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Val
Doonican
Saturday 15 November
7pm
Gulbenkian Theatre,
Val Doonican has recorded over fifty albums, sales of which register in the millions, and he has fans all over the world. He charted many times with both singles and albums, appearing on ‘Top of the Pops’ to sing hits such as ‘Walk Tall’, ‘The Special Years’, ‘What Would I Be’, and ‘Elusive Butterfly’.
His TV shows ran for twenty four years, from humble beginnings
opposite ‘
Don’t miss this unique
chance to join Val in
Tickets
Ł20
Booking Office 01227
769075
On line bookings www.gulbenkiantheatre.co.uk
Ends.
Press Contact: Bernard Lee mag_dot_lee_at_tiscali_dot_co_dot_uk
Biography
Michael Valentine Doonican
was born on 3rd February 1927, the youngest of eight children. He became known
as Val because, growing up in
Val often talks about the
great happiness of his childhood – his ‘Special Years’. However, his family were
poor and he shared a room with his three brothers: his four sisters slept on the
other side of a partition wall and his parents in the living room. When Val was
still young, one of his sisters contracted TB, forcing her to move into their
parents’ room, and Val’s father to move into a shed at the end of the garden.
This eccentric arrangement continued until Val was fourteen, when his father
died, but enabled him to spend a great deal of ‘quality time’ with his dad.
Many of the young Mr
Doonican’s favourite moments arose from long country walks with his father, who
would walk down the road, book in hand whilst the young Val foraged in the
hedgerows, occasionally returning to his father’s side in order to take a sweet
from his pocket. They would pick watercress to make sandwiches and boil up baby
potatoes, making the most delicious meals Val had tasted. However, there were
also darker times waiting for his father to leave the pub barely able to stand
and having lavished most of his weekly wage packet on alcohol. In fact, despite
working in many bars and nightclubs, Val remained virtually teetotal until
middle age.
When Val was fourteen, his
world was shattered by his father’s death from cancer of the throat and mouth.
Val felt unable to attend the funeral, and shortly afterwards felt compelled to
leave school in order to help support the family. He had been a reasonable
scholar, but left without qualifications and had to take a job assembling crates
at the orange box factory where his father and older brothers had worked –
something which he says would almost certainly have disappointed his father
greatly.
However, Val had been
writing and arranging music from a very young age, harmonising his friends’
versions of the songs they saw performed on film by the likes of Gene Autry.
Among other achievements, Val took part in
Eventually, Val joined a
band, this time as drummer, despite never having played drums before! He stayed
with the band for six months, despite being sacked for blowing his nose during a
set and reinstated almost instantly because no-one else owned any drum sticks.
From the drums, Val found a job – again with Bruce Clarke – playing guitar and
performing general duties on the seafront in Bray,
Seventeen Years To Become an
overnight success
In 1951, still touring
Ireland with Bruce Clarke’s band, Val was approached by representatives of the
Four Ramblers and invited to join them in England, where they are best
remembered for ‘Riders of the Range’ on BBC Radio. They also presented Workers’
Playtime, their salaries augmented by gifts from the factories whence the
broadcast was being made. Looking forward to his first free products, Val found
that his 'Playtime' debut was in a corset factory! It is not recorded
whether he made use of the proffered samples on this occasion!!
His time with the Four
Ramblers introduced Val to the joys of golf, honed his professional singing
skills and arrangements, and led to the tour that was to revolutionise his life…
Val had bought himself an
amplifier for his guitar, into which had gone most of his savings. Making a case
to protect the amplifier, he used an old theatre poster advertising one Lynnette
Rae, at the time more famous than Val, who was re-building her career after an
operation for throat cancer (ironically, the disease that had killed his
father). Having used her as his amp’s guardian angel, Val finally met Lynnette
when both she and the Ramblers supported the late Anthony Newley on tour. For
the first time in his life, Val fell in love. He and Lynn married in the early
1960s, and are the parents to two grown-up daughters, Sarah and Fiona.
Whilst on that particular
tour, Anthony Newley held a birthday party. All the acts had to perform,
but not in their usual roles. Thus, singers did impressions and comedy turns,
with
Thus, he left the group and
started a more lonely professional life as Val Doonican – solo singer.
And The Rest Is History
Val secured a radio
programme on Wednesdays with the BBC ‘Light Programme’ – the precursor to Radio
2, and embarrassed the announcers terribly with some of his song titles (well,
you try announcing the next song as ‘Quit Kickin’ My Dog Around’ with a straight
face). This led to him linking his own material at a time when regional accents
were almost unknown at the BBC. However, Val’s surname was still not known to
his listeners - the powers-that-be in Broadcasting House having decided that the
general public would never remember a complicated surname like Doonican!
Val continued to play
cabaret and occasional theatre gigs but despite being a regular radio
personality, no recording contracts were forthcoming for him. He was spotted at
a concert by Val Parnell, who at that time arranged the acts for ‘Sunday Night
at the London Palladium’, booked onto the show and performed an eight minute
spot that, he says, changed his life. By the Monday, there were recording
contracts and TV show offers flooding his manager’s office. Truly, as Val
has said many times, he was 'an overnight success after seventeen years.'
These days Val still tours,
but as he told the web site during his interview, he is fortunate enough to be
able to pick and choose his concerts. He does not undertake television work as
the market for the lavish music shows no longer exists and, as he says, how
could he top the marvellous time he had doing what he loved musically: Val
presenting a game show would not have the same appeal to him.
Val is now a grandfather of
two, and the father of a successful novelist, his elder daughter Sarah having
scored some success in that field. He divides his time between his homes in
Buckinghamshire and