Nor did his record company offer any guidance. And my parents were not so good with money, either, so they didn’t have advice for me,” he says. The money he did get he spent exactly how a nice but naive 19-year-old would: “I bought cars for everyone in my family I bought the stupid little red sports car. Hawkes was in the extra-unfortunate position of not having written The One and Only – Nik Kershaw did – meaning that he didn’t make as much from the song as I had assumed. What happens to one-hit wonders when the hit has gone? Their names are too recognisable for them to get a normal job, but they can’t live without one. Surely he was just living off his riches somewhere. After all, he had been No 1 in the UK for five weeks. I noticed that his follow-up singles (I’m a Man Not a Boy and Secrets of the Heart – and no, I didn’t need to Google the titles, thanks very much) didn’t sell as well, after which he disappeared, but I wasn’t concerned. You need a single, unless you’re with Adele or Ed Sheeran Most of all, we sang the song, belting it out in the schoolyard every breaktime. We followed the exciting rumours about the mole above his right lip – or was it his left? – and whether it was fake. We knew that he – alongside some old guy called Roger Daltrey – was the star of the movie Buddy’s Song, in which he sang The One and Only, and some of us even went to see it. My friends and I read every interview with “Chezza” in Smash Hits, so we knew all about him: that his dad was in some 60s band, which didn’t interest us at all, and that his younger brother, Jodie, was his drummer, which interested us a lot. I was 12 when The One and Only was released, only seven years younger than Hawkes. For Hawkes, there is a vindication of sorts in this, not to mention some employment, and it has been a long time coming. During lockdown, Hawkes and his children cheered up the country by singing it on This Morning. And then there is Hawkes’ The One and Only, still sounding as sweetly endearing as it did in 1991. There is the Knack’s My Sharona, of course, plus 99 Red Balloons by Nena, Tiffany’s I Think We’re Alone Now and Steal My Sunshine by Len. Many one-hit wonders coast in on brief novelty – Baby Got Back by Sir Mix-a-Lot, say, or Mr Blobby – so the ones that endure, that people still dance to in their kitchens decades later, are an elite, eclectic bunch. He is so sunny, as open as a flower, that it is hard to believe he has ever heard a harsh word in his life, let alone been an object of derision for years, his name a byword for shallow pop and short‑lived success.Īt the height of his fame in 1991. I just did Butlin’s up in Skegness,” he says, with that sweet smile that hasn’t dimmed in the past three decades. “A typical day here might be: get up, do a couple interviews there might be a rehearsal with the band, possibly a gig. Hawkes’ wife, Kristina, is American and the family live in Los Angeles, but the UK is where Hawkes was born and where he works. We are meeting at mine because it is in between the passport place and where the Hawkeses are staying on this trip. They have an appointment to renew Casey’s passport later this afternoon – and you can’t really swoon over a man on his way to the Passport Office, even if he once was the biggest pop star in the world. Fortunately, he makes it easy for me, because he turns up with his son Casey, who, at 20, is older than his father was in his pop heyday. It went out there and made an emotional connection with people and that has nothing to do with me,” he says, then sips his tea.īefore Hawkes arrives, I worry that I will struggle to see him as the 50-year-old father of three he is, rather than the teenage heart-throb who sang one of the catchiest No 1 singles of all time. That’s when I realised that, this song, I don’t have ownership of it. “I know, right? Real lump-in-the throat time.
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