Beware of being plucked from obscurity by a talent show to international stardom. Few people can handle the pressure of celebrity, especially if you find yourself awash with money and girls.
“There is a dark side to fame that people don’t really understand,” mused its most recent victim.
I imagine none of you have never heard of Norman Alexander Milne, a young lad from Kirkdale, a rough area of Liverpool. Certainly his gravestone in Anfield Cemetery gives nothing away.
Growing up in poverty and for most of the time his father away at sea, the family did not even have a wireless. The only way Norman could listen to his idol Bing Crosby was on the radio at his friend's house.
Not much of Norman’s early life is known. He went to sea with the Royal Navy and after the war with the Merchant Navy. He met his wife, Margie Barker, a bank clerk from Toxteth, at the Grafton dance hall.
That would have been it, had it not been for two talent shows, where he gave voice for his admiration for Bing Crosby. Little did he realise that together, these two contests would change his life.
The first was at the Locarno Ballroom on West Derby Road, near where I used to work as a social worker. He entered 'New Voices of Merseyside' and won £10.
Then ashore in New York, he was persuaded to enter a similar competition at the Radio City Music Hall – and once again, Norman won. However, there is no record on how much he won, but it was enough for him to consider a career in popular music.
Not just a change in lifestyle, not just a transformation in his personal finances, but now a new name. Clearly Norman Alexander Milne wasn’t going to pull in the crowds and so Norman became Michael Holliday.
Now I am old enough to remember Michael Holliday, at the very beginning of modern popular music, the generation of Tommy Steele and a very young Cliff Richards, the one preceding the Beatles.
If pushed, I could even sing the first verse of Holliday’s first Number One, The Story of My Life, which as it happens was the very first successful collaboration between Hal David and Burt Bacharach.
And strangely the same title as the second single from One Direction.
Norman was now a major celebrity as Michael Holliday, producing some 32 chart singles in nine frantic years. He had everything it would seem, including his own television show, Relax With Michael Holliday.
“Rave reviews, television appearances, inflowing money, famous friends and adoring female admirers,” observed one commentator.
But it was all too much. His marriage failed, his nerves shredded, a major mental breakdown in 1961, just as the Beatles got going. In October 1963 while in his mansion in Surrey Hills he wrote a note to his estranged wife Margie and then took 20 Nembutal sleeping capsules. Norman was just 38.
And this week, a similar outcome for another hugely successful singer – who had everything but nothing.
We read in the Old Testament how another young man was plucked from obscurity to find himself a leading celebrity – and who crashed spectacularly. So much was riding on him but the pressure was simply too much for him to handle.
It’s 1030BC and the nation of Israel needed a king – at least that’s what they thought. So the prophet Samuel summons the people at Mizpah, and there he begins a somewhat laborious process of elimination to find the right man.
“After Samuel got all the tribes of Israel lined up, the Benjamin tribe was picked. Then he lined up the Benjamin tribe in family groups, and the family of Matri was picked. The family of Matri took its place in the lineup, and the name Saul, son of Kish, was picked..” (1 Samuel 10:20).
However, when it came to his selection Saul was nowhere to be found. Then a moment of Biblical humour.
“Samuel went back to God: “Is he anywhere around?” God said, “Yes, he’s right over there—hidden in that pile of baggage. . Samuel then addressed the people, “Take a good look at whom God has chosen: the best! No one like him in the whole country!” (1 Samuel 10:22f)
Saul looked good; he was a natural celebrity. “He was as handsome a young man as could be found anywhere in Israel, and he was a head taller than anyone else.” (1 Samuel 9:1) Saul was also a great warrior. "Wherever he turned, he was victorious." (1 Samuel 14:47)
However, his failure as a king and as a person was total, even at the end toying with the occult before his tragic end as he falls on his own sword.
But that was the problem: Saul was tall, handsome and gifted. He seemed to have everything which meant there was little room in his life for God. Certainly he had no need – so he thought – to depend on God and rely on his faithfulness. There was always a viable alternative to trusting God, the most dangerous predicament we can find ourselves in.
As pastor Rick Warren warns us: “You never know God is all you need until God is all you have.”
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