Remember you’re a bankrupt! Womble Mike Batt goes bust
He wrote the catchy signature tune for the Seventies children’s show The Wombles and had eight top-30 UK hits, including The Wombling Song and Remember You’re A Womble.
Now singer-songwriter Mike Batt, 68, may soon find himself picking up litter on Wimbledon Common as he has filed for personal bankruptcy.
The son of a civil engineer, Batt was a jobbing musician who lived on a houseboat in Weybridge, Surrey, until his fortunes were transformed when the producers of a new TV show about South London-dwelling recycling rodents asked him to write a jingle for it.
Instead of the £200 fee, he asked for the copyright for musical production. In 1975, the Wombles became the biggest pop stars in Britain and Batt made £1 million. He bought an 11-bedroom house and went on to write Bright eyes for Art Garfunkel and later discovered Kate Melua, whom he produced and managed.
As well as filing for bankruptcy, Batt has also resigned as a director of record label Dramatico, the
company he founded in 2000. The label had major success with Melua, bringing out her first album in 2003. Batt lives in Surrey with his second wife, actress Julianne White.
A spokesman declines to comment on why he has filed for bankruptcy. But he has suffered money problems in the past.
In 1991, he turned Lewis Carroll’s The Hunting Of The Snark into a West End show which flopped, leaving Batt ‘hanging on by the skin of my teeth’ and facing repossession.
‘I had a word with the bank manager and they gave me some leeway,’ he recalled.