This unofficial site features his current and recent events and tours
Review of The Story of James Bond - a tribute to Ian Fleming - The London Palladium - 5th October 2008
Ever since I bought tickets for Tony in Chicago, See Tickets send me e-mails promoting various theatre shows. I normally ignore them for a few days, take a quick look and then delete them. When I received this e-mail on 11th September, I was on my way to see Tony at the golf in Peterborough and when I got back I had to wade my way through my inbox and by the time I had deleted all the phishing emails wanting my bank details and other items in my inbox, I opened this one. Nothing had been announced about it, but Tony's name was listed 6th on the list. In 2004 Tony had done a concert of Bond themes at the Bolton Rebok Football stadium, so I knew he could sing them. I decided to book tickets and ask if Wendy would like to come. I was already staying with Wendy for Dine with Davina and she didn't mind me staying for another couple of days (thank you Wendy). If it actually turned out that Tony wasn't going to be part of it, my husband and son (who quite like Bond films) would have been willing to use the tickets and go along. At Dine for Davina, we checked that Tony was actually doing it - yes he was! His manager John Glover didn't actually have any tickets and was quite jealous that we were going. When I booked there were a few of the £100 tickets in the stalls, a few £75 and £50 left, and a few much cheaper upper circle ones. Up in the Gods it was going to be for us, but at least we would be there. By about 23rd September it was completely sold out.
Sunday 5th October arrived, it was a day with heavy rain. We looked at the logistics of driving to a station with a car park and then getting the train and underground to the theatre, but we didn't fancy waiting round in the cold and wet. I decided to drive into central London, especially as I had seen that you got half price parking if you got your parking ticket validated at the theatre.
We arrived at the theatre at about 6.30 pm to see Tony's partner Alison in the queue waiting for his Mum to arrive and spoke to her for a little while and then we went off for a bite to eat. Before entering the theatre our next task was to get the car park ticket validated. Because we were in the Upper Circle, we weren't allowed in the front door with all the arriving celebrities, so as we waited at the front door behind the barriers a kindly usher got our ticket validated. We then made our way to our seats in row B in the Upper Circle. These aren't the best seats up there as your view is restricted by a gold rail that runs around the balcony.
I won't try and re-invent the wheel as somebody else has written an excellent review of the evening, thank you Tim Pollard (although he had much better seats than us!). The evening was split into two almost equal halves with Tony having a song in each act. He was on 6th in the first act singing 'Thunderball'. Tony's singing was good but the sound levels were wrong, especially for us up at the top. He was first on in the second act. There was a video of Sir Paul McCartney as Tony was singing 'Live and Let Die'. Tony had four lady dancers around him and even did some dancing himself. I thought this was a good performance.
It was a good evening and I learnt a lot about Ian Fleming and his books. I really enjoyed it. At the end of the show we waited outside and watched the many celebrities leave, including Roger Moore and Gok Wan. Unfortunately we had to go back to the car as the car park closed at midnight and Tony hadn't come out yet. Once out of the car park, we decided to drive back round to outside the Palladium, just to see if Tony was there. As I drove up Argyll Street, the car taking Tony home was stopped in the middle of the road and we had to wait behind it whilst he got in and was driven away. Our timing was just a little bit awry.