Ed Tudor Pole – singer, actor, serial showman – saw the pop and punk wars as ‘pure theatre’.

Word In Your Ear

Ed Tudor Pole entered punk rock from stage school and always felt he was playing a part. After being hired to act in the Great Rock’N’Roll Swindle, he formed Tenpole Tudor and had a brief and dramatic moment in the sun, all recorded in his rollicking memoir ‘The Pen Is Mightier.’ He talks here about …

… his “quite posh” ancestry and a great-grandfather bankrupted by the Wall Street Crash.

… a “Damascene conversion” to the Rolling Stones and ten hours in the burning sun at their Hyde Park show, aged 14.

… being at RADA with Timothy Spall, Imelda Staunton and Juliet Stevenson.

… The Great Rock’N’Roll Swindle audition and the “really horrid” Nancy Spungen’s striptease.

… how everyone’s related to Edward 111.

… the secret of a One-Man Show – adopt the voice of Will Hay and “let the audience do the work!”

… why “most actors are awful people and all crippled in some way” and his time in theatre was “like being a cow in a field of sheep”.

… how Stiff’s Dave Robinson hated punk and wanted Tenpole Tudor to be a novelty act.

… three months with five acts in a coach on the Stiff Tour.

… how the success of Swords Of A Thousand Men didn’t affect their ticket sales - “it was bought by 350,000 12 year-old boys who weren’t old enough to go to gigs”.

… why the Tenpole Tudor split broke his heart.

… as Socrates said, “the unexamined life is not worth living.”

Find out more about how to help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear

… surprise paydays like the use of Who Killed Bambi? in the Zero Day soundtrack to accompany Robert De Niro’s nervous breakdown.

Order ‘The Pen Is Mightier’ here …

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Pen-Mightier-Autobiography-Punk-Rocker/dp/0857306057

---

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.