Your Mind Matters – Ian Shaw, Does Talent Soothe The Soul

This is Your Mind Matters, and I am Dr. Maria Kempinska. Today I have the extraordinarily talented artist Ian Shaw speaking to me about his life, his thoughts, his mind, and his art. Basically, he has won the BBC Jazz Vocalist Award more than once, and I cannot tell you how delighted I am to have him here today. But before I introduce him And before he starts speaking, I just want to give you a quote of his, which I think is more than delightful: "Allowing my music to be a prism through which I can view and be viewed without pretense or artifice." Welcome, Ian Shaw, and thank you so much for joining me. And can you— ah, and can you please tell everyone about your background? Because not everybody starts with a gifted and, you know, sort of a background where you're just handed everything on a plate and then the talent just unravels. Well, hello, hello, Maria. Hi, Ian. We've known each other for a very long time. It's a pleasure to take part in this very exciting thing. You tell me, you asked me about my background, and I was wondering if I should tell you that I'm sitting in front of a Molly Parkyn painting and some terrible cushions, but I think you mean historically my background. Although Molly Parkyn says a lot. She was an amazing artist. Yeah, we're both Welshies. We have so much in common. Sort of similar backgrounds, albeit 40 years apart. She's 90 now, and I'm not 90. No, definitely not. My background is very, very simple, I think, if one can call whatever you want to measure simplicity. Again, so I was born in North Wales to a working-class family. My dad was a great musician, but he also had to work to look after his family, and So he became a steelworker at Shotton Steelworks, famously closed down by Margaret Thatcher. My mother married her army boy, her sweetheart, who she met when she was 17, and she dug her little stilettos in the parquet-floored dance halls of North Wales and Chester and danced with this handsome bugger who then went off to the army.— he was conscripted in Gibraltar, continued as a chef and a trumpet player, and then came back. That's my background. I have one sister. I have— I had a brother who predeceased me called Gareth, who died before I was born, and the memory of him sort of hung over our family in a good way and a bad way, I suppose. He was called the other baby, or the first baby. So it was all a little sort of mid-'60s angst, I suppose, to lose a baby from jaundice after the thalidomide scenario, you know, would have been a pretty fearful thing, I think, for a very kind of nice young couple. My parents were very good, honest people. A Good and Simple Man, which is the title of a song that I have, which is in dedication to my father. That's my background, full of music, full of wind wind, weather, sheep. We could see Liverpool from our— from my back bedroom, which I sort of aspired to. Wow. Right on the tip of North Wales. Okay, I mean, I'd like to sort of delve into a little bit more of your background, but what I'd like to start with— and we can tell through the texture of your voice, even though we're just speaking here, um, how rich your voice is. And I want everybody to know, so when I saw you perform, and I've seen you a few times, um, What always astounds me is here we are, we're all fairly ordinary people potentially, aren't we? Yeah, we are. And yet within you, when you sing, there's this, um, it's almost like another world that people enter into. And I said you're like Al Jarreau, who I was a big fan of his. I'm not a massive fan of jazz, but I'm an incredible fan of yours because you have that ability to draw people into your voice. Now I know that I'm a fan, so people listening might say, well, what does that mean? So how would you describe your voice? And I know people eulogise about your voice, and I may not be the best person to describe you, apart from if you get a chance to listen to Ian sing and go and watch him, please, please make sure you do. How would you describe your voice? Oh, well, thank you very much for the Al Jarreau comparison. Al was a very good friend of mine. I miss him hugely. Oh, wow. I cherish his texts and emails, and he called me Ian with two I's, which I always— I thought, he's given me an extra I, so that's good coming from Al. I think, not to say it was a Damascene moment, but Rich, I remember Richard Coles, who's a friend of ours, wrote this beautiful book about his calling to God. I'm an atheist, but I remember sitting in a little piano bar restaurant, wine bar thing in the '80s when I was at college called Tango. I was employed to just play the piano, and then one of the guys who was running the he said, "Can you sing?" And I said, "Well, I don't know really. I'm singing bits and pieces at college, but not really." And he said, "Okay, we'll get you a microphone." So we got this crappy little mic and amp, and I suddenly sang and I thought, "Huh, I'm singing," excuse me, "I'm singing out into a room and some people are looking and some people aren't and it doesn't matter if they're not or they are." And I just thought, "Oh, this is almost like a sort of divine weapon in a way." a good weapon, if there's such a thing. I never had that as a child, not singing, certainly playing the piano and playing my cornet, my trumpet, and acting, which is the other thing I did and do. And also the ability to make people smile, I suppose. I mean, reeling on through the years, my thing at the moment is just great material, and I'm known for reinterpreting stuff, you know, that other people have written, although I do write myself as well. I'm not prolific, but when a song comes, it really comes and whacks me around the head like a piece of old fish, you know. So I think, well, I must— again, that's almost— it's not irreligious, but it's not religious. So like Richard Coles was in a pugin church in the middle of town, I think in Holborn, and he saw this shaft of light. My shaft of light was a very good-looking young waiter who said, why don't you give us a song? And I remember thinking, and I remember thinking, oh, I'm doubly armed now. I can do this playing and singing thing. Um, and then of course, years later, I moved away from the piano because I met a wonderful singer called Claire Martin who said, you need to swing more, you need to book a band, you know, with bass and drums and try the jazz singing. I jumped ridiculously deep into that thing and absorbed hundreds of new albums of people I'd never heard of, like Mark Murphy and Betty Carter, Carmen McRae. I'd heard of Ella, of course, and Frank Sinatra. And I found this whole world, um, that didn't have a me in it as well. And I remember my mum always used to comment on people like Kate Bush. She used to say, oh, you know, there's only ever