This Is Your Life: Geoff Love

Geoff LOVE (1917-1991)

THIS IS YOUR LIFE - Geoff Love, musician, composer and arranger, was surprised by Eamonn Andrews - with the help of the Todmorden Brass Band - on the doorstep of his home in Enfield.

Geoff, who was born in Todmorden, West Yorkshire, played trombone with the town's amateur Symphony Orchestra, having learned how to play the instrument at school. He became a full-time musician at the age of 16, playing with various bands before enlisting with the King's Royal Rifle Corps at the outbreak of the Second World War.

After the war, he worked as a freelance trombonist and arranger and got his big break when he joined Harry Gold and his Pieces of Eight. By the mid-1950s, he had his own orchestra, and in addition to writing and arranging for several record labels, he released many popular albums of his own. From the 1960s, he worked as a musical director and arranger for several show business names, including Max Bygraves and Frankie Vaughan.

"Oh I don't believe it! Well, where's the pies and peas?"

programme details...

Edition No: 397
Subject No: 396
Broadcast date: Wed 8 Jan 1975
Broadcast time: 7.00-7.30pm
Recorded: Tue 31 Dec 1974
Venue: Euston Road Studios
Series: 15
Edition: 10
Code name: Band

on the guest list...

Joy - wife
Frankie - mother
Adrian - son
Barbie - daughter-in-law
Nigel - son
Diana - daughter-in-law
members of Todmorden Brass Band - in audience
Max Bygraves
Connie - sister
Edwin Shawforth
Freddie Platt
Diana Coupland
Norrie Paramor
Norman Newell
Beryl Reid
Harry Gold
Johnny Wise
Louis Osbourne
Laurie Gold
Freddie Tomasso
Ralph Bruce
Betty Taylor
Northage Mather
Frankie Vaughan
Gladys Mills
Frank Ifield

production team...

Researchers: Carol Lee, Maurice Leonard
Writer: John Sandilands
Director: Robert Reed
Producer: Jack Crawshaw

names above in bold indicate subjects of This Is Your Life

related pages...

A Musical Life

blowing a trumpet for the musicians

Geoff Love This Is Your Life Big Red Book

Screenshots of Geoff Love This Is Your Life - and a photograph of Geoff Love's big red book

Presenter Eamonn Andrews and producer Jack Crawshaw recall this edition of This Is Your Life in their book, Surprise Of Your Life...

Necessity, they say, is the mother of invention, and our need on this particular New Year's Eve was to find an exciting way of surprising Geoff Love.

We had wanted to surprise him in the role in which millions of music lovers know him best – out in front of his own orchestra making music as only he can.

Knowing what a non-stop worker he is, the first thing we did was to check out where he would be appearing on such a busy night in the entertainment calendar. You can imagine our surprise when we discovered that, on New Year's Eve, 1974, Geoff Love wasn't working. He had actually decided to have a night off. And it didn't take us long to discover the reason. There's just one thing in his life that comes before music – his first Loves. A whole family of them, his wife Joy, sons Adrian and Nigel and his mum, Mrs Frankie Love.

In the year that was coming to a close Frankie had celebrated her 82nd birthday and her son had decided that, no matter what, the last night of the year he would keep free for his family to celebrate in a quiet tree-lined avenue in Enfield.

Knowing that once he had made up his mind, wild horses wouldn't drag him away, we abandoned all plans to attempt to lure him to an outside location. There was only one thing for it. If Geoff wasn't planning to come out to play then we would just have to go up there and fetch him.

The new plan was probably the most simple we had ever contemplated. Followed by an easily hidden film unit, I would simply open Geoff's front gate, walk up his path, knock on the door and, with his family's blessing, surprise him on his own doorstep.

It was in the course of some fascinating research that we thought of the idea to elaborate on our plan. We had discovered that Geoff – the grandson of a full-blooded Cherokee Indian and her black American husband – had inherited his musical talents from his parents.

His father, Kid Love, who was born and brought up in Chicago, became a dancer and came to England with a dancing troupe. He married Yorkshire-born Frankie, who was also a singer and a dancer. And Yorkshire was where Geoff was born. In the small West Riding town called Todmorden, to be precise.

It was there that his musical talent was first encouraged. He had started his working life as a garage mechanic, but later, when he returned to Todmorden a celebrated musician with an international reputation, he was thrilled by an invitation from his home town pals to lead their brass band as a guest conductor.

