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2. it but that is because he lives in London. But the north of England is in a different position from London and it needs to be opened up to business. The HS2 is cheap when you are doing what this is doing in the period that it is going to take, and our future generations are going to benefit from it.
“Don’t get me wrong. If you are about to be uprooted in your home where you have lived for 100 years, that is tough. But we’ve got to think of our great-grandchildren and how they will benefit from it.”
Perhaps Bill and the others should have been more careful.
Pete says he has had a natural survivor’s instinct since he was a young lad. He grew up in a Coventry suburb with his younger sister Kay. Their father was an aircraft engineer and their mother a housewife.
BUT IT was his grandfather who gave him an education long before he set foot in a classroom. Every day, he and Pete would go to the bottom of his garden to watch the steam trains, which is where his famous passion for railways started.
At school he struggled to read, later discovering he was dyslexic, and left education unable to read or write. His careers officer told him that he was too stupid to even get a job in a factory.
“I was born in ’47, which was the boom year, so I didn’t even get into school for 18 months because there just wasn’t a place,” he recalls.
“There were 62 kids in a class but how do you teach 62 kids who don’t want to be at school? It was very tough but everybody around me was in the same position.”
Growing up in Coventry in the early ’50s, Pete took a job with British Rail, stoking the boilers on the steam engines. At the same time, he was DJ-ing at night, having collected records since the age of 10. He would charge 10 bob a time (50p) to play at parties.
“It became something to do every Saturday night and I didn’t have to buy my own beer either.”
Meeting fellow music producers Mike Stock and Matt Aitken in 1985 changed his life and, in 1987, they formed a small record label, Stock Aitken Waterman which eventually went stratospheric. However, behind the scenes Pete was still struggling with his reading and writing skills.
“By the time I met Matt and Mike I was 30 and still learning to read and write,” he admits “I’d always tell Mike the story and lyrics and he would write it down and work out what I was talking about.
“One of our first hits was I Should Be So Lucky. It was a worldwide hit and Kylie Minogue never looked back. The same year, Rick Astley had a massive hit with Never Gonna Give You Up.
“I am so proud of Rick and you can’t go through what we went through and not be friends. Our careers are so entwined. Rick was 18 when I signed him and I went to his 50th birthday four years ago.
“He is bloody funny and a great talker and I love the fact that he has had this huge comeback.”
He laughs: “Everybody Kylie, Jason, Rick Astley Bananarama wouldn’t last they are still touring.”
Much of Pete’s time nowadays is spent working with his long-term friend Simon Cowell behind the scenes on The X Factor and said and and
Britain’s Got Talent. The pair have collaborated since 2001 when they launched Pop Idol on which Pete was a judge.
“Lots of things have changed but the reality format still works. After 50 years of doing this job, there are still people that are blinking brilliant,” he says. “I work in the background and just watch what is going on TV wise. One thing I can’t do is dance or sing so you won’t find me doing that for sure.”
Pete concedes so-called reality TV is under pressure as never before since the deaths of three Love Island contestants and the show’s presenter Caroline Flack.
But, done responsibly with proper support for contestants, he believes it is still a format with much to offer viewers.
“We were much stricter than they are now and we would definitely look after young people that were on our show. I don’t care what people say.
“It is people’s lives that you are playing with and if we thought someone was vulnerable, then we wouldn’t show it. I think we have a duty of care on The X Factor and Britain’s Got Talent and if you want to know about other shows, then you have got to talk to them.”
AWAY from the heady world of showbiz, Pete famously keeps his feet on the ground with his model railway; a recreation of Leamington Spa, circa 1954 – a favourite childhood trainspotting location. He has been building it since 2002.
“I update it every week and I even have my own Facebook page called Rail Nuts Leamington Spa.
“It’s an absolute perfect model that I have built myself but now there are about 10 of us working on it because it’s a big layout.
“Everything is hand built including the track and the locomotives but it is not quite finished and I am adding shops and offices to it at the moment.”
He loves nothing more than chatting to fellow railway aficionado Rod Stewart whose own set is an intricate model railway of a US city.
“Rod hasn’t seen mine yet. He is always too busy on tour but he has got the invitation. But Roger Daltrey has been up to see it. He has a great German modern railway and he loves mine!”