one of that type of artist, isn't there? And I think it's true to a certain extent. And I think you can You can kind of grab satellites of other people and ride around them, and suddenly maybe you break through and you become something different, almost like, you know, bubbles in a stream, which of course is a lyric. Everything's a lyric, Maria. I love it, but I like bubbles in champagne glass, actually. That's how I see it. But you know what, Ian? You know, it's so fascinating. You've sort of tried to encapsulate something quite profound there, and it is profound. You know, to know that you've got masses of talent and yet you didn't realize it. But when you grew up, your father, as you said, was a performer, but he wasn't— was he a paid performer? He was. He— well, not in the brass band scenario, but he did the odd paid job, but he was mostly not— he was mostly unpaid. So his job really was, you know, rolling out metal and steel until that ended. And then when that ended, he got together with a friend of his. I mean, round about that time, there were 11 suicides. So because of the closing down of initially the steel works. You know what always surprises me actually about times like that? How community is so important to people. Somehow society has not got to grips with the power of community. To keep communities together. If you're making change, just make sure the community stays together. Give them an alternative. And they never seem to do that. I'm always astonished that that never seems to happen, but that's what you're talking about. There was no alternative given. Yeah, I am. And it's, it's thanks to my dad really that I've got a direct conduit to, I think, things that whatever happens to me in my life and whatever stages you go through in your— I hate loath to say the word journey, but you know, the trajectory, which is a great word, I suppose. Moving forward is another thing I hate. But whatever happens around you, you can fully absorb. You can store some of it in little pockets to use when needed and wear some of it on the outside. My father was very good at that, you know, and he used to say things to me like, you know, you're great at all, brilliant at all this singing and performing and playing the piano. He was so proud of me when I was working in the pubs when I was 14, you know, playing and singing. But he used to say to me, look out for those, a word for this bit, look out for those clown shoes, you know. Don't be sort of taken advantage of. I think he was probably meaning I could have made money properly if I'd stuck at my trumpet and I decided to go a different way because I had to make money to build a house and to raise a family and get my kids through school and through college. That was his legacy for me really. I suppose the, the thing is just to do whatever you do, you just have to do it because you do get caught out. If you don't do something truthfully, you will get caught out. No, I agree. Coming back to the influence that your father had, and we'll come to your mother shortly, but you know, you said he went, he fought in the army, was that correct? He didn't fight. He was, he was in the army in 1954, I think. Oh, conscription then, wasn't it? So it was conscription. Yes. So you can imagine the atmosphere in the early to mid-50s, having gone through, you know, I mean, I'm talking to somebody who is the daughter of refugees, right? So we know about that thing about, you know, the right to, the right to live, really. I love that term, the right to live. And what I am always so proud of when somebody goes into the army, with, and conscription, you didn't have a choice, but that they were prepared to defend my life potentially. Yeah, our lives. I'm always so in awe of— mostly it was men, men that did that. Yeah, actually, you know, and when they were there, they willingly did it. They got into that mindset and thought, no, I will do that for you. Yeah, of course. And far be it for me to sort of take away the non-time-specific nature of this, this wonderful thing that you— that I'm so pleased to be taking part in today, whatever we call it, podcast or is that we're sitting in wherever we're sitting. I'm sitting in central London, and the news has never in my lifetime been so completely earth-shattering. I know. And with, you know, with the Russian invasion of Ukraine— Ukraine. It is an invasion. And within 4 days, over 3 million refugees have been created by division, by someone not allowing one person, pretty much, and probably a cabal of about 12 people. I mean, this man is deranged, as we know, um, Putin. So the right to live has immediately been snatched away, as it was in the Second World War, and as it was threatened all the way through the '50s, '60s, '70s, up to the present day. It's never ever changed. It doesn't change, does it? No, that movement of that sort of competitive male-oriented movement of people. Well, you know, you're not allowed to have that, so could you please leave this space? That's never going to change, you know. We were chatting about volunteering earlier on, and you were telling me how that was a way that really shaped your early life. And indeed, indeed, it has been mine as well, with no virtue signaling needed to be said, you know, because I work very closely with refugees and have done for many years now. Oh, tell us about that, Ian, because I know we're going to get on to your music and other elements, but this is what makes you the rich— gives you that rich voice. I know it. I know that when people listen to you, they enter into— I do say it— you enter into a different space. It's almost a sacred space, and I know that can sound a little perhaps too woo-woo, but it's not. Because having been there and watched you perform, there are some performers that you think, oh, you're lovely, you're brilliant, you get the notes just right, as you do when you train for the theater. I trained for the theater, and you've got to hit the note directly and it's got to be right. But other people just draw you into a space that's theirs, and all of this gives you the richness and depth into your voice. So, uh, I know you do work with refugees. Tell us more about that. Well, I've always felt— this is crass by its very existence, this thought process— but I've always felt like a refugee because since I had a paper round and I took on another paper round in a neighboring village because the money was like 2 quid more a week or something, so I was an economic migrant between 6 o'clock and 9 AM. You know, 3 days a week when I was at school. I've always got— had that sense of it doesn't matter where you want to be geographically, it's where you want to be spiritually that matters, you know. And I've always been very conscious of that. I was being very conscious of the opportunities that