by Steve Brown, who has died aged 69, was a comedy songwriter, notably for the satirical puppet show Spitting Image, who eventually became a house songwriter; he also wrote some stage music, Tony! Opera Rock Tony Blair, in collaboration with his friend Harry Hill, and the Olivier-winning Spend Spend Spend, which chronicled the real life rags-to-riches-to-carts story Viv Nicholson, whose husband won a fortune in the. football pools in the 1960s.
A dapper figure with a neat beard and a wry smile, Brown worked with many of the biggest names in British comedy, including Rory Bremner, Lee Mack, Lenny Henry and Steve Coogan, with whom he appeared as band leader Glenn Ponder. in Knowing Me, Knowing You with Alan Partridge (1994), a parody of Coogan’s chat show. Brown’s character’s name later evolved into Glen Ponder, allowing Partridge to describe it as an anagram of Legend of Porn.
In one memorable episode, Partridge presents a special French edition of his show from Paris Fashion Week, and is outraged to learn that everyone else on set had accompanied Ponder to the Folies Bergère the evening before, but was not given he was invited.
Turning to his sender, on the air, Partridge declares in Monty Python style: “You’re in the job! You are sacked, I am sacking you. Indeed, it has happened, it is over, it has already happened, you are a sacked man. You are sacked. You are sacking material, I want you off the premises in 10 minutes. Introducing me, Alan Partridge, introducing you, Glenn Ponder. A-ha!”
Brown’s greatest success, however, was his musical Spend Spend Spend. He was drawn to the true story of Yorkshire housewife Viv Nicholson, who won £152,000 on the pools then went on to lose it, because, as he put it, “there was love, sex, money, power, death and he has a loss. – what the opera is made of.” Viv Nicholson gave it his blessing, and the show opened at the West Yorkshire Playhouse in Leeds in 1998, with music by Brown and lyrics by Justin Greene.
It transferred triumphantly to the West End the following year, where Benedict Nightingale of The Times praised the show for “not patronizing Nicholson. It provides fun and passion, mining town poverty and suburban kitsch – all for some of the most enjoyable songs in London theatre.” Viv herself joined the cast to take the curtain call on the first night at the Piccadilly Theatre, where she was visibly changed, then went on and flashed her bottom just before the final curtain fell.
Barbara Dickson, as Viv, won the Olivier Award for Best Actress, and Spend Spend Spend won the Evening Standard and Critics Circle awards for Best Musical, beating its big-budget rivals The Lion King and Mamma Mia! in what The Daily Telegraph called a “David slaying Goliath” moment. Charlie Spencer said it was “popular entertainment at its best, without the cynical cynicism of so many musicals and blessed with heart, humor and an irresistible humanity”.
But Brown’s early victory could not be overcome. In 2009 he staged a musical version of Frank Capra’s film It’s a Wonderful Life after a 19-year battle to secure the rights, although it was only seen in Ipswich. I Can’t Sing!, a spin-off of The X Factor written by Hill, enjoyed critical acclaim at the London Palladium in 2014 but was a box office flop and closed within six weeks. Brown admitted to Time Out that when he was first asked to work on the project, “I thought, ‘Oh my God, that’s a terrible, terrible idea’.”
It was Tony! Brown and Hill’s next collaboration, a “rock musical” that presents former prime minister Tony Blair’s complete Shakespearean arc from “A new dawn has broken, hasn’t it?” that “I have no doubt that we will find evidence of weapons of mass destruction programs.”
It included the bad taste of Blair’s “people’s princess” speech and featured a panoply of New Labor grandees: John Prescott as a pugilistic Bernard Manning, Robin Cook as a priapic pedant and Cherie Blair as a seductive Scouse vamp. Gordon Brown’s big number, Macroeconomics, was an auditory-style imitator taken word for word from one of the ex-chancellor’s knotty speeches.
Tony! However, it failed to find favor in the Daily Telegraph, with Dominic Cavendish comparing the show to Blair’s prime and noting: “[It] it starts promisingly, moves into a disappointing phase and then is welcomed.”
Steven James Brown was born on 25 October 1954, the third child of Len and Marge Brown, and was raised in south-east London. At the age of 13 he wrote his first song, a Tudor pastiche called My Lady’s Love has Gone Astray.
He left school with no qualifications and at 17 spent a few weeks working on a trawler. He tried telesales but ended up a softball salesman while writing songs, recording demo tapes and knocking on the doors of music publishers. He was seen playing above a pub in London, he was offered work on a show in the West End and in a radio show.
He was galvanized watching Sondheim’s 1976 revue Side by Side. One of his prized possessions was a letter from Stephen Sondheim recommending Spend Spend Spend.
Brown joined Spitting Image in the late 1980s and remained there throughout the 1990s. Meanwhile, he appeared on the Radio 4 comedy sketch series In One Ear and wrote a number of songs for Radio 4/BBC 2’s Dead Ringers, where he made a brief TV appearance as Noel Gallagher with Jon Culshaw’s Liam. He also composed all the music for Harry Hill’s TV Burp and the BBC’s The Ant & Dec Show, and later wrote the popular theme song “Wonkey Donkey” when Ant and Dec moved to SM:TV Live present on ITV.
Brown discovered and mentored musicians Laura Mvula and Rumer, producing their respective debut records, both of which went platinum.
In 1983 Brown married, firstly, the impressionist and radio producer Jan Ravens, a regular on Dead Ringers. The marriage was dissolved in 1993, and in 2010 he married, secondly, the actress Deborah Cornelius, who survives him and two sons from his first marriage, the comedian Alfie Brown and the musician Lenny Brown.
Steve Brown, born 25 October 1954, died 2 February 2024
