edit: What t thread this is turning into. Meanwhile someone's taken the WP:JK job. But further opinions can continue to be included, likely thru the week-end.

re: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_King

Reality sets in...
& though perhaps Mr. Jonathan Kings's (JK) Wikipedia (WP) bio has been slanderous in the past, as of this January it's settled down substantially. It's been a *stable as well as an apparently balanced article for some months so I've just given it a GAN (Good Article Nomination)- for *NPOV (Neutral Point of View [-&w/a polymorphously perverse subject]) as well as for being *well-written & *broad. *Accuracy though is one aspect I am not most fit to judge...

But most _anyone_ is welcome to voice an opinion; & JK's bio is now open for review for this "Good Article" distinction. Add your opinion, following the GA criteria*, to the bottom of the discussion page at:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Jonathan_King .

Any Editor (ie., any reader bothering to register) & not having already contributed substantially to the article may contribute to this GA-review process.

Meanwhile in a better world, JK's EuroCourt case could stand to make a precedent promoting a more loving world of pre-Xtian, Hellenist values. Anyone wishing to include more substantial edits in the web's #1 reference site, but without jeopardizing neutrality may suggest changes on the discussion page only. We'll see what we can do.

_________________________
* - GA criteria as found at
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Good_article_criteria ).

I got a bit confused here..are you asking for someone to edit his entry ?

It seems to read OK to me...fairly straighforward.
I can be a bit naughty with these wikipedia entries..I've altered a few and some have stayed for months. I'm never nasty or horrible though...just like to prick a few of the pompous ones.

Like the poltiican whose entry I added about his passion in goat herding in Mongolia and charity work with the locals and his alternative wife and children who ran the goat farm for him. Months later a journalist asked him how he bacame interested in goats !

I'm mentioned in 2 entries but ony in passing. Those link thingies they have send the reader to a Norweigan professor !.God only knows what he'd think if he read about me !! (being him)

An altrative

http://www.encyclopediadramatica.com/Jonathan_king

his name temporarily escapes me..the actor pictured with the impossible hair?

Someone told me today that Lady Ga Ga is a sex-change..anyone know?

Peter Wyngarde (who played Jason King).

veritas wrote:
his name temporarily escapes me..the actor pictured with the impossible hair?

Someone told me today that Lady Ga Ga is a sex-change..anyone know?

I always thought that Ga Ga was Xtina Aguillera's alter ego. Very simillar vocals and share the same number of earlobes.

No...., the Wikipedia article on Jonathan King (WP:JK) does not lack for vandalism. Be assured JK's suffered more than his share of WP hate.
What the article could use is *more* like this from a recent visitor, who wrote this earnest [but perhaps incomplete] response to my request:

"Excellent article; the above Good Article Nomination (GAN) link was posted on several popular boards and led me here. Fair, balanced, well written, informative. Thank you.
—Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.251.195.18 (12June 2009)"

I'm asking this sort of response be posted at the end of the article's discussion page (I already gave this link:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Jonathan_King
Just go to the bottom, clicky on 'edit' and spew- following these five Good Article criteria: Well-written: Factually accurate & verifiable: Broad in coverage: Neutral: & Illustrated.

It's all brutally simple considering the influence at stake.

Just to be clear about all this, I am not a contributor to WP:JK. But I'd like to think it would mean something to those Editors who have slaved, some for years, on this persistently annoying little article, to have the world acknowledge the sincerity in their effort.

If any of this is still making sense, then I suspect one of us may be drinky and fit to retire.

Many thanks, O brave and friendly humans
&/or WP Editors

my apologies..now I fully understand what you are requesting.

I must formally join Wikpedia as a contributer as I have written profiles of 2 well known people in the past and updated several with factual information.

I must cease my mischieviousness but it was only done to others who speak in public without proof and make exagerated claims about others who cannot fight back-such as 2 radio "shock-jocks" and a particularly vile politician who has since been voted out.

One should always be careful though as things can come true.

