John Otway: The eccentric Rock & Roll 'microstar' who calls Nottingham his second home

It’s somehow very Nottingham that someone who describes themself as “Rock & Roll’s Greatest Failure” has chosen our city as his second home. 

Not, let me stress, that Nottingham is a place of failures. But because here we love a rebel; a talented rogue; a proudly unpompous one-off.

There is after all, only one musician in this world who spent their big-break TV appearance rolly-pollying around the stage, making choo-choo sounds, cutting off their guitarist’s feed in the process, and then finishing with a destructive and painful leap onto an amp, landing on their “most tender body parts”, and sending the gear tumbling to the floor in a chaotic heap.

Conventional it wasn’t. But it got people talking. And they’re still talking about him now, and he’s still playing, 57 years later. The “music and mayhem” goes on.

Meet John Otway: one of the most infamous musicians you’ve (maybe) never heard of, and certainly one of Nottingham’s most eccentric characters. 

Otway – as he introduces himself – has barely taken a break from touring in a long and eccentric career that’s taken him to Glastonbury, The Royal Albert Hall, the Edinburgh Festival, and countless more intimate venues where he can rock the night away with his own, cult following. 

He played his 5000th gig a couple of years ago. “That’s a hundred shows a year for 50 years,” he points out. “A surprising number of people have seen me.”

That’s Otway: always happy to joke about himself. Always having fun being self-effacing.

“I’ve always enjoyed self-effacing humour,” he says. “I’m good material. There’s a lot to be self-effacing about!”

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But there’s also a lot to be proud of. Otway is a legendary name in punk and festival circles and is still capable of packing out venues. Next month he’s playing two gigs in Toronto.

As well as touring prolifically for decades he’s had hits in the charts, written books – mainly mocking himself – acted, performed a cameo on cult 80s sitcom The Young Ones, and been a guest star on Never Mind the Buzzcocks.

Not that you’d know that from the titles of his books: Cor Baby That’s Really Me: Rock and Roll’s Greatest Failure, and I Did It Otway: Regrets I’ve Had a Few.

But does he still? Does he wonder whether, had he taken a less anarchic approach to the TV appearance on Old Grey Whistle Test, back in 1977, whether his career might have gone in a different direction? Could he have been one of those musicians who take themselves very seriously?

“I tried that and it didn’t work,” says. “My intention was to be a huge great megastar. I achieved microstardom.”

The next tour stop for our own Microstar is right here in his second city, where he spends half the week but which, he admits, he’s “more and more drawn to”.

“I’m thinking of putting my [London] house on a permanent lease. In Wandsworth I don’t know any neighbours, I go to the local pub and I don’t know anyone. 

“Not like here: you walk into a pub like the Gladstone and the Poacher and there’s all these people you know, who you chat to. There’s a community.”