Yeh, Jet was really something. Music was so scarce in those days. I couldn't afford the records so i had to play the tunes in my head(something I still do). You heard them maybe twice a week - there were no rock n roll radio stations in England.

I was still a big fan when things started going wrong. Myheart went out to him him when he did the NME concert on telly from Wembley and he said, This is my latest single Big bad Bass, which thanks to you all hass been a flop....

The coloured pic book in Woolies went down from half a crown to sixpence. I bought it then. My mum said, he's not popular now, is he? And I said, i still like himIt would be worth more now. Where do all these things go?

About 1965 he sold his story for thre first time to The People, or News of the World. It was only then I realised before the Shads, he'd been a jazzer. Smoking dope in Soho with Tony Crombie. crombie was not long after - maybe already enjoying a big career with Alan Haven - doing Ronnie Scotts club, touring Las vegas, etc.

Whenever I heard of him in the intervening years, Jet was not doing too well. One of my mates got a gig in the 1970's in a group that Jet had just left. Two Irish guys ran the group - the starting pay was four quid a gig. Another time there was a feature on telly, looking very raddled Jet was living in a caravan, and looking bloody miserable.

it must have been in the 1980's that that book about the history of the Shads came out and the story surfaced about Cliff having an affair with Jet's wife. Strange there has never been any mention of it in any of Cliffs sunny anecodtal tomes about his past. That 'lessons in Love' sequence in The Young Ones really sort of comes alive, with that revelation.

I finally got to see Jet play, when he was 70. He looked tiny and bald, but I was still in awe of him. Doing a gig at a Warnerbreaks weekend. the show was a short one - but it climaxed with Jet high kicking through FBI. The were a gang of musicians from Holland in the audience. Young guys who loved the shadows music. One of them had that old LP where the Shads were wearing big wooly jumpers with reideers on the front.

The next week, I went out and bought a bass guitar. Jet was inspirational. If Cliff could convince anyone that his relationship with God had the intensity of Jet's relationship with the wood and the wire of his bass, he would be converting millions.