Bye, bye baby!
Bay City Rollers’ fan who spent a fortune on 4,000 concerts worldwide is left distraught by sudden ban
FOR more than 40 years she has been happy to call herself the Bay City Rollers’ biggest superfan.
Heather Vaughan has spent a fortune on tickets for thousands of their concerts and boasts a house full of band memorabilia, plus an album of pictures of her posing with lead singer Les McKeown.
But the 57-year-old housewife’s long-standing infatuation with the Rollers has now turned sour – after they banned her from all gigs.
Even when she travelled to Australia last month after spending more than £1,400 on tickets for 14 concerts, she was refused entry by security guards at every venue.
Last night a heartbroken Mrs Vaughan, whose lifelong obsession with the band led to her appearance last year in the documentary When Pop Ruled My Life, said she was mystified by the ban.
She said: ‘I’m not a stalker. I’m a genuine superfan. I agree that someone looking from the outside might find my behaviour a bit obsessive but the Bay City Rollers are like my hobby.
‘I’m really hurt about how I’m being treated, especially when I genuinely don’t know what I’ve done to deserve it. I’ve given up years of my life to follow Les and the band. I feel rejected, like there’s now something missing in my life.’
As a teenager in 1973 she began following the Edinburgh-based band that sparked ‘Rollermania’ with smash hits such as Bye Bye Baby and Shang-a-Lang. Often she skipped off school without her parents’ knowledge to travel to gigs.
Along with her friends, she would hang around McKeown’s home, hoping for a glimpse of her hero. He would cheekily get the starstruck teenagers to run errands.
She recalled: ‘He often shouted down at us from a rooftop balcony, asking us to get shopping for him, like cigarettes or food. He particularly liked Greek yoghurt, pitta bread and cucumber.’
Months later, she and four of her friends appeared in a magazine photo shoot at his apartment, proudly doing domestic chores as they sometimes did in reality. She added: ‘I was pictured with a Hoover, a couple of others were doing the washing and cleaning, while another two were making his bed. It sounds awful now but we didn’t think much about that then.’
Despite their good looks, distinctive tartan trousers and scarves, the Rollers split in 1978 after legal wrangles and a punch-up on stage in Japan between McKeown and guitarist Stuart ‘Woody’ Wood.
After successfully battling a period of addiction, McKeown eventually went solo, forming Les McKeown’s Bay City Rollers, and is still touring. In 2015, original members Wood and Alan Longmuir joined him in a reformed version of the Bay City Rollers but it was short-lived after more fall-outs.
Mrs Vaughan, from Essex, has been to every concert before and after the split – around 4,000 – spending hundreds of thousands of pounds on tickets, travel and memorabilia. She said: ‘I’ve never had a full-time job as I knew it would get in the way. I always worked as a temp to raise enough money for their tours and my husband has been very understanding.’
Throughout, she’s been on first-name terms with McKeown, even appearing on stage with him for a song, and he’s met her longsuffering husband Dave several times. This makes the ban imposed on her all the more perplexing.
‘I haven’t done anything wrong,’ she said. ‘I haven’t crossed any boundary I shouldn’t have, which is why this all feels so unfair.’
She first realised something was wrong in April when she was asked to leave a gig in the north of England after being spotted by McKeown. The same thing happened at a concert near Frankfurt, and then the gigs in Australia. She believes it may stem from McKeown arriving at a Premier Inn before a gig in Cheshire to find her checked in there and standing outside. She said: ‘I felt embarrassed to suddenly see him there and thought: “Oh no, this looks bad”. He didn’t look happy but I was only there because it’s cheap and cheerful and close to the gig. ‘He held up his mobile phone, took my photo and walked on into the hotel. Since then it has been suggested he has a stalker. Well, it’s certainly not me!’ In a subsequent TV interview in Australia, McKeown said: ‘I have a strange stalker story. I don’t want to give her publicity but that person has flown over to Australia even though I’ve got a restraining order against them.’ Mrs Vaughan, who insists there is no restraining order, said: ‘I just want to go back to at least seeing Les in concerts. I’ve devoted my whole life to Les and the Rollers. I don’t want it to be Bye Bye Baby.’ McKeown’s spokesman said last night: ‘We can confirm Heather Vaughan has been and continues to be barred from BCR concerts. ‘She is fully aware of this and the reasons why. We won’t go any further than that.’
‘I’m not a stalker, I’m a genuine superfan’ ‘She is barred. She is aware of the reasons’