The Keith Moon story is a movie in waiting, both a comedy and a tragedy

The Keith Moon story is a movie in waiting, both a comedy and a tragedy

Author: Mark Ellen, David Hepworth and Alex Gold April 10, 2026 Duration: 47:09

The life of Keith Moon can be seen as Animal from the Muppets or as a dark, psychological odyssey. And the two co-exist in Tony Fletcher’s magnificent ‘Dear Boy’, first published in 1998, never out of print and now ‘remastered’ with new pictures, updates, epilogues and a foreword by Mandy Moon who “has to keep reminding myself this person was my father”. Tony looks back here at events along the way, many of which now seem unimaginable. Among them …

 

… fact versus fiction: his fudged birthdate, his hidden marriage, the Roller in the swimming-pool

 

… Tony’s meeting with Moon two months before he died

 

… the letters to his wife Kim when touring America  

 

… Mel Gibson, Mike Myers, Jason Schwartzman, all once in line to play Keith onscreen

 

… “I killed a man”: the terrible incident with his chauffeur

 

… the legs in the bath, the head in the bed, the loudspeaker in the bushes: the punchline of all his pranks was “someone’s going to suffer”

 

… “working-class rock stars who conquered the world like pirates without a map”

 

… would things have been different if he’d been hailed as a pioneering drummer?

 

… the times he met Larry Hagman and Oliver Reed

 

… do book publishers look down on drummers the way musicians do?

 

… to Golders Green with Viv Stanshall in German uniforms and an open-topped car: #DifferentTimes

 

… and a sad and telling moment on the Stardust film shoot.

 

Order copies of ‘Dear Boy’ here: https://omnibuspress.com/products/dear-boy-the-life-of-keith-moon-omnibus-remastered?_pos=1&_psq=dear+boy&_ss=e&_v=1.0


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There’s a particular kind of conversation about music that happens between friends who’ve spent a lifetime immersed in it-not as distant critics, but as participants in the culture. That’s the atmosphere you’ll find in Word In Your Ear, a podcast from Mark Ellen, David Hepworth, and Alex Gold. With a collective eighty years of writing and broadcasting for titles like Smash Hits and Mojo, and shows from "The Old Grey Whistle Test" to VH-1, they don’t just recount history; they unpack the stories behind it with the ease of a shared laugh. This podcast grew naturally from their work on the late, great magazine The Word, where they began recording over thirteen years ago, building a dedicated following who found something genuinely special in the mix. Each episode weaves together music, commentary, history, and interviews, moving seamlessly from deep-dive analysis of a seminal album to a frank chat with a surprising guest, all delivered with the warmth and wit of a late-night chat. It feels less like a formal show and more like you’ve been invited to pull up a chair in a room where the anecdotes are plentiful and the expertise is worn lightly. The result is a consistently engaging listen that treats music not as a museum piece but as a living, breathing part of our lives.
Author: Language: English Episodes: 100

Word In Your Ear
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