my mother and father didn't have because of the family, because they were two very bright people who just didn't— just didn't get that door kicked open in the same way that they kicked it open for foot, mostly me. My sister— for my sister, kind of dug a different route, really, and still does. She's a wonderful human being. She runs a school. She's as solid as a rock and has been through all sorts of kind of, you know, things that we all go through. She's a teacher? No, she's what we used to be very glamorously called a school secretary. Do you remember? Oh gosh, yeah, how important they are. Yeah, so she sits very— she sits very you know, very queenly in a room. And just— I've heard her on the phone, it's brilliant. Bosses people around, but in the most funny and witty and engaging way, you know. And she's just— my sister and I are really close. We've become closer since, you know, naturally sometimes since your parents leave the mortal coil, you become closer to your siblings. And because there is something in our knowledge of when somebody has seen you from zero to hero, basically. You know, they know every aspect of your, as we call it, the trajectory, which I prefer that term. And they know the ups and downs you've gone through, the fact that your life wasn't easy. You know that, yes, you had supportive— your father, I can hear, was supportive, but he worked in the steel industry. He was a worker. And, you know, to go to work every day in a factory. My father also worked in two factories, so I get it. And, you know, to work in a factory is hard work. It's hard physical work. You don't get the mental stimulation. It was an enclosed space. I did a couple of jobs actually in factories, so I know what— yeah, but, you know, it wasn't my life. I didn't— I didn't depend on factory work. I did it as an extra, earning extra money. But they had to do it to, as you say, raise children. Totally different mindset. And you— and your sister has seen you grow. She has seen the ups and downs of your life. She has seen what you've gone through. Yeah. As you've grown up, you know, and you know, the happiness and the sadness that everybody goes through. And the only person that witnesses all of that is our sibling. Yeah, you're right, you're right. She'd probably contest the zero to hero bit with one of her classic rye dry smiles to the side. You know, I remember once saying to her, we're finishing some pasta or something, I said, 'Oh God, my eyes are bigger than my belly,' and she went, 'Uh, no, they're not.' She's really got me, really got me in a place that feels very safe. She's like a real mate, you know, although she is my sister and I, you know, I love her family. I'm not that day-to-day connected with them, and we carry all sorts of all sorts of sort of memories that are different, you know, different memories, because my sister remained in North Wales and I kind of broke away. And that are always, always, always completely always close to my— I wasn't close to my father, which sounds really like a sort of crazed thing to say at this point. I respected him, but we had nothing in common other than music and a series of dodgy cars. And he'd tell me how to get to 'You should have taken the B134, not that one. Which way did you come?' And that was really, to be honest, that was about it really. I think he relied very profoundly on the relationship that I had with my mum, which was a lot easier. A lot. My dad didn't know I was— ever know that I was gay, which I to this day find astounding, you know. 'Dad, this is— hey Dad, this is Julian Clary.' Yeah, yeah. And a whole host of very out male and female gay people that he's met and absolutely adored. He never ever wanted to sort of put that moniker on his— on his— do you regret that? Yeah, I wrote him a letter and put it in his jacket, in— on his— in his coffin. I put it in his jacket. I wrote him a letter to say that we'll look after Mum, and by the way, I'm gay and it's fine, and I'm sorry we couldn't talk about that bit. And, you know, Thanks, Dad, for everything. And, you know, he died very unexpectedly. So, but it was— yeah, that's the one thing really that wasn't— I think it probably, you know, I know this is sort of the beginning of every good book, or Edmund White will talk about it, or Patrick Gale or anyone, but— oh, Jeanette Winterson, but the other way. It's the one sort of bond, I think, sexuality, that especially during that particular transitory period of acceptance and non-acceptance, you know, that's the '60s, '70s onwards, and Clause 28 and all that. I think my dad would have been okay with it if it had come from the horse's mouth. Did you not think? I do. I mean, he sounds— I think he was in the entertainment industry. Yeah, basically. So he would have understood, he would have experienced that. And sometimes people may intuit that something's going on but maybe not want to verbalize it, and you know, and everything like that. But I think, you know, as soon as you hit the world of theater or the world of entertainment, you can't— you can't ignore that side of entertainment and people, because they are people. Everybody is a person, and you live and die by your talent, not your sexuality. Yeah, you know, there was a picture— there was this amazing kind of mother-of-pearl, um, uh, photograph album that was full of my dad's pictures from when he was in the army. So 2 or 3 years, I think you said, 3 years actually. And there was a picture in it, my sister and I fascinated by all the pictures of him cooking, you know, these black and whites or serrated edges, tiny little sort of brown box brownie, you know, black and whites. And, um, there was one picture of him snogging another soldier, obviously in jest. And I remember when I got to the age of 16, there was— it was markedly removed from the photo album. Oh really? Both parents realized that my sister and I had taken more of an interest in that photo than usual, you know. And I just imagine my dad on that rock in the middle of the, you know, from the Pillars of Hercules one end to the Straits of Gibraltar, you know. My dad's in there sort of, he must have had sort of lusty thoughts about Spanish, gorgeous Spanish women that were knocking around. You just don't know, do you? Because no, and to some extent I think there is a part of our lives that we don't always have to share with everybody. Yeah, and that's fine, isn't it? And that's fine, as long as you do that and you're conscious of doing it. But if you have repressed— I mean, one of my closest friends, she was gay, and sadly she's no longer alive. She was lovely. And, but, you know, so I shared a flat with her when I was 21, and it never occurred to me. It never occurred to me to ever talk in those terms. To anybody or say, oh look, this is my friend, she's gay. It