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If you want to put on a show with your own back catalogue, who do you go to? Well, there’s Ben Elton of course, (We Will Rock You and Tonight’s the Night) but, if you want the pioneer of the so-called juke box musical, then go to Buckinghamshire’s very own Jon Conway.

That’s what David Essex has done because before We Will Rock You and Tonight’s the Night, and for that matter, Mamma Mia (ABBA) and Our House (Madness), there was Jon’s Boogie Nights which he co-wrote with Shane Richie. Now, there’s All The Fun of the Fair, a new musical featuring the songs of David Essex and starring the man himself.

Jon wrote his first professional pantomime at the age of 18 and has since written over 150 of them, including the UK’s most performed version of Peter Pan. Innumerable variety shows followed down the years, including Rock With Laughter, which also became a ���˿��� TV series, the Chuckle Brothers stage tours and their TV series To Me to You, and recently Simply Ballroom which has toured the world including a six-month stint in Las Vegas.

Boogie Nights - The 70s Musical in 1997 was the first musical he wrote and directed and became one of the first ‘catalogue’ musicals to open in London. Next was the world premiere stage version of the TV hit Happy Days, followed by the first ever theatre sequel, Electric Dreams – Boogie Nights 2.

In his regular day job as a director of Qdos Entertainment plc, which was founded together with Nick Thomas some 25 years ago, they produce shows, manage five theatres, represent over 300 performers and actors, supply entertainment to theme parks, holiday parks and cruise ships and not forgetting their core business Qdos Pantomimes, which stages 20 top class pantomimes every year.

He told us how it all started, how he knows what audiences want and talks us through putting on a new show, using his latest production All the Fun of the Fair as an example!

You’ve had so many successful shows, what made you want to get into this world and how did it all start?

Jon: I was born in a circus! My father was the General Manager at Bertram Mills and Billy Smart and my mother was an acrobat on elephants! I actually started at 10, then at 17 I wanted to be a comedian. Paul Daniels helped me enormously and taught me magic and so I was a sort of comedy magician.

Boogie Nights

I met my business partner Nick Thomas when the summer show and pantomime business was on its way out. We were sort of brought up on that so we put on shows that we wanted to see. We had 20 years in Blackpool and all the seaside resorts doing that and that taught us a huge amount about how a show works.

We were in our early 20s when we started producing and we were still performing, but then we got so busy we couldn’t do both. I’m 50 now (I can’t believe I’ve got there!) and I’m still running round the country and doing things. It’s quite hard work but I want to entertain really, there’s so much misery around that it’s great to be in a profession where you can make people feel a bit better, which you can in the theatre.

You live in Buckinghamshire, which must be great for your business because it’s got great links to everywhere, but are you ever there, or are you constantly going round the country checking on your shows?

Jon: All the time! We have an office in Scarborough where we keep all our scenery and where all our finance is based, and we have an office in London, but we also run the theatres in Southend and Wycombe and other places as well. I generally do a couple of days on the road going round seeing what we’re doing and I’m always looking for more talent and meeting people, but I’m at home today in my office!

I think that they key with your shows, especially your pantomimes, is that you know what people want and you know which people put “bums on seats”. Is that something that you’ve just learnt over the years, to be aware of what’s happening in the country?

Jon: Yes, but it’s getting harder and harder because there are less dramas and variety shows on the TV, so stars of that genre aren’t on the TV quite as much, but you’ve got to keep up with what they call the Zeitgeist I think, it’s about being topical. I have a ten-year-old son Jordan who advises me on the pantomime stuff, with shows like Tracy Beaker and High School Musical, but to be honest, I’m also a great audience!

I don’t go to the theatre loads and loads like some of the producers, because some go all the time and they get a bit jaded with it. I go every now and again like a normal customer, and I put things on that I think I’d like to see because I think I’m fairly ordinary. I’ve got a kid and a mother who’s a grandma and a wife and we all think “we’d like to see that, so we’ll go”.

Sometimes people get a bit arty and think they’ll do something because it’s educating, but I just want to entertain people.