I wrote of one shock jock -taking my cue from the late but lovable Sir Dai Llewelyn who was constantly short of cash and sold his life story to the NoTW several times, that a particular famous friend of his constantly suffered from piles but then "he always had problems with that part of his body" (a hint that he was also gay)

I included something along the same lines about a rather creepy shock jock who has since been brought out of the closet in a biography which included tales of his time as a school teacher where boys would literally wet themselves because of his fierce temper and tendencency to fling blackboard dusters at a lad to strike them in the head.

I also wrote that he had 'wowed an audience at the school's 1971 annual concert with his rendition of "If I ruled The World" delivered in very fetching purple bell-bottomed pants'- a song I thought summed up his character nicely,

Oddly-that entry remained for over 12 months but the "piles" reference disappeared after a week and I've since heard he was suffering from prostrate cancer.

One should be careful of what one wishes for.

Here is an interesting blast from the past that would look good on Jonathan King's Wikipedia page. It's the transcript of his interview by John Pitman on BBC Television’s “Man Alive” colour documentary film “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star”, a report on the weenybopper phenomenon filmed in July, 1973. Although the film primarily concerned itself with EMI’s very expensive launch of the subsequently tragically ill-fated eleven years old ex-choirboy from Southgate, Middlesex, Darren Burn, it also took a short look at his weenybopper rivals Ricky Wilde and The James Boys.

“Ricky Wilde’s mentor is Cambridge graduate Jonathan King, successful singer, producer and manufacturer of stars. Ricky Wilde is getting the big build-up and Jonathan King is confident he’ll succeed and become the British weenybopper superstar. King’s also smart enough to keep an ear open on the opposition.

JONATHAN KING: There was a record called Over And Over by The James Boys that Larry Page produced which I think was the best actual pop record of the whole crop and was very nearly a hit. It was a smallish hit, not because of the boys being particularly brilliant, but as I just said earlier because it was a very strong record with a strong tune.

JOHN PITMAN: What about Darren Burn?

JONATHAN KING: I know nothing about him. He sounds as though he can sing nicely on the record (Something’s Gotten Hold Of My Heart), but I think the arrangement is dreary and I think that it’s been too recently a hit song to happen again personally, but I may be wrong there. Again, Darren Burn was launched in a welter of publicity saying vast million pound sums spent on this, that, promotion and so on. To me, this is the wrong way to do it. If you’ve got a star, don’t spend hundreds of millions of pounds trying to launch them in the first place, let them emerge naturally. Let them come through if they’ve got star quality, because there’s nothing worse than trying to hype someone into being a star because you can’t. If someone will be a star, they will be a star. If they’ve got that quality, the only way to make them into a star is to nurture that quality slowly but surely.”

Unfortunately for Darren Burn and EMI, events proved Jonathan King only too right. But Ricky Wilde never made an impression on the charts, either.

True but Ricky's I Am An Astronaut was huge in Scandinavia, has recently been covered by Snow Patrol and Ricky went onto become the successful writer and producer behind his big sister Kim.

And, I think, turned out a happy and fulfilled older man.

I'm pleased to hear that, JK. If only we could say the same thing about Darren Burn. The poor lad never recovered from the intense feeling of failure he felt when all that expensive hype came to nothing, which led to depression, drug addiction and eventually suicide at the early age of 30. As for The James Boys, I have no idea what became of them.

Any idea what happened to his Dad Colin, who worked for EMI?

Incidentally I would never again try to promote, produce or develop anyone under the age of 16. It is simply not fair on them.

Someone answered that very query when I put it on an Internet website. They said they were working with Colin Burn at EMI at the time of Darren's singles being made in 1973 and that Colin had moved to South Africa in the early 1990's following Darren's death. I don't know whether that's true, but I have done searches on various electoral role databases and according to those, there is no Colin Richard Burn listed as living in the United Kingdom at the present time.

Was "Something’s Gotten Hold Of My Heart" produced by Biddu?

