As we left, and for reasons I have already forgotten, I started quoting a verse from his 1956 hit, Lost John: "Lost John need a pair of shoes of his own," I started. Nevertheless, he was perky enough to offer to teach me to play guitar next time we met, and to sign for me a recent compilation album of some of his best-known tunes.
When we reached his room, Lonnie looked unwell and, in the middle of the afternoon, was still in his dressing-gown. I was tired, had a bad back myself and felt profoundly anti-social, but Louise and Dave, variously producer and production assistant on my Radio 1 programme, persuaded me to trudge grumpily on up the hill to the Holiday Inn anyway. We had been supposed to see the legendary skiffler at a soundcheck the afternoon before, but a bad back had delayed him and the opportunity had been lost. On Thursday 31, the three of us were prowling the streets of old Nottingham when the call came that Lonnie Donegan hoped we would have time to visit him at the Holiday Inn. This latter was, as you might imagine, something of a misnomer, but it gave your toppermost of the poppermost radio buddies an opportunity to fill each other's hotel rooms with cockerels, so answered a need of sorts. L ouise and Dave and I were in Nottingham in October for what is now called (Radio) 1Live but would have been known, in the 1970s and 1980s, as a Radio 1 Fun Week.
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