was, this is my friend. Yeah. And then if somebody had a question, oh really? Oh yes, well, that's her partner and she's her partner and things. And my daughter actually did say to me, oh mum, thank God you were so willing to embrace, you know, Lynn and her partner. And well, people are people. People are wonderful people. Of course, yeah. Yeah, of course. And that's how it happens. It's tragic when— and we're seeing it, as you've just said, with the invasion of Ukraine at the moment— that people are intransigent. They have a view of the world and it's my way or the highway, and they come in and they bomb the hell out of people, or they create laws where you can't exist because it doesn't suit them. Yeah, and today, again, being a little bit sort of dull and time-specific, but today, you know, we're waiting for this bill to go through the Lords, which is Priti Patel's absolute dream bill. Which is to, is to literally pull up the rope ladder and not, not even look at asylum cases that are already in existence, you know, not even look at the fact that there are 25,000 prisoners in detention centers in this country and in Northern Ireland. We're the only country in Europe that does this. No, not that many people are aware of the immigration removal centers. You know, there are people that have been in there that we talk to, they've been in there for 13 years. They have no legal aid, they have no lawyer, they don't know what's happened to their family. You know, they get their shitty little phones and 40 minutes talking time with some sort of local counselor who is mostly coming from a volunteer group. I'm hoping— I think I'm an optimist. I'm not often in the glass-full thing, but I am, I suppose, a soulful optimist, if you can think of that. And I'm hoping that the The one thing that will come out of this ghastly situation with the Ukraine is that all these things will open up, and people who have previously thought that it was okay to support a very right-wing government, to support, uh, the daughter of an immigrant who is now punished, literally punishing immigrants, migrants, or refugees, or however you want to call them, hoping that some thing will trigger people's larger sense of where we're at as, as a tiny little island and how broader we can become, even with the shackles, economic shackles of Brexit. I agree. Do you know, I just think that society is being revised at the moment. Yeah. And politics as it was doesn't hold a place so much anymore. We do need a much more socially and psychologically and spiritually aware government. Government and the way to govern. But there's nobody out there that is showing the way, and I think this is the problem. But the work you're doing with refugees is so profound, and the statement you're making about people that are shackled away— they've come away from somewhere for some reason, you know, and, um, and you never know why. And it takes so much time to actually find out what is the— what is the truth of their existence, what happened. To them. Some people, a smaller minority, much smaller minority, yes, that they've got bad reasons, you know, to sort of go into a country, but a lot of people— and I still work with refugees myself— so, you know, they are escaping from somewhere to a— one, overall, Great Britain is a fabulous country. That's all I can say. Overall, in the great scheme of things, this is the country I prefer to be in. So in that respect, can we make it a better place to live? Absolutely, absolutely. We need to create a new movement that shows people how to make the changes because they, you know, the governments and organizations are stuck in a rut of a way of organizing everything which doesn't suit today's life. And especially as you're talking about all the refugees, all the movement that's going on, and people don't want to be where they are, and we've got to make it easier for people to integrate and settle in. Of course. We do need a new way of creating these movements and a new way to integrate and a new way to allow people to join in our world. And our world overall, I think, is still the best world. That's my opinion. Yeah, no, I fully concur. So what you're saying is really the, the way that we have done for the last 120 years since the end of Queen Victoria's reign, because this country is built on diversity, on immigration, You know, once you start taking that away, the thing that hurts people the most is when they live in Spain or somewhere. I just wrote a piece about this for my podcast. Oh, did you? Yeah. And they're staunchly sort of patriotic, and yet, you know, they're in Spain in some village and they're drinking German wine, they're having their PG Tips imported over Branston pickle, Marmite. There's a fish and chip at the corner. There's a Guinness-bound pub. And yet they are living in this beautiful country and then complaining suddenly because of Brexit that they can't get their teeth sorted in Spain anymore, or they can't get— they can't get their health insurance, you know. Yeah, there's a vein of abject stupidity with people who— don't you think so? I hate to use that term. Call it ignorance, but you're right. Yeah. And you know, we have free education in this country. Yeah, yeah. Use it, make the most of it. We're so lucky. And free health. And we know the world over, until the last— sadly, the last 8 to 10 years— we've been known for welcoming people who enhance, uh, our society, you know. Um, and the, the, the biggest example, of course, is the National Health Service, because if you've got the very top level to the kind of the least paid, which is, I guess, cleaners in hospitals is the least paid. Cleaners and people who bring tea round, and they often double up on that. None of those people are what we would, you know, famously 1950s call indigenous Brits, you know. They're just not, you know, and when it suits us to invite people from Jamaica to build the roads and the hospitals and the airports, then that's fine. However, when it gets a little bit, eh, eh, eh, let's just bury 20,000 cases in the Home Office and forget about them, and then deny that they ever existed, you know. Are you a political animal, or are you a social activist? I'm afraid I am. I have no shame in my tie-dye shoulder bag and my badges. Would you do politics though, like Eddie Izzard? I'm too old, really. I mean, I know my limitations. So would you then create a sort of social— I really like the term I do think there should be a movement to show people how to make changes. That's the mood, that's the way I come to all this. If you don't like something, can you show a different way of doing something? Yeah, I see what you mean. Yeah, so you present the alternative, right? You present the alternative, yeah, because, because, yeah, do you know what I mean? Because