Simon McDermott - The Songaminute Man - How music brought my father home again

Copyright Copyright Dedication Pride of Britain Awards, November 2016 Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Epilogue Acknowledgements Photo Section About the Publisher

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2017

Copyright © Simon McDermott 2017

Simon McDermott asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Ebook Edition © February 2018 ISBN: 9780008232634

For my father

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright Copyright Copyright Dedication Pride of Britain Awards, November 2016 Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Epilogue Acknowledgements Photo Section About the Publisher An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2017 Copyright © Simon McDermott 2017 Simon McDermott asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins. Ebook Edition © February 2018 ISBN: 9780008232634

Dedication For my father

Pride of Britain Awards, November 2016

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

Photo Section

About the Publisher

Pride of Britain Awards, November 2016

The lights were blinding.

I was sat surrounded by some of Britain’s most famous faces – Simon Cowell, Stephen Hawking and Prince Charles. Two cameramen made their way over to my table, one positioning himself right in front of me. I could see the red light. I knew they were recording and my heart was pounding. On the stage, James Corden filled the screen, his voice booming across the room:

‘There’s a carpool karaoke star I want to pay tribute to this evening that isn’t to do with me. He’s 80 years old and he has the voice of Frank Sinatra and instead of Sunset Boulevard, he likes to cruise the mean streets of Blackburn, Lancashire. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Mr Ted McDermott and his son Simon.’

The screen cut to a video of me driving with my dad in the car as he belted out ‘Volare’. I felt pride and heartbreak all at once. There was the dad I knew and loved. He was happy and full of joy, with little sign of the confusion and aggression that had blighted our lives for the past four years. The interview cut to a picture of Mum and Dad when they were younger and then to Mum as she sat there with tears in her eyes: ‘You do get upset about it. The person that you knew is slowly going away,’ she said.

How did we get here?

My dad, Ted, was diagnosed with dementia in 2013, when he was 77. He can no longer recognize his family or where he is. It’s been devastating to watch this insidious disease take him over, but through everything, music has been the one thing that’s kept us together. Dad still loves to play his records at full volume as he sings around the house, remembering the words to every song, even if he doesn’t recognize anything else around him.

Living with dementia means that no day is ever the same. There are moments when Dad is happy and caring and moments when he can get incredibly angry and upset but not know why. Evenings he’ll often spend hours wandering around the house, shouting my mum’s name, or looking for people who aren’t there.

It was after one particularly bad outburst that I took Dad driving around the Ribble Valley in Lancashire, playing his old backing tracks to try and calm him down. It didn’t take long before he was singing along in perfect tune. Dad – for a moment – was back to his old self and all the confusion and aggression had gone.

Those drives in the car gave us something to hold on to during the really bad times. I started to record them just for myself and Mum, but then I had the idea of uploading them to Facebook, with a link to a fundraising page I’d set up to support the Alzheimer’s Society who’d supported us. In just a few short weeks the videos had been watched millions of times worldwide. The donations came pouring in and before I knew it we had raised over £150,000 for the charity to help other families like us.

Now I was about to go onstage to receive a Pride of Britain Award for raising dementia awareness. It was one of the most surreal moments of my life as Sir Cliff Richard and Dame Joan Collins appeared to present me with the award. ‘I can’t believe your dad sells more records than I do,’ said Cliff.

For Dad, his one true passion has always been music. He’s been singing since he was a young boy, growing up in a noisy house with thirteen brothers and sisters, and his musical ability was always encouraged. Although my grandparents didn’t have a lot, the family never went short. My grandad was hard-working, with a job in the forge and lots of friends down at the local pub, while my grandmother was a strong and loving mother who knew everyone on the estate where she lived. Dad had a typical childhood for the time – his younger years were about football or playing out in the woods at the back of the estate. Once he left school, one of his many jobs was as a Butlin’s Redcoat, where he travelled the country singing in clubs. He earned himself the nickname ‘The Songaminute Man’ because of the many different songs he could perform by heart.