Hootenanny crowns Jools

Published on Saturday 26 December 2009 18:55

PROFILE: Jools Holland

Who else but Holland interviews in the manner of an elderly uncle speed dating?

THERE are many odd longstanding Hogmanay traditions: singing Auld Lang Syne with people you've just met, making resolutions you forget by the second day of the year, and carting around a black bun of about the same density as a U2 fan.

Oddest of all is the place Jools Holland occupies on TV, straddling the old and new years with his pubby musical blend of the half-decent, the yawningly dull and the authentically black – all heavily seasoned with his boogie-woogie piano improvisations.

Empires have risen and fallen, yet Holland's Hootenanny tootles on, despite the shock-horror revelation some years back that it is pre-recorded weeks in advance, so that while Kylie Minogue and David Tennant appeared to be seeing in 2009 with TV's Mr Hammerthumbs, they were in fact respectively back in Australia and attending Billie Piper's wedding.

Love him or loathe him, there is no denying the totalitarian dominance of Holland, not just of Hogmanay but also of music television. Later has been running since 1992 and, like hepatitis A, there seems no cure in sight. Where else can you see a camera whirl 360 degrees around a guest list that this year includes Tom Jones, Dizzee Rascal and Lily Allen? And who else but Jools will interview them in the awkward manner of an elderly uncle at a speed dating evening? Apparently Holland does not like to talk about his own private life, and isn't very interested in anyone else's. His compromise is a line of interrogation that is only fearless in its banality; one favourite question is how his guests fill time on tour. (Apparently Bjork makes food on a Primus stove.)

Still Holland doesn't give a Hootenanny about our assessment of his presenting skills, because he still regards himself as a musician, first as the keyboards man for Squeeze, the new wave godfathers of Britpop, and latterly as the leader of his own Big Band. To some, he seems more of a skilled tribute act to old American techniques, but he has his admirers and they help shift his albums in impressive numbers. "I didn't think anybody could play like that," gushed BB King. "When the likes of Pete Johnson died, I wondered if I'd ever see that kind of playing again." Indeed.

Julian Miles Holland was born on 24January, 1958, in Deptford, south-east London. He grew up in a house without a bath and it was while he was taking weekly dips at his grandparents' home that he first heard boogie-woogie played by his Uncle David. "I just spent hours and hours sitting at the piano trying to make that noise," he later recalled.

He started playing piano at age eight, when Uncle David taught him St Louis Blues. By the time he was in his teens he was a regular performer in pubs across south-east London. Then, aged 15, he met Chris Difford and Glenn Tilbrook, and formed Squeeze. "My first gig was as a duo with Glen Tilbrook at a pub in Poplar," he recalled. "We got paid 15 and had a great night – it didn't feel like work."

He was not academic and was asked to leave school at 16 after a series of smoking and truanting misdemeanours. Squeeze proved to be a more astute investment of his time and talent. Their tunes were catchy, their lyrics clever and subsequent singles such as Cool For Cats sold more than half a million copies. They were managed by Miles Copeland, a sharp American whose father had been head of the CIA and who also looked after his brother Stewart's band, The Police. Few British bands attempted to tour America at that time, but Copeland took them over, driving them to gigs in an estate car.

However Holland had other musical ambitions, and after six years he left the band to pursue musical avenues closer to his own taste. Television offers also began to crop up. He first met Bob Geldof's then girlfriend Paula Yates in 1978, when he was playing with Squeeze on Top Of The Pops. The encounter led to an invitation to pose in his grandfather's tartan underwear for Yates's notorious picture book Rockstars In Their Underpants.

By the early Eighties he had taken his first plunge into presenting with a documentary about The Police, briskly wrapping up a section where Stewart Copeland demonstrated his guitar skills with an abrupt: "That's enough of all that." The self-assurance of this 24-year-old dazzled TV producer Geoff Wonfor, who paired him with Yates for a live, chaotic new music show called The Tube, where Holland's preference for elderly musicians complimented Yates's heavy-breathing excitement over young lead singers.

Madonna, Frankie Goes To Hollywood and Culture Club all disported themselves on the show during its five-year run, but somehow it was Holland who became its rebel godhead when he was suspended for six weeks after blurting out the f-word in a live trail during a children's programme. (The offending phrase: "Be there, or be ungroovy f***ers.")

He was possibly distracted by the upheavals in his private life. When The Tube began, Holland was living with his girlfriend Mary Leahy, a hairdresser. The relationship produced two children. But in 1987, on location with The Tube, he fell in love with the 23-year-old mistress of Bamburgh Castle in Northumberland, Christabel, Lady Durham. They left their partners, set up home, had a daughter Mabel, now 19, and married in 2005. Holland had to endure renewed media interest when his father Derek was jailed for 15 months after stealing 35,000 of jewellery from Christabel. The couple tried to have the charges dropped and, in his autobiography, Holland attributes his father's behaviour to depression.

Despite his suspension, The Tube made Holland a TV star and the work has rolled in since. He conducted the interviews for the Beatles Anthology series, hosts a weekly show on Radio 2 and, of course, bumbles his way through Later, and the non-balloon and party-poppers version of Hogmanay, Hootenanny, which started in 1992.

Success for Holland has been on a scale that easily outstrips the performance royalties for Up The Junction. "He's built a little empire down in Greenwich," Difford says. "He's got a recording studio there and owns about half a dozen flats, a couple of restaurants and a garage. He's got a castle down in Kent and he lives next to Buckingham Palace in London."

Holland still records and tours with his 18-strong band, who also appear on his TV shows in various configurations. But the good news for the boogiewoogieman's devotees is that he has no intention of stepping away anytime soon.

"Later will become like The Sky At Night and I'll be like Patrick Moore hobbling on," he has promised. "I'll be on your screens for the next 50 years."