The First Meeting

Around 1982 Ringo was invited to Clearwater’s offices to discuss with Britt Alcroft, David Mitton and Bob Cardona aspects of the show and to meet David and Bob for the first time.  

As I was managing Ringo’s studio at the time I heard about the show and decided to find out if they had chosen a composer yet. I managed to get Britt Allcroft’s contact details from a girl named Nas who worked at Clearwater and following a telephone conversation with Britt I discovered the composer for the show had not yet been finalised.  Britt had invited some named composers to pitch for the chance of composing the music for the show, but she said there was still time to submit ideas.

Junior and I were neighbours at the time, and we had worked together on various record and jingle projects at Startling Studios. As neither of us had worked on anything like this before I thought it would be an opportunity for a collaboration thinking it would probably only last for one series. So, I asked him if he would like to join forces for the pitch. We composed three demos and sent cassette copies to Britt for consideration.

It took quite a long time to learn we had been successful, and The Thomas Theme had been chosen, our other two demos became Toby’s theme and Edwards’s theme.

The sound editors were having problems with the sound of the whistles. Real steam whistles were too big and loud for the on-screen characters so one of the first things we did was create the famous engine whistle sounds using our Roland Jupiter 6 flute pre-set with a bit of tweaking. We gave the sound editors various examples. Sometimes with two notes and sometimes with three, some with bends and some without.  They had so many to choose from.

Toby’s bell was the bell from our local pub The Nags Head, perfect for Toby’s theme. It was so exciting to be composing to picture for the first time. We didn’t have the luxury of time code so everything was composed and recorded in short sections. It was pieced together in the editing suite.  

Me, Britt and Junior at an early photo session for the launch of the series 1984

The Thomas The Tank Engine Crew

Who’s who from left to right:

Mike O’Donnell. Britt Allcroft, Junior Campbell, Ringo Starr, Norton Knatchbull, Reverend Wilbert Awdry, Austen Smith, Angus Wright, Leslie Creasey, Bob Cardona, Christopher Awdry, David Mitton