Portrait captures the wit and wisdom of a Cavern legend
by Philip Key, Daily Post
BOB Wooler, the Cavern disc jockey who died earlier this year, had often talked of writing a book of his experiences.
The nearest he got to it was by talking to Merseyside rock historian and broadcaster Spencer Leigh.
Leigh had been working with Wooler on the book, mostly over drinks at Keith's Wine Bar in Lark Lane, but became frustrated with the exercise.
Wooler, it seems, tended to be a little secretive about his life and Leigh naturally wanted openness. In the end, Leigh abandoned it and wrote instead a book about the Merseysippi Jazz Band.
Wooler's death has now allowed him to use his tapes and paint a portrait of Wooler in a new book The Best of Fellas (Drivegreen Publications: £12.99).
Refreshingly, it is neither autobiography nor biography but, as Leigh admits, the story of ghosting Bob Wooler's autobiography.
The result is one of the funniest of Mersey Beat memoirs, not least because Wooler was a witty and funny man himself.
I first met him post-Cavern days when he had teamed up with Allan Williams, the Beatles' early manager.
As a new arrival in Liverpool some 30 years ago and writing a daily diary column for the Daily Post, they toured me around Liverpool's lunchtime bars in search of stories. They seemed to know everyone and I always returned to the office with a notebook full of tales and slightly merry.
It was not just the alcohol - although in those days they were knocking back the suicidal Special Brew - but the company which made me merry.
There was Williams, the down-to-earth chap with salty language and Bob, well-spoken and full of witticisms. The two were a great double act and Wooler's comments became known as Woolerisms: Leigh has a host of them in his book.
An early difficulty for Leigh was Wooler's age, "born in 1932" he insisted. The indefatigable Leigh managed to track down the birth certificate and confront Wooler with it. He had been born in 1926.
He admitted: "I was born in Liverpool, I don't know where precisely, on 19 January 1926." His father died when he was four, his mother when he was 15. He also had a brother Jack with whom he lost touch, although Leigh discovered he had predeceased Bob.
Bob was always the master of language, generally describing the Cavern as the best of cellars, a play on a Peter Sellers record album The Best of Sellers. Leigh's title The Best of Fellas seems highly suitable.
Typical of his immediate wit is Wooler's description of the Cavern. "The whole place was like a Turkish bath as we believed in BO, that's Box Office and Body Odour. It was the sweat smell of success. The ventilation was the State of the Ark..."