And we guessed that the lads of the Todmorden Brass Band might be equally pleased to return the compliment by travelling south to help us spring our surprise.

We guessed right. To a man, they agreed. And on the morning of New Year's Eve they clambered into a coach to leave the Yorkshire village and head down the M1.

We all met in a quiet cul-de-sac just a few hundred yards from Geoff's front door. As the boys piled out of the coach to stretch their legs I was pacing the pavement as best I could in preparation for the famous Andrews march.

It seems that I can keep in step – until the others move off. If you see what I mean?

So bizarre was the scene that a group of local residents began to gather round to watch. Some of the youngsters recognised me and we were worried for a time that one of them might think it a lark to cycle off and warn their famous neighbour who was marching up the road for him.

But even if that did happen I doubt if Geoff would have reacted to my presence quite like one rather charming lady who was looking on. As I marched by her garden gate, all dressed up and at the head of the band, she didn't bat an eyelid but merely leaned over her gate and greeted me in Gaelic.

I was so flabbergasted I didn't know what to do. So I just kept my eyes forward and marched straight on. Looking back, I suppose I was a bit unsociable but I could hardly stop for a natter with the entire might of the Todmorden Brass Band hard on my heels and not exactly soft on my ears either.

As we marched on, I wondered how Joy and the family were coping with their nerves inside the house and particularly what sort of a reception I would get from the only other member of the household apart from Geoff who didn't know I was coming. He was a massive Great Dane, rather inappropriately named "Tiny".

Geoff, fortunately, has a better ear for music than Tiny and almost before I had knocked on the door he had opened it to see where the music was coming from. When he saw my musical accompaniment were the boys from Todmorden he shouted: "Where are the pies and peas then?"

Bill Birch recalls this edition of This Is Your Life in his book, A Love Affair With Music...

The programme was filmed by Thames Television during the morning and afternoon of New Year's Eve, 1974, and shown on January 8 1975. It began with presenter Eamonn Andrews marching the Todmorden Old Brass Band along the avenue leading to Geoff's Enfield home at 26, Queen Anne's Place. He was appropriately attired, complete with peaked cap, as being the band's official conductor. Gathering everyone around the front porch, he greeted the amazed bandleader with the immortal words, "Geoffrey Love - this is your life"!

One band member, Philip Kerr, remembers it all in vivid, amazing detail:

"The initial approach came from Thames Television in January 1974, asking if the band would be available to play on 31 December in London for no fee, but all expenses paid. The engagement details were not divulged at the time. We travelled down by coach and had some breakfast, which it turned out, had to sustain us until much later in the day. We met with Eamonn Andrews and discovered that we were to march up to Geoff's front door playing."

"However, all was not as it seemed as an official from the Musicians Union demanded that only musicians in the Union would be allowed to play. Then Thames Television would only agree to pay to enrol 12 of us, the other 14 would have to (supposedly mime). And so it went on. Eamonn was unable to march in time with the band so had one of his production team to march out of camera shot so that he could watch and copy him. When Geoff saw us at his front door, genuinely astonished, his wonderful smiling face greeted us with the immortal lines "Tod Band! Where's the pies and peas?": it being a reference to post-concert parties at the Queen or White Hart hotels, (when pie and peas were inevitably served) at the conclusion of charity concerts at the Tod Town Hall at which Geoff had conducted the band."

The show opened with Geoff and his wife Joy being congratulated by their first-born son Adrian, followed by second son, Nigel, and his wife, Diana, Geoff's mother, Frances and his sister, Connie. Max Bygraves, Diana Coupland, Beryl Reid and Norrie Paramour were unswerving with compliments, not just about Geoff's ability as a musician and skill as a musical director, but how much respect they had for him as a warm-hearted, caring person and friend. There were also filmed tributes from Frankie Vaughan, Frank Ifield and Mrs Mills, none of whom could be present owing to prior commitments.

More praise came from his great friend and producer Norman Newell and from his first employer, Edwin Shawforth, of Todmorden. Freddy Platt, whose band he had joined when only 16, came from Rochdale, expressing happy memories and compliments as did jazz bandleader Harry Gold who, with his Pieces of Eight, brought the show to a close with Geoff joining in and singing an up-beat 'Shine', once one of his very own feature spots with the band, almost 30 years before.

Series 15 subjects