Steve Brown, who has died aged 69, was a composer of comedy songs, particularly for the satirical puppet show Spitting Image, and eventually became that show’s house composer; he also wrote many stage musicals, including the Tony! Tony Blair Rock Opera, in collaboration with his friend Harry Hill and the Olivier award-winning Spend Spend, tells the real-life rags-to-riches, rags-to-rags story of Viv Nicholson, who made a fortune in football pools in the 1960s.
A dapper figure with a trim beard and a ruddy smile, Brown has worked with many of the leading names in British comedy, including Rory Bremner, Lee Mack, Lenny Henry and Steve Coogan, with whom he appeared as troupe leader Glenn Ponder. Coogan’s chat show parody Knowing Me, Knowing You with Alan Partridge (1994). Brown’s character’s name later changed to Glen Ponder, allowing Partridge to describe him as an anagram of Porn Legend.
In one memorable episode, Partridge presents a special French edition of her show at Paris Fashion Week and is furious to learn that everyone on the set had accompanied Ponder to the Folies Bergère the previous evening but that she had not been invited. On the air, Partridge turns to his boss and says, Monty Python-style: “You’re fired! You’re fired, I’m firing you too. Actually it happened, it’s over, it already happened, you are a fired man. You are fired. You are the target of being fired, I want you to leave this building in 10 minutes. You know me, Alan Partridge, I fire you, Glenn Ponder. Aha!”
But Brown’s greatest success was undoubtedly the musical Don’t Spend. She was drawn to the true story of Viv Nicholson, a Yorkshire housewife who made £152,000 in pools and then lost it all because, as she puts it, “there was love, sex, money, power, death and loss” – the stuff opera is made of. Viv Nicholson gave him his blessing and the show opened at the West Yorkshire Playhouse in Leeds in 1998, with music by Brown and lyrics with Justin Greene.
It successfully transferred to the West End the next year, where Benedict Nightingale of The Times praised the show for “not patronizing Nicholson”. It offers fun and poignancy, mining town poverty and suburban kitsch to some of London theatre’s loveliest songs. Viv joined the cast for the curtain call on the first night at the Piccadilly Theatre, where she was visibly impressed, then turned around and started flashing her bottom just before the final curtain fell.
Barbara Dickson won the Olivier Award for Best Actress for her role as Viv, and Spend No Spend won both the Evening Standard and Critics Circle awards for Best Musical, beating big-budget rivals The Lion King and Mamma Mia! It’s what The Daily Telegraph calls a “David slaying Goliath” moment. Charlie Spencer called it “popular entertainment at its best, devoid of the cynical intrigue of many musicals and blessed with heart, humor and irresistible humanity.”
But Brown’s early victory proved impossible to limit. In 2009 he staged a musical version of Frank Capra’s film It’s a Wonderful Life, but after a 19-year battle to obtain the rights, although the film could only be seen in Ipswich. I Can’t Sing!, a send-up of The “I thought, ‘Oh my God, this is such a terrible idea,'” Brown admitted to Time Out when he was first asked to work on the project.
Brown and Hill’s next collaboration resulted in former prime minister Tony Blair saying, “It’s a new dawn, hasn’t it?” Tony!, a “rock opera” presenting the full Shakespearean style from his work Tony! “I have no doubt that we will find evidence of weapons of mass destruction programs.”
It contained a bad taste poem about Blair’s “people’s princess” speech and featured a cast of New Labor greats: John Prescott as the manquee boxer Bernard Manning, Robin Cook as a meticulous pedant, and Cherie Blair as a seductress as a Scouse vampire. Gordon Brown’s big number, Macroeconomics, was an operetta-style narrative taken word for word from one of the former chancellor’s thorny speeches.
Tony! However, it failed to gain support in The Daily Telegraph, with Dominic Cavendish comparing the series to Blair’s premiership and stating: “[It] It starts promisingly, moves into a disappointing phase, and then becomes unwelcome.
Steven James Brown was born on 25 October 1954, the third child of Len and Marge Brown, and grew up 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 spent several weeks working on a trawler at the age of 17. He tried telemarketing but eventually became a paperback salesman while writing songs, recording demo tapes, and knocking on music publishers’ doors. Spotted performing above a bar in London, he was approached to work in a West End show and radio comedy.
He was excited by watching Sondheim’s revision of Side by Side in 1976. One of his most valuable possessions was a letter from Stephen Sondheim praising Don’t Spend.
Brown joined Spitting Image in the late 1980s and remained there throughout the 1990s. Meanwhile, he appeared in Radio 4’s comedy sketch series In One Ear and wrote several songs for Radio 4/BBC 2’s Dead Ringers; where he made a brief television appearance as Noel Gallagher in Jon Culshaw’s Liam. He also composed all the music for Harry Hill’s TV Burp and the BBC’s The Ant & Dec Show, later writing the popular “Wonkey Donkey” theme when Ant and Dec moved to present SM:TV Live on ITV.
Brown discovered and mentored musicians Laura Mvula and Rumer, both of whom produced their first albums that went platinum.
In 1983, Brown first married impressionist and radio producer Jan Ravens, who was a regular on Dead Ringers. The marriage ended in 1993, and in 2010 he married secondly, to actress Deborah Cornelius, who survives him along with two sons from his first marriage, stand-up comedian Alfie Brown and musician Lenny Brown.
Steve Brown born October 25, 1954, died February 2, 2024