My Bathtimes with Livvy
Soundsman Fielder's Exclusive Revelations!
BEING BORN and brought up in Cambridge never did much for my street credibility unless I happened to be talking to avid Pink Floyd or Henry Cow fans. But it did mean that I got to share a bath with Olivia Newton-John before most folks.
Bath time with Olivia was a regular thing. In the afternoon we would frolic in the garden with gay abandon and what more natural than as the sun drew slowly down behind the verdent vegetation beyond the sun porch (cut the literary crap and spill the beans Ed) than we should rip off our clothes and plunge into a warm bubble bath. Such games I recall hunt the soap, sink the rubber ducks or torpedoes (I always won that). Even though she was two years older than I, she was always tolerant of my awkward manners.
But alas those care-free innocent days came to an end. Maybe it was something I said. But suddenly, without warning and before our relationship could blossom into anything deeper and more consummate, she was whisked away from my infantile clutches and taken Down Under to the land of culture all of it physical.
Our paths never crossed again … the other week at the Rainbow Theatre when she opened her British tour. Anxious to spare her any embarrassment lest she should recognise me from the stage and fluff her immaculate performance, I lurked well back in the stalls and admired her from afar.
But at the press conference she held the following day I did harbour a lingering hope that a long-lost spark of deja vu might cross her palmolive complexion. But there was no sign. I would have strolled nonchalantly up and casually introduced myself, reminding her of our long-lost bond (‘Hi there, we used to bath together’) but she was led quickly away from her brief ordeal with the national newspaper journalists who were concerned only with asking her when she was having a baby and whether she would have a face lift when her youthful looks started to fade (seriously) before I had the chance. She was doing no face-to-face interviews either so that was that.
Mind you, there was no particular reason why she should remember our happy times together; I was only three at the time. And I only discovered our past pleasures when my parents told me a year or so back.
By Hugh Fielder
Photo caption: COME ON in, Hugh, the water's fine