Confessions of a one hit wonder
Star who sang ‘You’re my favourite waste of time’ tells of pushing toga-clad Phillip Schofield home in a shopping trolley, falling for Carol Smillie, being TOO NOISY for Ozzy Osbourne ... and getting stalked by groupies on a 3rd-floor window ledge
BACK in 1986, destiny seemed to be handing a young Owen Paul the full superstar package of fame and fortune. With heart-throb good looks and a fashionable mullet haircut, the singer was soaring up the charts in Britain and abroad.
On TV’s Top Of The Pops, the audience joined in with the insanely catchy chorus, singing ‘You’re my favourite waste of time’. Surely this was the hit that would propel him into the celebrity stratosphere?
Fast forward to the present day, however, and it transpires that fate had other things in mind.
As the Scottish singer – older, disillusioned and minus the mullet – prepares to launch a 30th anniversary version of what turned out to be his only major musical success, he reveals the highs and lows of life as a one-hit wonder.
The 54-year-old also shares tales from his extraordinary life before and after pop success: of playing for Celtic as a schoolboy alongside the legendary Charlie Nicholas; of wheeling home a drunk Phillip Schofield; and of falling foul of hell-raiser Ozzy Osbourne – for being a noisy neighbour.
He says: ‘My career so far has been varied and very random at times, but for the most part enjoyable. My Favourite Waste Of Time is an awesome record, but I’m a rock guy and I wrote [other] stuff that no one ever heard. The fact that it was a killer hit and everyone remembers it 30 years on softens any blow.’
Born and raised in Glasgow, Owen McGee was one of four children to Irish roofer Owen and Scottish shop manager Sarah. He attended Holyrood RC Secondary School with Jim Kerr and Charlie Burchill, who while there formed the basis of Simple Minds with Owen’s older brother Brian. Their youngest brother Paul, a singer/ songwriter, voiced the McDonald’s ‘I’m loving it’ slogan. Young Owen played alongside Charlie Nicholas for Scotland and Celtic at schoolboy level, but ‘to my dad’s great disappointment’ ended his apprenticeship after being inspired by The Sex Pistols to become a musician.
From 15, he sang and ‘pretended to play’ guitar (‘I learned as I went along’) in a string of bands and took his youngest brother’s first name Paul for his stage surname.
At 20, Owen Paul went solo and became the first client of Peter Powell when the then Radio 1 DJ formed a company which would later manage clients including Ant & Dec.
Another early client was a young hopeful named Phillip Schofield, who Owen remembers fondly from long before his days hosting This Morning.
Owen said: ‘I’ve known Phillip since I was 20. Back in the days when he was presenting from the Broom Cupboard for children’s BBC, we were at a toga party and somehow he got so inebriated that he ended up in a shopping trolley and I wheeled him home.’
After signing for Sony CBS at the age of 23, Paul earned a Best British Newcomer nomination at the 1985 BPI Awards (now The BRIT Awards). Impressed by film of Bette Midler performing My Favourite Waste of Time, a song written and first released by US singer Marshall Crenshaw, Owen made changes to the music and lyrics before recording it himself.
‘I knew my version would be a smash hit, and assumed it would be credited as “written by Marshall Crenshaw and Owen Paul”,’ he says. ‘But the producer Muff Winwood explained that Crenshaw wouldn’t allow us to release it unless we gave him the full writing credit. I refused. Peter Powell told me: “You’re going to have loads of hits, so just sign away the rights to this.”
‘Then Muff spoke the words which will haunt me all my life: “You’re on your third single and a lot of artists get dropped if their third is not a success. If you don’t go with My Favourite Waste Of Time you might not get a hit.” So I signed.’
Paul’s version was kept at No.3 in the UK by Madonna and Wham, but it did top the charts in Belgium and Holland and was a big hit all around Europe and in Australia. Yet, receiving only a performance royalty, Paul claims he has earned less than £50,000 from the song
and estimates he would have received ‘more than a million’ if he had managed to negotiate a share of the writing credits too.
