The Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo: ‘The Show Must Go On’: ‘The Show Must Go On’ Travels of The Tattoo Producer
‘By God! I don’t think it would have been done if I had not been there!’ So said Wellington after Waterloo, the victory he called ‘a near-run thing’. Nor, perhaps, would the Edinburgh Military Tattoo have been done in 1995 if Brigadier Mel Jameson had not been there – in Perthshire, with a brigade to command too, as if that weren’t enough. But he was willing to say ‘Yes’ when asked to take over when the producer suddenly fell ill – not conveniently at the last minute, but seven months out, when little had been settled, or even begun. Needless to say, the 1995 Tattoo was a triumph, and two years later Mel Jameson became its official producer. Recognising that after the horrors of the Second World War the Edinburgh Tattoo had always been meant to show off the ‘scarlet, gold, musical and ceremonial’ image of the British Armed Forces, he concluded that his mission must be to find the most interesting and exciting acts and bands from home and from overseas. This is the story of his decade in that quest – the ups and downs, the pleasures and the pains, the dramas, delights and disappointments; the travel, the people, the sights and sounds. Few can have seen or heard what Sir Melville Jameson has. And all recounted with the lightest of light touches that has always been his trademark. The Show Must Go On is a rare treat indeed.