Danny Baker

Was it difficult for you to get your eight [discs]?

Oh, it is impossible. It's like naming children or, you know, or performing surgery, I suspect. You say the NME, but it wasn't the first job I was at 14 in a record shop. And so I was 14 and left school when the last year you could leave at 14 and went to a record shop, which I didn't know, but happened to be the hippist shop in the West End, long before there were mega stores and all of this. And so music is, and obviously, growing up in the family, it was everywhere. Doing this was hard. That's why I've gone on a strategy here that I hope, I hope, will diffuse and make the journey easier.

What was your dad like?

Worse than me. My old man was. Or better than you, depending on you. Yeah, no, no, I think worse than me is a way of putting it. And I don't mean that in the sense of annoyance, hopefully. The old man was larger than me, put it that way. My old man was a huge personality. But my old man didn't care for the niceties of life or even show business. He didn't refine his personality to make it a career. My old man used it at home and all that, but he was a brawler as well. And I've never had that. He was a big union leader. And he had the volatile side of him. He was a docker, yeah.

Tell me about the woman that was known as Ma Baker.

My nan Baker was my main images, listening to Brian Hayeshot. My nan would sit there and swear at the radio all day. In her life, she worked everything from a docker during the First World War. She owned pubs, she ran shops, she did anything. And she was not a sweet old lady. She was the kind of old lady who would stand out in the street at closing time and sing. And was she she was your dad's mother, wasn't it? Yeah. And she was a big matriarch. And the only time you ever saw my dad and his brothers cowled was in her presence. When she died, they named the bar across the road Marl Baker's. It still is on the Isle of Dogs. It's Marl Baker Snug, I think. Yes, it is. That's it. She was very tough. My parents were terrific people, extremely confident people. But my mum was as sweet as my dad was bumptious. But they remained together nearly 60 years. And she knew the lyrics to every single verse of a song. You know, she's got dementia these days, but even now, a song will come on. And she still can know the verse and every single word. And she'll say, Oh, I can't remember what I did ten minutes ago, but I can remember this. My mum was by comparison quiet, but you know, I've got to say that the Woolwich Ferry would be by comparison quiet to our family.