‘I’ve not spoken about that in all these 30 years because, when I signed away those rights, I had to put it out of my head,’ he says.
Sadly, even the success of the song turned out to be a mixed blessing. He says: ‘I hated it because I it was ruining my career. I’m a rock artist. I made a pop record on a whim, and I’m treated as “pop bubblegum guy”. I went from walking down the street as normal on a Monday to appearing on The Wogan Show in front of 15 million people the next night, and then there were girls hiding in the bushes wherever I went.
‘After a show at Edinburgh Playhouse, I woke up in a hotel the next day and opened the curtains to find three teenage girls sitting on the window ledge. They must have been there all night. The weird thing is, my room was three floors up. They must have gone up the drainpipes. I was s **** ing myself. For one, I was terrified they’d fall off. Secondly, they were all underage, and if I got caught with them... I was frantically getting my manager and other guys in before we could pull them in through the window.
‘The schoolgirls in Scotland in particular were fanatical about me, but it didn’t flatter my ego. When I played Hammersmith Odeon and there were 3,000 screaming girls, I knew that the next week it’d be for Morten Harket of A-Ha and the week after that it’d be for Bros.’
But within nine months of Waste Of Time becoming a hit, Paul was dropped by his label. ‘I did one more record, then was at loggerheads with Sony because I wasn’t giving them the records they wanted, and those I did give them they didn’t promote.’
PAUL later worked as a consultant for Powell, which involved a few encounters with music mogul and Britain’s Got Talent and X Factor svengali Simon Cowell. ‘To me, Simon is like Kenneth Williams,’ says Paul. ‘He’s very camp. When we first met in 1989, he went “Owen, darling, how are you?” When I saw him again recently he greeted me in the exact same way. He is the Kenneth Williams of the modern era.’
In 2001-02, Paul was living at the Los Angeles home of his friend Charles Lewis when a sing-song they had in the garden upset the neighbours – Sharon and Ozzy Osbourne.
The ensuing bust-up was featured on the hit fly-on-the-wall TV series The Osbournes.
‘I was there over the winter and, being Scottish, we had a New Year sing-song in the garden. I got my guitar out and sang a few things like Stand By Me. A few spats started. Sharon was shouting a bit. Charles had to talk her down across the wall. They threw a lot of things into the garden – not all of it made the telly because some of it wasn’t cool at all. They then used the footage with our faces blurred out. But that episode was the most popular one they did.’ In 2012, Paul got ‘a random call’ to appear on the Rogue Traders section of BBC’s Watchdog. It involved him playing his hit while a sting was carried out on a businessman who had been bullying pensioners partly by calling them ‘a waste of time’.
‘Watchdog changed everything for me’ says Paul. ‘Among the viewers were bookers who went, “That guy’s still alive!” All of a sudden, I was inundated with offers of ’80s shows and festivals. Not having sung My Favourite Waste Of Time for so long before that, I’ve been loving it ever since. For my 30th anniversary version, which will be released on November 6, I’ve applied for a share of the writing credits...but no one’s got back to me yet and that’s holding up the release.’
Appearing alongside stars such as Susan Boyle at a 2014 charity event in Glasgow’s Clyde Auditorium, Owen became smitten with host Carol Smillie. ‘We’d never met before, but that night I turned into a schoolboy in her company. She is shiny and lovely and awesome... boy, I got a crush, and she could tell. I was like a puppy dog.’
From 1989 until 2007, he was married to Anita with whom he has a son Josh, 26, and daughters Olivia, 24, and Hannah, 20. For a year now, he’s rented a house near Oxford. ‘All my ownership went at the point of divorce,’ he explains.
What Paul most wants for his future is clear. ‘I’m not particularly looking for another hit, just some recognition as a writer, either by someone else having success with a song of mine or having one used in a movie. The artist in me craves that and I could then rest easily.’
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