To say I wasn t scared by the threat from one of The firms Henchman would be a lie! I was left shaki

To say I wasn t scared by the threat from one of The firms Henchman would be a lie! I was left shaking in my boots wondering that maybe this is much bigger and more dangerous than I thought at first. I went back inside the hotel and thought it best not to mention the threats fearful that the waiting journalist would write about it. I could just see the headlines; Boland gets threatened by the Rolling Stones etc . I was sure that would make things a lot worse so I just made my excuses that I was tired and made my way to my room. To be honest I was terrified and seriously thought that I would leave UK as soon as possible.
alamo auto rental Early next morning and having slept very little, a car picked up Mandy and myself at the hotel to take us to Holborn studios were a team on makeup, hairdressers and stylists alamo auto rental were waiting to prepare Mandy for her first ever modelling job. The session went very well, to say Mandy took to it like a fish out of water wouldn t be an exaggeration, in fact she looked liked she s been doing this for years. (See photo) The newspaper was very satisfied alamo auto rental as were the photographer and all those who attended alamo auto rental the session.
It seemed where ever you looked Mandy s face was plastered everywhere making headlines in practical every newspaper covering her arrival at Gatwick. Before leaving Holborn studios I received another call from a national newspaper asking to meet me as they wanted to negotiate a fee for a photo session and interview with Mandy. So after the car dropped us back at the Hotel I took a taxi to meet the journalist and again a fee was agreed which also included a move to the Savoy Hotel. This was all incredible, a few days ago I was at home in Marbella now I was in London alamo auto rental been wined and dined by journalists and now moving into the Savoy Hotel. You wouldn t believe it if you had read it in a book, on the other hand you ARE reading it!
Before we moved into the Savoy, Mandy accompanied by her mother attended a police station saying she wasn t going to lodge a complaint against Wyman. I m sure a huge sigh of relief came from the Stones camp and their lawyers. Perhaps now the firm would withdraw their threat for me to leave UK? Anyway as much as a coward that I am all this was just to good to be missed . I was staying!
alamo auto rental I must say the Savoy was unbelievable, for any of you who haven t had the opportunity to stay there, please put it on your bucket list of to do s before you die. Again the conditions for the photo shoot were the same as the first shoot, that there would be no fee if another tabloid got a shot of Mandy before they published their story. One of MY conditions was that Mandy would NOT talk about her time with Wyman. Mandy was incredible during the shoot , she was a natural and the camera loved her. That particular session alamo auto rental lasted well into the evening and by the time we got back to the hotel and had something to eat we were all ready for bed. The next morning all the newspapers were delivered to my room and what I saw made me sit up boltlike. There on the front pages of The Daily Express, The Sun, The Mirror was a photo of Keith and Mandy at Stringfellow s LAST NIGHT!!! I couldn t believe it. This was sure to see our fee cancelled after all I had agreed no other paper would run what s called a today photo until they published. I was furious as I entered Mandy and Keith s room throwing alamo auto rental down the papers on the bed demanding an explanation! I was even annoyed with Keith as he knew the score and had promised to keep Mandy in hiding until publication . All they could do was giggle like a couple of kids, mind you that s all they were. They explained that once I d gone to bed they at sneaked out of the hotel for a few drinks and somehow ended up in Stringfellow s. Somehow I smoothed the newspaper alamo auto rental over and we got our fee. But I did learn that more control needed to be taken over Mandy. So I called Patsy, Mandy s Mum, and suggested that from now on Mandy must stay at home and that she should keep an eye on her. Thankfully Mandy and her mum agreed knowing I was only doing this for her own good.
I too needed somewhere to stay and run this crazy show from so I rented the top half of a house at the end of Kings Road. The Mandy Smith Story continued to run and the demand from magazines now asking for photos and interviews was mind boggling. alamo auto rental I found myself being wined and dined by editors and TV executives almost daily, all wanting their pound of flesh from Mandy. One TV show I remember doing was a New Years Eve TV special staring Jules Holland, it was a send up of the then popular alamo auto rental TV show Come Dancing co-hosted by popular comedian Ruby Wax (photo). It was I suppose the precursor to Holand s hugely successful annual BBC s Hogmanay Show. It was a great night, alamo auto rental everyone wanted to meet Mandy. On one occasion Ruby Wax came over to Mandy asking her what was it she had that she (Ruby) didn t have? Mandy just looked at Ruby and replied; Age dear! We were sat next to a young man who began to tell us that he was hoping one day to get his own TV chat show, he was Jonathan Ross!