otherwise people are saying, I don't know what quite what you mean. If they don't know what you mean, they don't know what— they can't see it. It's like telling an artist, a painter, you know, like Picasso, to sing a song, you know, they can't because they just don't know what you mean. And I think that's where we are. Yeah, I think you're right. I think presenting an alternative view and a pragmatic view as well, albeit a humane view, I suppose, if you're looking at the thing about refugees, I mean, the basic thing about refugees is that nobody, nobody wants to leave their home, and that's a fact. However, on the other hand, everybody has a right to a better life, and that's, that's the human condition from year zero. It's a better life. It's when, even if you're religious, it's when sort of Eve tripped over and she knew that Adam wasn't really the sort of bloke that she fancied the most, you know, in that garden, but she'd give it a go because she wanted to. She wanted— she saw a better place in the garden to raise her kids, you know. It's hilarious, you know. So you're right, why shouldn't we? And you know, having done, as you know, Jonglers, and when I saw— and when comedians went all over the UK, I saw everybody wants a better one. Actually, you'd remember this in, you know, from the '80s to the '90s, we'd have various performers who pretended to be working class. Yeah, various comedians who pretended to be working class, and I'd sit there and watch them, of course, you know, and think, and part of my upbringing, because I was Polish and a refugee, I would not ever really rock a boat unless I had to. So I would observe this, and then later they, those same performers, would get annoyed with the yuppy brigade that were working class, that were making money, because it was the working-class yuppy brigade that were in the audience that weren't listening to them or something. And I thought, no, that is just wrong. But it's a great scenario, isn't it? It is, it is. It's funny, but you are occupying, Maria, a very healthy sort of central, centre ground there, which in utopian terms would really work. No, I completely I totally hear you there, but you're talking about social activism. I have friends who I lean on sometimes a little bit too much, who are by their very nature socially active. I am socially active, but I found as an older man now, an older human, I found ways of doing it which are more effective, and that is with raising money with music, with advocacy with making— I'm, you know, happily in touch with a lot of asylum and immigration lawyers, and you have to look at individual cases. I'm a proud patron of two— a trustee of one and a patron of the other— two refugee charities. And through— yeah, of course, one is called Refugee Support Europe, which is refugeesupport.eu, and it's headed by two wonderful humans called Yves Lanière and Paul Hutchings, and they are on the ground. So I had a phone call yesterday with Eve to say we need to make another £65,000, which is what we did last year at the Bedford, which is somewhere where you're very familiar with. I am. The old Banana Cabaret, the rival. I love it though. Yeah. I like other venues. So that's— that's super. But that is to me social activism. It is, it is. And that is making a stand, that is making a voice, it's creating a ripple. Yeah, it is. You know, Paul will go out and he will find the easiest and the most pragmatic points geographically in which to supply hopefully £60,000 worth of food and drink and phone credits to Ukrainian refugees traveling across 2 or 3 countries. That's what he does. That's what his team do all over Europe. And there's— I'm so proud of them. And equally, side by side with refugees which is— I met them in the Cali jungle because I spent a year on the ground working in the Cali jungle, building shelters, bringing in generators. Wonderful people there. Juliet Stevenson was phenomenal when she was out there. She drove a bus to France to help create a women and children, an unofficial women and children's center. For refuge and sanctuary. And I met some extraordinary people out there. So if I was 20 years younger now, I would take these jobs that have been offered to me, one by a branch of Amnesty UK, which is to do fieldwork. Because one thing I learned working in the Kali jungle from September 2015 was how to help people who really know how to organize their lives, organize them with money.— so raise money to keep them dry, keep them warm, and keep them alive, basically. And it wasn't difficult. And meeting other volunteers out there from all over the world, mostly women, I have to say— 72% of the voluntary sector at that point was women— which encouraged me to write a whole album called Shine Sister Shine. I was going to ask you what came out of it. Shine Sister Shine.— Yeah, that did come out of it. Yeah, and I reshaped a song called My Brother, which was about my brother who predeceased me, Gareth, my sister's brother, my brother, our brother who died. And I reshaped it because everybody in the jungle used to call me my brother, my brother. That sort of sisterhood and brotherhood thing was, it was very prevalent when when you're kind of trying to survive on a chemical dump, you know, in the north of France, Calais, which is basically Croydon with better cheese. Yeah, yeah. And a baguette, hopefully. And a baguette thrown in, yeah. Yeah, but, you know, it's interesting because I've just been in touch with my family, most of my family, my parents' family. I wasn't even aware existed half my life because Poland was under communist rule. But later got to know them and a sort of a niece, great-niece somewhere got back in touch or got in touch a couple of years ago and I was in touch with her to see what was happening between Poland and all the border, the Polish border was opened up and all the refugees were welcomed in. And I think that's because they understood and she was saying, "Yes, we're just getting night goggles ready, we're just going to see what we can do." And there's a lot of that goodwill that is happening out there in all the surrounding countries, which is fabulous. But from this, one, you got an album and your song My Brother, and that is so powerful. But please don't underestimate the work you do, because without your money, without your fame, to be fair, people— it gives— it's almost, as you say, that prism. It gives people that view. The way you're talking about it today, it gives people that opportunity to see something something in a way that nobody else could present the same story. And you entertain them and you give them something back through the entertainment. Well, yeah, it was something that you were talking about earlier on, and that is when you're sitting there or standing there as an entertainer, as