I think it’s fair to say that you were a bit of a pioneer of the so called Juke Box Musical with Boogie Nights. It seemed to be the first of its kind where you use famous hits and string them together with a story?!

Jon: It’s true, I wrote that with Shane Richie, amazingly 12 years ago now! It was before Mamma Mia, before We Will Rock You, and before Our House, before all of those shows and I have to say, when we originally opened in London, we were hammered!

This wasn’t because they didn’t like the show, but because they said it wasn’t a proper musical, because nobody had written a proper score. But of course that had great songs in it.

We remember Ben Elton and Suggs and people like that coming round to us and saying this is great, we want to do something like this, so in a sense Shane and I almost feel like we were in at the start of some of those other shows, because they’d seen what we’d done!

Especially at the moment, with people being very careful with their money. Have you found that the credit crunch has affected this particular tour at all?

Jon: I think we’re very lucky because we had quite a big advance on the show to begin with so people were already committed. I also think that people are perhaps thinking twice about having a holiday or moving house or buying a car, but will still do something that’s very reasonable. To go and see a show in the provinces is £25/30 for a top price ticket and you can come for a lot less than that as well, so we haven’t hit it yet, but one is very aware of the situation around the country.

It’s not easy launching something new, and it’s what I’ve been most pleased about with All The Fun of the Fair, because while a lot of people know David [Essex’s] songs, the context of the show is brand new, and we’re very pleased about the level of interest in it. It’s not easy launching something new.

What’s your dream show – is there something you’ve been thinking about for a while?

Jon: The best show is always the next one that you’re going to do – and the current one I guess! I’ve got a couple of things in mind, I’m working with another singer/songwriter and then I look at some of the movies out and think that would make a good stage show!

Then there’s always the pantos, we do 20, and this year I wrote a new Cinderella in Bradford with a new set and costumes and a slight twist on the story which was very fresh and very exciting and it’s done really well, so it’s about keeping busy.

Some of our stuff now goes onto cruise ships now such as Boogie Nights. It sounds daft but we’ve translated it into American because Americans don’t quite understand the English lingo, so it’s a bit different for them and we call it Boogie Wonderland. That’s sailing the high seas as we speak and that’s really interesting because you get multi-national audiences seeing what you’ve done.

David Essex © Paul Mitchell

So, talk us through how you put on a production, how did your new show All The Fun of the Fair come about?

Jon: I’ve worked with David Essex for a few years now and he decided that he wanted to do a show using the back catalogue of his music, so he asked if I would listen to all his songs and come up with a story. 80 songs later and five days of back to back music, (I didn’t realise he’d done so many albums!) we came up with an idea.

Because I was born in the circus, and unbelievably worked with David when I was 14 or 15 when our circus was supporting him when he was doing his first album, I said ‘why don’t we do it around a fairground’?

Of course, he has a fairground connection as well having worked on them when he was a teenager, so we had to get a story around it. But his songs are so well written, with a story threaded through them anyway, that it almost wrote itself and the whole thing came together quite quickly.

How did you pick which songs to use?

Jon: Well, we wanted to use all the hits – four number ones and eight top ten hits – and then there are some great songs like Dangerous which is one of my favourites in the show.

We decided on the story of a travelling fun fair, where they all come into a town and as well as being regarded as strangers, they’ve got all the difficult bits of their own lives to deal with. We then decided that the theme that we wanted to pick on was that of love the second time around.

David’s character is widowed and the woman who falls in love with him has been divorced and I think that’s something that applies to a lot of people, particularly those of the theatregoing age which tends to be slightly older. No shows seemed to be approaching that subject so that’s the idea I had in mind to begin with and then it hit me that it worked perfectly with what we were trying to do.

And his fan base who’ve been with him all along maybe reaching that stage of their lives and can really relate to it?

Jon: It’s absolutely the case. I’ve worked with David on and off for about five or six years and one of the funniest things about working with him is that his very loyal fans are very loyal to me as well! They know who I am, they see me at the Stage Door and while I wouldn’t say I get mobbed like David does, I get recognised and people come and talk to me. It’s interesting how it [the story] does resonate with them. They say that they’ve come to see it because David is in it but actually the story means such a lot to them as well.

