The Keith Moon story is a movie in waiting, both a comedy and a tragedy episode artwork

EPISODE · Apr 10, 2026 · 47 MIN

The Keith Moon story is a movie in waiting, both a comedy and a tragedy

from Word In Your Ear

The life of Keith Moon can be seen as Animal from the Muppets or as a dark, psychological odyssey. And the two co-exist in Tony Fletcher’s magnificent ‘Dear Boy’, first published in 1998, never out of print and now ‘remastered’ with new pictures, updates, epilogues and a foreword by Mandy Moon who “has to keep reminding myself this person was my father”. Tony looks back here at events along the way, many of which now seem unimaginable. Among them … … fact versus fiction: his fudged birthdate, his hidden marriage, the Roller in the swimming-pool … Tony’s meeting with Moon two months before he died … the letters to his wife Kim when touring America   … Mel Gibson, Mike Myers, Jason Schwartzman, all once in line to play Keith onscreen … “I killed a man”: the terrible incident with his chauffeur … the legs in the bath, the head in the bed, the loudspeaker in the bushes: the punchline of all his pranks was “someone’s going to suffer” … “working-class rock stars who conquered the world like pirates without a map” … would things have been different if he’d been hailed as a pioneering drummer? … the times he met Larry Hagman and Oliver Reed … do book publishers look down on drummers the way musicians do? … to Golders Green with Viv Stanshall in German uniforms and an open-topped car: #DifferentTimes … and a sad and telling moment on the Stardust film shoot. Order copies of ‘Dear Boy’ here: https://omnibuspress.com/products/dear-boy-the-life-of-keith-moon-omnibus-remastered?_pos=1&_psq=dear+boy&_ss=e&_v=1.0Help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourearHelp us to keep The Longest Continuous Conversation In Rock'n'Roll going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The life of Keith Moon can be seen as Animal from the Muppets or as a dark, psychological odyssey. And the two co-exist in Tony Fletcher’s magnificent ‘Dear Boy’, first published in 1998, never out of print and now ‘remastered’ with new pictures, updates, epilogues and a foreword by Mandy Moon who “has to keep reminding myself this person was my father”. Tony looks back here at events along the way, many of which now seem unimaginable. Among them … … fact versus fiction: his fudged birthdate, his hidden marriage, the Roller in the swimming-pool … Tony’s meeting with Moon two months before he died … the letters to his wife Kim when touring America   … Mel Gibson, Mike Myers, Jason Schwartzman, all once in line to play Keith onscreen … “I killed a man”: the terrible incident with his chauffeur … the legs in the bath, the head in the bed, the loudspeaker in the bushes: the punchline of all his pranks was “someone’s going to suffer” … “working-class rock stars who conquered the world like pirates without a map” … would things have been different if he’d been hailed as a pioneering drummer? … the times he met Larry Hagman and Oliver Reed … do book publishers look down on drummers the way musicians do? … to Golders Green with Viv Stanshall in German uniforms and an open-topped car: #DifferentTimes … and a sad and telling moment on the Stardust film shoot. Order copies of ‘Dear Boy’ here: https://omnibuspress.com/products/dear-boy-the-life-of-keith-moon-omnibus-remastered?_pos=1&_psq=dear+boy&_ss=e&_v=1.0Help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourearHelp us to keep The Longest Continuous Conversation In Rock'n'Roll going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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The Keith Moon story is a movie in waiting, both a comedy and a tragedy

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This episode is 47 minutes long.

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This episode was published on April 10, 2026.

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The life of Keith Moon can be seen as Animal from the Muppets or as a dark, psychological odyssey. And the two co-exist in Tony Fletcher’s magnificent ‘Dear Boy’, first published in 1998, never out of print and now ‘remastered’ with new pictures,...

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