I decided very early on that I should explore the possibilities of Mandy making a record. I called John Reeds office in Soho. John was managing some of the biggest recording stars at the time including Elton John. I thought, because Mandy s name was absolutely alamo auto rental everywhere, that at least he would see me. An appointment was made for me to meet Reed, which in itself was exciting. I remember sitting in his outer office waiting alamo auto rental to be beckoned in by the great man himself but after an hour an assistant suggested I was wasting my time and that Reed wasn t going to turn up. He handed me a piece of paper with the name and telephone number of a Pete Waterman scribbled on it. He advised me to call him as he had just started a new record label and perhaps he might be interested in Mandy. I was not a very happy man to say the least. When I got home I decided that I would call the Waterman chap and see if he might be interested in talking to me about Mandy so I called the number. I remember that how impressed that he had a telephone in his car. I introduced myself and mentioned Mandy etc. He told me that he couldn t believe that I had called as he had just been with Pete Burn s (lead singer of Dead and Alive) who was enthusing over Mandy saying she looked so like a young Bardot and he should consider a remake of the song Terry by Twinkle as it was about a motor bike accident and Mandy could pose for a photo on a motorbike like the iconic photo of Bardot for the cover. Pete sounded very excited and although it was approaching midnight he asked me to jump into a cab and join him at his studios in at the Borough just off London alamo auto rental Bridge. alamo auto rental I wasted no time and it wasn t long before I was sitting with Pete having coffee trying alamo auto rental to negotiate a record deal for Mandy. Pete pointed out he had NO money for an advance but would offer a higher percentage on record sales , odd I thought at the time as he, nor I , knew if Mandy could sing or not! I instantly liked Pete Waterman finding his enthusiasm contagious. His label PWL was beginning to have some success, one of his acts, Bananarama were just braking America with a cover version on Venus and Dead or Alive s had a hit with You Spin Me Around. alamo auto rental He explained about his partners Mike Stock and Mat Aitken and told me he was trying to build a hit factory out of thin air. I signed Mandy to PWL.
Mandy was beside herself with excitement when I told her that I had signed a record deal for her. Mandy schedule was still very busy filled mostly with interviews, photo sessions etc so our appointment for the recording with Mike and Mat could only be done over a weekend. I remember sitting alamo auto rental outside the recording studio waiting for Mandy to come out feeling like a parent at the dentist who s kid was inside having a tooth extracted. It felt like hours when Mandy finally came out accompanied by Mike and Mat all smiles saying she was brilliant!
A couple of days later I returned to the studios to hear the finished song. I didn t like it, not that Mandy could sing she sounded great but I felt the song sounded dated and ask could Mike and Mat not write an original song for her? After some gentle alamo auto rental persuasion from myself and Pete they agreed and wrote a wonderful song called: I Just Can t Wait. (see Video below)
From that moment on Mandy s career reached a whole new level. It was nonstop record alamo auto rental promotions. I launched the record on the then Stringfellow owned massive Hippodrome Club in Leicester Squire (formally the Talk of The Town, coincidently alamo auto rental the last time I had been there was to see Bruce Forsyth s cabaret show, little did I know years later I would be launching Mandy in this very same spot!) Again it was a huge success and as it was Mandy first live performance it seemed the world press turned out to record the event (below you ll see a cover photo of Mandy on Bravo magazine in the outfit that was designed and made by Vivian Westwood especially for this occasion)
Almost daily we found ourselves at Gatwick Airport at some unearthly hour of the morning taking off for one country alamo auto rental or another to appear on their versions of Top Of The Pops (see photo of Mandy on TV in Germany) . It was then that we suffered out first real set back in when Pete Waterman called to deliver the bad news that the BBC announced that they had banned Mandy s record and the only excuse they gave that they didn t think the standard was good enough. So I decided to ignore UK and tackle the European market especial the German where the market was even bigger than that UK. I achieved alamo auto rental almost the impossible by negotiating with Bravo, the biggest selling music magazine alamo auto rental in Europe, to put Mandy on the front cover, it was to be the first time in this famous magazines history to put someone on the cover that hadn t yet scored a hit record!! The Germans loved Mandy and her record eventually made the German the top of the German alamo auto rental charts.
My phone was going crazy, every evening when I returned