Remember there is more to songwriter Mike Batt than just The Wombles theme

MIKE BATT is the musical equivalent of George Lucas.

Let me explain.

Mike didn’t take his fee for writing The Wombles theme. Instead, he asked for the musical rights to the lovable inhabitants of Wimbledon Common in the same way Lucas waived his director’s fee for Star Wars in favour of the merchandising rights, which turned out to be worth billions.

“Yeah, it was a bit like that but not on the same scale, obviously!” laughs Mike.

“It was a path I took without knowing it was going to be so big.

“I was 23, married with children and doing jingles to make a living. I was signed as an artist but I hadn’t had a hit yet, so my agent said: ‘There’s this thing called The Wombles the BBC are making. Do you fancy doing a tune for them?.’

“I said: ‘Great, I’ll go and talk to them’ and then I read the scripts and thought: ‘Woah, these are good characters, I’d like to do more than just the theme’ so I asked for the rights to make a record.

“I was scuffing about a bit without much money so to waive what was a £200 fee was a big deal in the early 70s but I got the rights, and my mum was good at making costumes, so we had this wacky two or three years of just the hits coming one after another. Eight hits and four gold albums.”

Great Uncle Bulgaria, Orinoco and Co. were so big that when I asked Mike about the famous recyclers, I said The Beatles instead of The Wombles.

“You can mention The Beatles as much as you like!” says Mike. “No, the fact you’ve got them confused is flattering actually.

“I went on Heston Blumenthal’s show as one of the celeb tasters – ‘celeb’ being in inverted commas in my case – and I was introduced on a caption as ‘Mike Batt, man who wrote The Wombles song’.

“And I was quite offended that they only mentioned ‘The Wombles song’ as: A – I hadn’t only done The Wombles and B – there were about 50 songs over four albums!

“But people still say: ‘Oh, I know The Wombles Song.’ I’ll say: ‘How does it go?’ They’ll sing: ‘Remember you’re a Womble’ and I’ll say: ‘That’s not The Wombles Song, that’s Remember You’re A Womble’ and they’ll say: ‘Oh, there were two songs?.’

“No, there were 52 songs!

“I don’t mind people mentioning The Wombles, I’m very proud of what I did with them.

“But what it did do was it took away from what I set out to do. I’d been doing work with Family, the band who were going to be the next Beatles – even The Beatles thought they were going to be the next Beatles.

“That was going to be my first arranging job and I ended up not getting an album credit, so nobody booked me to do any more rock ’n’ roll arranging.

“So from then on, I was thought of as Mr Womble which, to be honest with you, does rather dominate things to this day!

“I don’t mind it. I still get introduced at parties as: ‘This is Mike, he wrote Bright Eyes’ and you get a quizzical look, and then the host will say: ‘He also did The Wombles’ and it’s: ‘Oh, yeah, we know that!’”

I’m surprised there hasn’t been a Wombles reboot after the Paddington films success.

Mike, who at one point owned all the rights, says: “I think there might be one coming but I won’t be in charge of it.

“My wife said it’s probably for the best as it’s so strongly linked with me but I do care very much about the characters and I hope whoever does do it does a good job.”

Speaking of Bright Eyes, the theme to the Watership Down movie sung by Art Garfunkel, how does Mike plead to the charge that he traumatised millions of children with THAT song and video?!

“Oh, guilty!” he says. “I think I traumatised a few adults as well, to be honest.

“They threw that song out of the film four times as they didn’t want ‘Disney’ songs in it but the money people wanted them as it was a cartoon and every time the director threw it out, it was reinstated.”

Mike’s latest record couldn’t be further from The Wombles or savage animated rabbits as it’s a special recording of him conducting the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra performing Gustav Holst’s famous suite The Planets.

“They’re not a bad little band, the RPO!” says Mike. “I’ve worked with them quite a lot.

“They’re a very good bunch and nice and friendly.”

The album was recorded back in 1993 and was unearthed in Mike’s vaults.

“Indeed! It was found by Bob Matthew-Walker who’s a distinguished composer and produced the recording session.

“There had been a bit of legal shenanigans that went on over the recording and it just lay there unattended to.

“It was sort of forgotten about.

“But Bob rang me and said we ought to try to find out who could put the record out and it was very timely because it’s the centenary of the first performance back in 1918.”

We were played The Planets in music class but the only ones I can remember are Mars and Jupiter.

“Yes, they’re the two people can usually name. But they’re all great in their way,” adds Mike.

Mike’s renowned as a composer and a conductor and says: “One of my regrets is that life is too short and days are too short as there are so many things I want to do.

“That’s why I’ve never had time to concentrate on what I really would have loved to have done which is be a principal conductor of a symphony orchestra.

“I tend to think: ‘Oh, I haven’t got time to do everything I want to do.’ But people say: ‘Don’t worry about that, as long as you’ve enjoyed what you’ve done.’”

Holst The Planets performed by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Mike Batt, is out now on Guild.