needless to say, Lenny's TV death made the Christmas Number One spot the following week. Damon Albarn put a good mix together, and was kind enough to make a sizeable donation to the Princess Anne Husband Memorial fund on behalf of the Royal Grotes Disease Foundation and Grotes Action UK. Loads of people went to Lenny's funeral, but there were no songwriters, no musicians other than those celebrities associated with Grotes Awareness fundraising: his was a Grotes funeral. They probably went and inscribed something about Grotes on his headstone, he wouldn't be surprised. 

He may go down in history as a Grotes martyr and activist, but at least he had that Christmas Number One - better late than never.