Brian Beacom

LEO Sayer, it has to be said, is a little b******.

Now, you’re thinking; this is bit of a harsh statement to make.

After all, we’re talking about the nice little fella from West Sussex with the pasta twists hairstyle.

We’re talking about little Leo who appeared on Top of the Pops back in 1974 singing The Show Must Go On and looking like Casper the Friendly Ghost who’d been dressed that morning by his little sister.

And didn’t he display a voice that was close to miraculous?

And we still liked Leo after he took off the Pierrot costume and make up, because he sang some great songs such as The Dancer and One Man Band and Moonlighting. (Although to be fair, when he switched musical track to go all disco with You Make Me Feel Like Dancing and sugary with When I Need You that tested us to the limit.)

But in fact, it’s Leo Sayer himself, whose giving Leo Sayer his character.

Or rather it’s Gerard Hugh Sayer, the man he was before teaming up with manager Adam Faith in 1973 and storming the British charts with seven singles straight into the Top Ten.

“I can’t be Leo Sayer all the time,” he explains, speaking at his home in a tiny village 65 miles south of Sydney.

“Leo can be a little b******. And if I were Leo all the time, he’d want everything.”

He pauses for a second, smiling. “That’s why I call myself Ge-rard,” he says of his real name, emphasising the second syllable, and making the name sound rather la-de-dah.

“When I go to the airport staff say ‘Are you Leo Sayer’s brother?’ You see, everything I have, my bank statements/credit cards, the lot have Gerard on them. Not Leo. It’s a good way to remind myself.”

The name check comes up because we’re talking about the effects of fame. Or rather surviving it.

Leo Sayer is 69 in May but he’s fit and well and still emerges regularly from his Aussie village home to tour, the world, including a Glasgow trip in May.

Part of the reason Leo has sung and danced his way through four decades is he has managed to keep his curly head in check.

“I did cross the threshold a couple of times in my life,” he admits of pop madness.

“The first was in 1974, during the Pierrot time. I took another heartbeat change when You Make Me Feel Like Dancing hit America and I became a total icon there.

“Suddenly, I was walking on water and experienced the sort adulation that Elton Mick and David (Bowie) had.”

How did it manifest itself? Girls were on tap of course. But drink? Drugs?

“You find yourself asking to be driven around in a pink limo,” he says, in an almost embarrassed voice, “and if the limo turns up and it’s not pink you scream and throw a tantrum.”

Did he actually do that?

“Absolutely. What you think at the time is you can get from A-B in a mini, or a Ford, but it’s so much nicer to get there in a Rolls.”

He laughs at his own folly. “A f***** pink one.

“As for the drugs, I was blessed with an incredibly fertile imagination anyway. I had all my crazy ideas and they went into my songs.”

That’s not to say he didn’t dabble.

“Maybe I was helped because I didn’t start in the business too young. If you get into coke and LSD at sixteen that could take a toll.

“I’ve smoked a few joints and popped a few bills over the years. I went on one LSD trip but I swore I’d never do that again.

“But then during the quieter years in London it was time to go clubbing and try it out but it didn’t feel that special. And I didn’t want a heart attack.”

Little Gerry Sayer was a shy, dyslexic boy who found himself bullied at school and on the margins. He was clever, and great at art, but couldn’t tie his shoe laces until he was 21.

After attending art college he worked as a designer, until the business folded.

Then gradually, the harmonica player was coaxed onto the stage and began to sing in a local band.

As fate would have it, at one gig he met a songwriter called David Courtney.

Courtney, a former drummer, declared he wanted to write with Sayer and introduced him to Adam Faith, the former pop star.

“He was an ice cream freezer, a geezer,” says Sayer, of his manager, grinning.

“Waitresses would be in his bed in seconds. He was a lothario beyond comparison. I was a well behaved boy when I met him, in fact I had just got married. (To Janice, in 1973).

“But when I told Adam my plans he said ‘What are you doing, my son. You’re mad?’ You’re cutting down all your chances.’ But then the career started, this lifestyle with this crazy man running everything.”

Adam Faith “ripped off” Leo Sayer to the point the manager earned way more than the performer/writer. (He later took Faith to court to recover some of the cash in the Nineties, winning back some £650k. Astonishingly perhaps, Leo is sanguine.

“I don’t really blame him for it all. If I had some guy called Leo who was not that aware of how the world worked I’d have done the same thing.”

“And I can’t hate the guy, even though he ripped me off rotten because he put me there. His confidence in me was the cloak that I wore.”

It was Leo Sayer who came up with the Pierrot costume device to attract attention.

“In those days we were all looking for an original look and we were inspired by people like Alex Harvey and Elton and David’s Ziggy Stardust.

“The costume was transforming. Out of the corners of your eye you could see the white make-up and I became an actor and played at being Leo Sayer.

“Yet, while this was my construction the guy telling me I could carry it off was Adam.”

Leo Sayer is a survivor in the business, perhaps because he lives in a quiet corner of Australia, in a lovely house with his ex-partner and business manager Donatella and with a garden full of fir trees and parrots.

“It’s very easy to live here,” he enthuses.

“All the creature comforts and lots of space. You can’t get away from the right wing politics, but that’s the same all over the world. But I do miss M&S sandwiches.”

And when he feels Leo is taking over, he switches back to being Gerard.

Perhaps Elton should check in at airports as Reg?

“He should,” he says, laughing. “The last time I saw him he was really unhappy. I said ‘Have you ever thought of going back to being Reg?’ and he smiled and said ‘Every day.’

“He then said to me ‘You’re really lucky you can go back to being Gerard.’ And he’s so right because Leo can be a little b******.”

*Leo Sayer, The Pavilion Theatre, May 5.