It’s staggering with musicals these days, because when people like something they come back again and again. I think our record so far is a lady who has already seen it 30 times and has booked 20 more. She reckons she’ll see it 50 times in the 26 week run we’re doing. There’s a lot of people who come back and we almost feel like re-writing it for them because they’ve seen it so often!

Like give them a different ending?

Jon: Well the ending’s a bit of a shock actually. I’ve been associated with shows like Simply Ballroom and Boogie Nights and lots and lots of pantomimes which are all happy ending, feel-good shows, but this is a lot more serious and meaty, it’s a lot more like Blood Brothers. It’s all very sad and very moving, it’s a bit more of a theatrical outing than a fluffy jukebox catalogue of songs.

I think what’s unique about this show is that in We Will Rock You, Queen don’t sing the songs. In this, David sings his songs but I guess you would want to get across that it’s not a David Essex concert, there’s a theatrical story there too?

Jon: Yes, and it’s a very strong, powerful story. David obviously sings a lot of the songs in the show but there’s a cast of 16 who share a lot of the songs with him. And some of them are almost operatic where three or four people are doing it and they’re sung through.

Nikolai Foster is directing it and he’s one of the hottest directors around at the moment. I was very flattered because he read the script and said he’d love to do this.

It’s also quite imaginatively staged, because as you can imagine, it’s no small task to try and get a fairground with a rollercoaster, a big dipper and 500 people all on the one stage at the same time!

All The Fun of the Fair © Robert Workman

How do you do it all then and tell us about the Sound Scape system?

Jon: The show is quite filmic, and the music is underscored all the way through with all these amazing sound effects. But we were thwarted a little bit by health and safety, because we wanted a team of stunt motorbike riders who were going to do the wall of death for us. But they won’t allow you to turn a petrol engine on in a theatre never mind ride a bike, so we came up with the idea of Sound Scape which is a specialised sound effect and it does make you feel like there’s a roller coaster coming straight through the theatre and that the motorbikes are going behind you.

Also, all travelling fun fairs have a dog and we have a very lifelike dog which is actually a recording. A woman said to a theatre manager the other week that she did enjoy the show but was surprised that they allowed dogs in the auditorium because there was this dog barking all the way through the show!

We do have some great special effects as well. We have a set of beautiful galloping horses and best of all are our dodgems. They steal the show, because all the notices, no matter how much they like David Essex or Louise English, always talk about the dodgems. It’s remarkable, because you see six people driving the dodgems around on the stage and they are real dodgems. What we did was take the shell of an original 1970s dodgem and put an old people’s mobility cart underneath it because they are the only thing that will actually travel 360 degrees. They literally turn round on a circle so although they look like rather mean dodgem machines, underneath it they are disability motors.

And we do get requests from people who actually want to have a ride in the dodgems!

In a nutshell then, what can audiences expect?

Jon: Well – be prepared, because it’s a bit different. It’s not just a catalogue of David Essex songs with a weak story in between, there’s a very strong powerful story there which, to be honest, I wrote as a play and then wrote with the songs in as well, so you could almost do it without the songs in there.

It’s quite heartbreaking and moving and there’s some very funny bits in it but it’s a much more theatrical, emotional night out! I think anybody who is a parent, anybody who has ever been married or divorced or widowed, will resonate with it and they will see that there’s something in there for them.

And the strange thing is that although the show finishes with a death, there’s a very uplifting, upbeat end that shows that there is hope for the future. I think that in these dark times, although on the one hand it’s always nice to have something that’s fluffy, it’s also nice to see that the real world is out there and can still touch you and sometimes we like to see that it’s tough for everybody, not just for us.

Often people think that escape is entertainment when times are difficult like now, but in actual fact, I think people quite like to see a little bit of harsh reality, so that they realise that their own lives aren’t quite so bad after all!

All the Fun of the Fair is at the Milton Keynes Theatre from the 9-14 February 2009 and at the Swan Theatre, High Wycombe from 20-25 April 2009.