Daryl Runswick

Song of the Double Bass Player

Clive James, Daryl Runswick, Pete Atkin, Steve Cook, Julie Covington, Peter Cochran, Nik Knight, Richard Harris, Jonathan James Moore Cambridge Footlights 1967

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    by Clive James and Daryl Runswick

Clive James wrote me this lyric in the spring of 1967 as a possible item for inclusion in Cambridge's 'Pembroke Smoker',
a revue at Pembroke College. I duly set it to music, to sing with my own double bass accompaniment, thinking of it as a curiosity that would perhaps raise a chuckle and some warm applause. The ovation you hear at the end of this tape of the premiere (recorded by Richard Harris, pictured above) astonished me. But the song went on to be one of the hits of any show it was put into, including the Cambridge Footlights' Edinburgh Fringe review that summer, and people remember it to this day, more than 40 years later.

This is the earliest extant recording of me. I was 20 years old.