The One and Only popstar Chesney Hawkes opened up to Matt Haycox about his taste of terror at 37,000 feet on a flight from Greece to Barcelona that he feared could have been his last.
It began when all the masks fell down. The passengers looked at each other and muttered about a malfunction.
“Put your masks on!”
“Then suddenly the stewardess came running down the aisle screaming: “Put your masks on! put your masks on!” recalls Hawkes.
“So we all put them on angrily. Then we felt the plane drop, the nose went down and sideways and all of our ears went pop, you know… It was rattling so much, things were falling out and bottles falling on the floor, things were smashing in the galley and the pilot said to us over the intercom: ‘ Emergency descent! emergency descent! – brace! Brace!”
“It looked like we were heading into the sea.”
It was about to get worse.
“I looked out the window and saw the plane banking way, way more than I’d ever seen a plane bank…it literally looked like we were heading into the sea. My wife and I looked at each other and said this shit is real,” says Hawkes.
We are all going to die!
“People were making the sign of the cross, a baby was screaming, a woman behind me was praying to baby Jesus. It was pandemonium and at this point the stewardess, who I said had lost her shit, she was screaming at a guy who was filming – a couple of people were filming obviously and I don’t know how you can do that. She’s literally screaming in Greek and I found out from the guy next to me said she was saying: ‘We are all going to die! The plane is going down and you are filming.’ She was annoyed at the fact he was filming, she then proceeded to lie on the floor in the foetal position with her mask on – it was just crazy.”
The son of a pop star
If you want to know how Hawkes escaped by the skin of his teeth from this nightmare, you will have to listen to the podcast.
Hawkes – who was named after singer and comedian Chesney Allen – grew up in music long before he had a hit with the Nik Kershaw penned song I am the One and Only. His father is Chip Hawkes – the bass player for the Tremeloes – the band that sang Silence is Golden.
When Hawkes was growing up, pop stars like Gerry Marsden and Peter Noone were around the house.
Auditioning before the Who
Hawkes always wanted music – the only other job he had was as a paperboy. When he was 17, his father gave him the summer to make money from music and he never looked back.
Listen out for the story where he was playing “That’s All Right Mama” by Elvis Presley in an audition, for The One and Only film, in front of Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey of The Who. Priceless.
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