3 SEPTEMBER 2005, Page 16

Public-school pop

From Hugh Massingberd

Sir: Among the public-school pop stars not mentioned in Marcus Berkmann’s amusing article (Arts, 13 August) were Michael (‘Mike’) d’Abo of A Band of Angels, which largely comprised Old Harrovians like himself, and later of Manfred Mann; Lord David Dundas, another Harrovian, of Jeans On fame; the Old Etonian Jeremy Clyde of the duo Chad & Jeremy; and Peter Asher and Gordon Waller, the Old Westminster boys who became Peter & Gordon. Waller went on to play the Presleyan Pharaoh in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, written by Tim Rice (Lancing) and Andrew Lloyd Webber (Westminster). I seem to remember that one of Dusty’s early cohorts in the Springfields claimed to have gone to Eton and that there was an Etonian called Pilkington-Miksa in the group Curved Air (led by the Old Westminster Francis Monkman). But Craig Brown’s suggestion that Marc Bolan may have been Captain of Boats at Haileybury appears to have no foundation in fact.

Hugh Massingberd

London W2