Saturday 22 June 2024

Darren Burn in a 1973 documentary


"Twinkle Twinkle Little Star", filmed in July 1973 and broadcast on Wednesday, 24 October of that year, dealt with the British record industry's efforts to find a new pre-teen boy singing star to rival Americans such as Jimmy Osmond. Although it featured, among others, eleven-year-old Ricky Wilde (son of Marty Wilde), the programme primarily concerned itself with the ill-fated eleven-year-old Darren Burn, an ex-Christ Church Senior Chorister from Southgate in north London and the son of EMI executive Colin Burn. EMI spent a lot of money promoting him and, although his initial record releases in 1973 were produced by Eric Woolfson, his record career failed to take off; his first single, "Something's Gotten Hold of My Heart", backed with "True Love Ways" (EMI 2040) reached number 60 in the charts. The programme contains an interview with Darren Burn by reporter John Pitman, in which Burn comes across as very intelligent and sophisticated for his age. In July 1988, during his last BBC Television interview ("People...Whatever Happened To Darren Burn?"), Burn, then aged 26, referring to his ill-fated launch in 1973, told John Pitman that it had been "a very strange thing for a young child to go through" and that it had left him "with a feeling of failure." He also appeared to be blaming his parents for allowing him go through the whole affair and told Pitman: "I certainly wouldn't allow one of my children to do that...should I ever have any." He died in October 1991, aged 30, in his flat in Southwark, south London, after taking an overdose of anti-depressants. Music critic Roy Carr, a contributor to "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star", said on the programme: "There are a lot of charlatans in this business who are out to make a quick buck and they don't care who they get it off!"

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