a performer, you've got that time. It's such a privilege to have that time with, you know, a room. If it's got— I mean, you were in a room with I don't know, 120 people, if that. You know, and I'll soon be performing in a room with 1,000 people. So it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter if you're with 3 people or 300 or 3,000, that connection is such a privilege. And you know this because you— this has been a huge part of your life, Maria. Just to be able to see someone make a connection and change not in a grandiose way, but change people's lives. You know, my manager Charlotte is forever having— this is what keeps me going. I mean, she keeps me going. She keeps me going. I'm underestimated. I would be probably knocking up tarpaulin shelters, which is a great thing in, you know, Greece or France or wherever. If not, Charlotte would say, keep doing what you're doing. You know, so she keeps me going. But She's off, you know, she gets— we get so many lovely messages and emails via the website to say, oh my, you know, I lost my wife 4 years ago, or we're struggling, and my young— or my kid is depressed, and you changed— you made everything good by— and I think what is the Joni Mitchell line, which is laughing and crying is the same release. And I think any performer— I remember talking to Simon Callow about this and he agreed. Any performer, I suppose it's the pathos-pathos thing on stage, but it goes a lot deeper than that. If you can make it ordinary and if you can be yourself, I think, as a performer, mostly on the stage, studios I don't really enjoy, I'm not a studio— I hate recording my own things. I quite like getting involved in other people's things but not my own. But if you can make that very ordinary connection, which of course is Shakespeare, then you can get— you get so much back, and it drives you to continue doing it. You know, if you say— does that sound like that? Yeah, it does. You've got to have that, that flow. In Greek times, by the way, when people were ill, the way of healing— to— I do say this quite a lot, but I think it's something On my programs, I do explain it that in Greek times, when you had an illness, you would go to what was called a spa in those days, the real spa. And you would look to see if you could have a dream where Apollo came to help you heal your illness. And then the healing wouldn't be complete until you created something, whether it was something written, whether it was a song, whether it was a painting, a sculpture. That was the complete circle of the healing, and that's what you do. That's why I'm saying the, the ability to draw people into that healing moment, and I've seen that when you perform, how enthralled everybody is. You just include everybody. There is this wave, and you know, energy, there is an energy that changes. And for me, you've just said about this studio, and I'm sort of thinking, well, 'You know, you should do more studio work because more people should hear you sing.' You know, and this is the power and the healing component to the voice, and the energy that a great voice gives is tremendous. I'm— yeah, I'm kind of mostly proud of my albums. I think I've got 20 out under my own name. Sort of proud of them. I don't listen to them ever. Yeah. And if I if you— even if I'm doing an acting thing or anything, I just can't watch it. So if it's visual, even less so, you know. I'm the king dysmorphia, I suppose, but like a lot of performers. But no, you're absolutely right, the healing thing. But it's two-way as well. There's a selfish streak and it has to be there because that's— oh no, it has to be there because if you don't get something in return, how can you develop? Yeah, yeah. You know, it's got to feed that part of you that we are psychoevolutionary. We need to move forward. Yeah. And the only way you move forward is by getting feedback, and your audience will give you feedback, and then people will come to you. And it's almost alchemical, and it's quite mystical the way it works, that people will come to you and say, Ian, have you thought about doing this? And you've got to move on. You have to do that to develop yourself. Yeah, you do, you do, you do. There was one— that's very, very interesting, the psychoevolutionary thing. There's one— and these things can change, and it takes something very unique for it to change. There was one— I met an extraordinary woman who I won't go into detail, it's an awful story. She was the wife of a diplomat and she'd ended up with two of her sons and a daughter. Her eldest son was killed and her diplomat husband was also killed. She ended up in Calais and we found her a caravan. Wonderful. Again, an artist called Georgia Mansour, who's a singer-composer. Writer. We realized that we could get secondhand caravans and drive them over. What we were thinking, I do not know, but it sort of worked. And we prioritized the women who had kids. And she was— she too, she couldn't ask for anything because she came from a very kind of, you know, fairly wealthy background, very kind of left-leaning reactionary sort of literary background. So the diplomat, you know, the clue was in the word diplomat, I suppose. And I remember she wanted some socks for her kids and she needed some dry food for the kids. And just going around knocking on her caravan door, that moment— that moment of giving her some stuff like that, I've never experienced the shame of— I felt, I felt ashamed to be the person who was almost like the, the, the carrying the torch of what we would, in the olden days, called Western sort of civilization, I suppose. I mean, she was fairly— she was from Syria, from Aleppo, which was bombed to bits. And just the shame, carrying that shame There was so much in that nanosecond of handing over this, this bag of stuff from you to her, from me to her, and her to me. It was a— it was an incredible moment. I'm not sure that it was a positive one that I was able to get anything out of. I say despair, all wrapped up, I should think. Sheer anger. And it was roundabout— yeah, and it was roundabout the time— it was just before Nazanin Sir Gary Ratcliffe was, was, uh, you know, was imprisoned. And I remember thinking, how dare you, Boris Johnson, how dare you not see this as your main— this would have been emblematic, this would have changed the course of your entire life had you seen that through. And I don't think they can— this is— I keep coming back to this point, they don't see it. Other people have to show them. It's as simple as that. They see their world world totally differently. But I do think, Ian, doing the work you're doing— and, you know, I'm very active with my psychotherapy. I'm also building a comedy therapy center in Watford. Wow. With a charity called One Vision, and we're going to be working with