The Estuary Fringe Festival Presents… John Otway

With support

Presented by: Tom Johnson’s Palladium Apex

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0	SOUTHEND-ON-SEA: St Mark’s Church
P	Saturday 5th August, 2023
N	7:00pm

Event information

The Estuary Fringe Festival are proud to present one of Britain’s best loved eccentric singer songwriters, John Otway. With over 5,000 gigs under his belt, Otway has has built a sizeable cult audience through extensive touring, a surreal sense of humour and a self-deprecating underdog persona.

Otway had to wait until 1977 and the rise of punk before his dream of fame and fortune would finally become a reality. Having caught the eye of the producers of the BBC's Old Grey Whistle Test, Otway's performance on that show would grab the attention of the watching audience. Otway, ever the showman, decided to jump on to the amplifier of his colleague during a performance of Bob Lind's Cheryl's Going Home. (Un)fortunately for Otway, he misjudged his leap and sent Wild Willy Barrett’s amplifier tumbling as he crashed down straddling the box under the amp.

Despite numerous attempts to get back into the charts, Otway would have to wait 25 years for his next taste of chart success. In the intervening years, Otway would become an actor; write an autobiography (Cor Baby That’s Really Me: Rock and Roll’s Greatest Failure); perform sold out shows at London’s Astoria and Royal Albert Hall; make regular appearances at both Glastonbury and Edinburgh Festivals; and write the nation’s seventh favourite lyric of all-time (beating Bob Dylan and Paul Simon in the process).

In 2002, Otway achieved what he desired the most – a second hit. A concerted publicity campaign saw Otway reach number 9 with the disco pastiche Bunsen Burner and a second appearance on Top of the Pops. Despite this success, a planned world tour collapsed, but Otway continued to gig extensively around the UK either with his band, as a duo with Wild Willy Barrett or solo. A follow-up autobiography was penned in 2010 and titled: I Did It Otway: Regrets I’ve Had a Few.

In 2012, to celebrate his 60th birthday, Otway produced his debut movie titled Otway the Movie: The Story of Rock n Roll’s Greatest Failure. A screening for producers was held at London’s Leicester Square with the final scenes from the movie filmed on the red carpet and edited into the film. The film was then taken to Cannes Film Festival and a 50-date tour of cinemas in both the UK and North America. It was subsequently voted the 2nd best film of the year in a poll of its readers conducted by The Guardian newspaper.

In 2022, Otway became Dr. Otway after being awarded an Honorary Doctorate from Oxford Brookes University.

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What else can we say? John is a must see for ANY Otway virgins out there.