No, Darren's two 1973 singles, Something's Gotten Hold Of My Heart (July) and Is It Love (November), were produced by Eric Woolfson, who also appears in the Man Alive film (which I have on a private DVD-R...hence my ability to transcribe JK's interview accurately) and they were recorded in Studio 2 at EMI's Abbey Road Studios in London. But his two 1974 EMI singles, Teenage Lover (April) and Summertime Time (June), were produced by Biddu. There may have been another single, as there is an unusual gap of six months between the Is It Love and Teenage Lover releases. However, if there was, I've not been able to find out what it was.

By the way, JK, I had forgotten about Ricky Wilde's I Am An Astronaut (his best single in my opinion) being a hit in Sweden...it does mention that on the Man Alive film...what I should have said was that he never entered the British charts in those days. Incidentally, he could have had a big hit with his rendition of his dad's old hit, Bad Boy, the acetate of which you played on the Man Alive film and it sounded really good. But for some reason, when the single of Bad Boy by Ricky Wilde was released on the UK label, it was a different song altogether. Perhaps Decca, who pressed all the UK label singles in those days, had pressed the wrong record with the right label.

There is no single by Darren Burn between EMI 2096 and EMI 2132.
My demo copy of the latter gives a release date of March 18, 1974.

I am in indirect contact with Eric Woolfson so will try to discover Colin Burn's whereabouts

Thanks for your reply, MikeMacca and the info. Strange that it should give the release date on your copy of EMI 2132 as March 18th, 1974, as, although I do have demo copies of the first two singles and regular copies of the last two, I do have an image of the label of an EMI 2132 demo copy grabbed off eBay and on that one, the date on the centre of the label is clearly printed as (1.4.74). Very odd, that. I wonder if the April date is for an export copy.

I have also been in contact with Eric Woolfson and James by email in the past year or so and I sent him a DVD-R copy of the Man Alive film in which he appears. He has been very helpful with info about those days of the early 1970's concerning Darren, although he didn't know that Darren was dead until I told him and he hadn't seen him since 1974. He also sent me some EMI publicity items concerning Darren from his archives, together with newspaper pages from the Daily Mirror and Sunday Mirror, which was very kind of him. He told me he remembers Darren as a delightful; charming and talented young man who showed tremendous promise at a very early age.

I suspect the release date was delayed as often happened. Cockney rebel's "Judy Teen" was released the same day and also got delayed a fortnight. The postmen were probably on strike !

Colin and Johanna Burn's house (the one used in the documentary) was at 17, Queen Elizabeth's Drive, Enfield, London, Greater London, N14 6RG. It sold in November 2007 for £605.000

EMI had another boy singer around the same time, one Jeffrey Hooper, who also released a few singles with no success

Yes, it took me many years to find out the location of that house featured in the Man Alive film. Eric Woolfson couldn't remember whereabouts in Southgate (Borough of Enfield) it was, either. Then, I had a bit of luck. A fellow member of The Mausoleum Club Forum had a 1973 telephone book for London and he said only one Colin Burn was listed in it and that was at 17, Queen Elizabeth's Drive, Southgate. So he and two other members, who lived only a few miles from Southgate, very kindly went last July (2008) to the address and photographed it for me with digital cameras and sent the pictures to me by email. On receiving them, I confirmed that it was indeed the same house.

Last November, thinking that they would be very interested, as it contains footage of the exterior and interior of their house as it looked in July, 1973, I sent a DVD-R copy of the Man Alive film to the present occupants of the house, explaining just who used to live there and all about the BBC Television programme being made there. Whether they received it, I don't know. But they certainly never acknowledged it.

After much research, I now know all but three of the locations featured in the film. These are Jonathan King's office where he is seem with Ricky Wilde and where he is interviewed about Darren; Larry Page's office where he is interviewed about The James Boys and Music Star magazine's office where editor Drew Smith is interviewed about Darren.

DR2, have you any information about how much money EMI spend on the marketing of Darren Burns (and other Weeny Boppers)? Thanks!