immigrants and so on. So there's a lot that we can do. We are so short of time, but I have to move on and ask you something about your mother. Yeah. Um, and I also— do you have a song that represents your mother, your father? You know, do you ever go that far? Yes, I did. I did a whole album called Life Jacket, which was— somebody said to me, God, blimey, you know, you need to calm down a bit. You know, you're 42 now, you need, you need a life jacket, literally a life jacket. What were you doing? Or isn't it for the radio? I don't know, probably drinking too much, you know, shouting too much. I don't know. Yeah, and that whole album sort of was about growing up and moving away at the same time. So there's a song on there called A Good and Simple Man, which is about my parents really, uh, you know, talking about my father and how he brought me to this scary city, and it, it, it kind of swallowed me up and spat me out in a good way, in a bad way, I suppose. So Yeah, my mom was, was just so gentle and so strong, but sort of gentle. She suffered with mental health for years. She was agoraphobic, which is such an unusual condition, so she couldn't go out of the house from when we were— when I was 11 until well into my 20s. So I missed, and she missed, the best parts of, of her kids, really, in a way, because she couldn't go out and enjoy things things with her family. She was on walkie-talkies and had electric shock treatment. She was put in nursing homes. So we were very shocked. That's really old-fashioned. It is. I think it only happened once. I remember my dad feeling very disturbed by it. And my dad's way— my dad couldn't deal with it at all, really. All he could do was just buy her nice dresses. But he was kind, wasn't he? Was he? Yeah, he was very kind. Yeah, he was a proud, kind man. He loved his kids. And how did you cope with it? Because there you are growing up, and you know, we forget, you, you lead life, you move on. As— yeah, you know, you have to move on. Life forces you, you've got to move on. I say, yeah, you've got to move on. But there was a period of time when you were growing up in observing your mother go through such a wretched time. How did you cope Well, we sort of just entered her— her world became very microcosmic, you know. So her world was really just the house. And every now and then, when she was feeling a little bit more confident, if it was raining, she could go out under an umbrella with the West Highland Terrier called Ben. She'd go up to Lloyd's shop and get a few things and then panic and come back, you know. We just entered her world, really. Sharon Cassidy over the road came and did our lunch because we, I, you know, I always lived in virtually lived in a very small town, a village really, called Flint. So we used to get, we used to come home for our dinners sometimes. And, uh, uh, and my dad got a freezer which you could put in the garage. We sort of adapted, like the whole, the whole of our life became almost like a sort of storm lantern around my mum, you know, to protect her and also to enable my dad to carry on working. Okay. Were you ever resentful? Did you ever find it tough? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I did. Yeah, I used to get very frustrated when eventually she got a little bit better for a couple of years and they used to come down to London and see me do gigs. And she would actually— funny enough, she was kind of better. The fish out of water was a lot stronger, so she was able to sort of cope with that more than she was with her own village, you know. And her own town. So I think she associated— I think a lot of her agoraphobia was to do with how a lot of things were taken away from her when she was young. She had to look after her mother. She was— did she? Yeah, she nursed her mother. Mum died of some pulmonary disease and pneumonia, and then her father died immediately, and then we moved. And then she was looking after a woman who had cystitis in one lung. And, you know, it's all kind of a little bit too dark and Alan Bennett, really, at one point. I think it, it must have affected her confidence and thereby made her guilty, I suppose, of going out. I'm sure. And did she enjoy watching you perform? Oh, they were so proud, you know. My sister's got boxes of VHS videos of early telly, terrible telly things I did, you know, Pebble Mill at One and all sorts of stuff that we would do to sort of get out there, you know. Yeah, of course you have to. And that, you know, there's no— absolutely no criticism for any of that. There's a wonderful book called The Ancestor Syndrome. And do you know it? I do. Yeah, yeah. Isn't it a fabulous book? And, you know, the— what people don't realize, and they often talk about trauma, and they don't realize the trauma that is perpetuated— not deliberately, by the way— and I talked to people about their own lives, you know, so can you sort of understand that sometimes people are so stuck in their own trauma that they pass things on inadvertently, it's unconscious. And your job, if you can, you know, sort of your mission should you choose to accept it, is when you become conscious of the world and then you grow and you understand what happened to your parents and their parents and and so on and so forth. Yeah. And how sometimes the ancestors' spiritual development and your spiritual development comes from way back in your ancestry. Yeah. Yeah. And then you carry that forward. But for you, you had the ghost, if you like, in the ghost in the family, which was your brother. Yeah, I think so. Yeah, the ghost was definitely my brother. And, and also not knowing really very much about our family. My sister did one of those, you know, tracing things and went back, and I just remember there was a wonderful Hattie Hayridge who we both love. A dual Hattie. Absolutely. And Hatt had this brilliant line where she said, oh yeah, I've traced my lineage and it went, went, you know, shopkeep, no, teacher, comedian, teacher, shop shopkeeper, factory worker, factory worker, factory worker. It's not suddenly going to become Earl, is it? It's just that fish. She's brilliant. I know. Do you know what I love about comedy is that that is so succinct. It's shorthand for life, isn't it? Yes. Oh God, that's a lovely way of looking at it. It is. It gives you that insight in such depth. And Hattie has that amazing ability to do that with lines, and you get the greatest comedians who can do that, and she's one of them. But you're so right, because some— mind you, when you watch some people on television that sort of scour back through their ancestry and find out that where they expected one of their ancestors to be a king, he was a criminal, or she was a criminal, you know, and their disappointment— they don't realize that that's their job. You've got to move on. You've got to explore and become better. That's your job, I think. Yeah, but I love what you said about the— yeah, it is, it does. Comedy's such a great sort of— and the economy of good comedy, yeah, because it's a great mirror, isn't it? Totally. And what was it like for you on the comedy circuit? Oh, it's just fantastic. I felt like such an imposter because I always did it with music. So initially it was on my own playing the piano. I did— I mean, sometimes I used to stand up and prowl around, as you remember. Yeah. But I always had the music to fall back on, which— so it was myself and Andrew Phillips, Phillips and Shaw. And we, you know, we worked at places like the Interchange, and we played at your place, John, a few happy times. I remember that's where I got pally with Helen Austin, who I taught at Middlesex Poly. I was her singing teacher. Were you? Yes, she's— she was brilliant. She adored you. Yeah, she was lovely. Two girls what sing. Yeah, yeah. And I loved it. The comedy thing made me realize that much later on, when I was then invited to sing at Ronnie Scott's— with Ronnie Scott, in fact— and Ronnie liked me, liked me because on a Friday night I would completely deal with that crowd as if it was a comedy crowd. Of course, you know, it's different at Ronnie Scott's now. It's more performance-based and it's expensive, and rightly so too, because it keeps musicians going. So it all gets put back in. We've only got— we haven't got that long left, but because I've got so many questions and obviously an hour is never long enough. But of course, uh, one question is, and this you may not say this about yourself, you might But one question was, does all great talent have to pay a price in other parts of your life? In other words, can you have it all? No, I don't think you can. Oh, I don't know. I think what happens is, I think great talent needs a level of intelligence. I've realized that over the years. Or even if you're not, if you don't have that basic sort of rudder, you can pretend to be quite clever. It makes me, it makes me very aware of people who want to do it and can't, or want to do it and just don't have the luck that I quite happily say that I've had. So it makes me see performers in other people who don't perform, and I quite like that. And sometimes I think, oh dear, I don't like the clown's— the clown's shoe syndrome. I shy away from all the kind of dos and parties, and people think I'm very gregarious. I'm not really. I much prefer— when I've done a gig, I like to just sit in the corner with 2 or 3 mates with a bottle of wine, you know. I don't want to work the room. I know people who do that, and I think that it Sometimes I lie awake at night and I think I've wasted my life, and that's a really dark place to be. Because during lockdown I volunteered at two local food bank hubs and I got immense satisfaction out of it thinking, oh no, I'm not wasting my life. People don't— No, but this is why I'm trying to tell you that there are so few people that can actually actually shine a light on the dilemmas of the world, and they come to you because you're talented. Then you shine a light on society. How fabulous is that? Not everybody can do that, or does it? I don't know. What one would hope that it would, and I think that sometimes I feel that happening, and then sometimes they— oh, people think I'll just shut up, you know. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, don't think like that. Shut up and sing, you know, a Jump Jive song or something. And why— you do, you can do both, and you have the authenticity to do both. And I love the fact that you do do both, because there are so many people that don't, and that's their choice. But you do, and that's what underpins and brings money towards everything else. Lots of people can do the rest. Not everybody can do what you do, and I really want to emphasize that.— Oh, well, thanks. But I think that's so important. What was exciting, especially with when what was hilariously called the refugee crisis— of course it wasn't, it's a political crisis, but people don't get that— but when we first started going to Calais, well, when I first went there on my own in my car, I met someone online called Riaz Ahmed who was in the jungle telling his story, and through him I met a woman called Mary Jones who was a teacher who'd set up a library in the jungle. I thought, I've got to go. So what was exciting about that, Maria, was actually then shaking up the whole music and comedy circuit. And within, within 2 months, you know, Julian and Rory Bremner and Joe, they were doing benefits for us. Yeah, Julian Clary, that is. Yeah, yeah, Julian Clary's got to be one of the kindest, most— isn't he? And yeah, when he first started on the circuit, I was so envious of his legs. He's got the best legs. Ever. And he stole one of my mirrors. So he's still— oh, no, it's just, it's just he did, but it's funny. Um, he said to me, well, I'm— he said, I'm donating a bag of shoes here, one of them we've got some special cop shoes, will I get them back? Just the funny— the second or third time we went out to volunteer at the Cali Jungle, he cooked Polly, my friend Polly Gibbons, who's wonderful singer. He cooked us dinner on the way out because it was when he was living in Kent, and I live partly in Kent. He's such a wonderful human being. And what was wonderful, what was amazing about doing that was the incredible amount of support from artists, from writers, comedians. Jackie Kay, for example. Everybody went, oh, well, if you're doing that, it must be easy. We are almost finished. I want to ask you a question. Imagine that people just don't know who you are. What song would you tell them which encapsulates you for them to listen to? Oh my goodness, Here's to Life, which I didn't write, but— right, here's, here's to life. It's a song called Here's to Life, which is made famous by Shirley Horn, because it touches everyone. Either that or Alone Again Naturally. Oh yeah, that's wonderful. Or a song of mine called '42,' 'Let's Stay 42,' which basically just says, well, you know, this is what I've done wrong, but I'm 42 now, so hurrah, hurrah, and you've moved on. Yeah, because you've got to have that. You've got to find out what's right and what's wrong for you. Every individual has to, has to. Of course. Yeah. And, and yet your life is still moving ahead and you are an amazing talent. You perform very often at the Pizza Express, I know. And there's a couple of— I want people to remember that this is Ian Shaw, and you are part of refugeesupport.eu and refugee.org, which are very close to your heart. Side by side refugees.org, yeah. Side by side refugees.org, yeah. And Ian Shaw, thank you so much for joining in the conversation of Your Mind Matters. My absolute pleasure.