Charlie Landsborough

Telephone Lines, Flour Mills and an Army Posting to Germany

He left school early. The jobs that followed, as he and several interviewers have listed them, took in an apprenticeship as a telephone engineer, work as a navvy on the railways, shifts in the flour mills, a post round, a grocery store and a spell in quality control. "When I left school I did a succession of jobs," he told the News Letter in 2018.

He joined the army in March 1961 and stayed just over four years. Posted to West Germany in 1962, he played in bands made up of other soldiers, the Rockavons and the Onions. After his discharge he went back to Germany and auditioned for a group called The Chicago Sect in Dortmund. He spent about nine months there, and during that time he married Thelma, whom he had first seen as a teenager in Birkenhead. In his account she bought his wedding suit with a cheque from her mother, and the couple celebrated afterwards in a local pub called Murphys.

Twenty-Two Years at The Pacific Pub

Back on Merseyside he formed a duo, first with Kenny McGunigall and later with Dave Carter, and became the resident performer at The Pacific Pub in Birkenhead for 22 years. In 1972 he and McGunigall sang "The Long And Winding Road" on Hughie Green's talent show Opportunity Knocks and finished second, behind a group called Airborne. He went solo in 1984.

The pub years shaped the act he later took into concert halls. He told the Irish News that for 22 years he "just played in the pubs and clubs and never said a word." He started telling short stories between songs to lighten the set, and only understood how much they mattered when a man from Derbyshire told him after a show that he had hardly told any stories, "and that's all I came for." The stories stayed in the show from then on.

In 1990 he recorded an 11-track cassette of his own songs, "Heaven Knows," in a studio in Bolton and sold it at gigs. Other singers were recording his material by then. His "I Will Love You All My Life" became a hit for Foster and Allen, and George Hamilton IV, who also recorded it, called him his favourite British songwriter.

Portland School and the Assembly Song "My Forever Friend"

He trained as a teacher from 1975 and qualified late in 1978, then took his first full-time post in early 1980. He taught at Portland Primary School on Laird Street in Birkenhead, which the News Letter called Portland Combined School. The screenwriter Jimmy McGovern trained as a teacher at the same time, Wirral Council's news site reported in 2026.

He wrote songs for the pupils to sing at assembly. One of them became a signature song. "We were doing a school assembly on the theme of friendship, so I thought I'd write a song for it," he told Jenny Lee of the Irish News. The title came from a card his sister Joyce once signed "To Charlie, my forever friend." A boy called Paddy sang "My Forever Friend" in front of the whole school, and then Landsborough put it away for years. He brought it back on an Easter Sunday at a country music club, thinking a gospel song suited the day, and the response surprised him.

"What Colour Is The Wind," about a blind child trying to picture the world, had a similar near miss. Other artists asked for it. "I remember my wife saying to me 'if you give that song away I will strangle you,'" he told the Irish News, so he recorded it himself.

Kenny Live and the Week Garth Brooks Lost Number One

He signed his first record contract in 1992, with Mick Clerkin at Ritz Records, and "What Colour Is The Wind" became the title track of his first album there. Sources differ on the year of what followed. Wirral Council's news site and the News Letter date the break to 1994, and the Irish News quotes him crediting Ireland with his "musical salvation" in 1994. The Irish Farmers Journal places it in 1995, and his official biography says his big break came in 1995.

The Farmers Journal version starts with a disappointment. He was due to support Foster and Allen on tour, and the support slot was cut from the bill. He made a quick call to RTE instead and ended up singing live on a show presented by Pat Kenny. Other accounts add that Gerry Anderson had already played the song on BBC radio in Northern Ireland, which brought it to Kenny's attention.

He went home to Birkenhead and kept teaching. His son picked him up and told him he was in the Irish charts. "I was like: 'What am I, 98?'" he told the Farmers Journal. "He said: 'No dad, you're second.'" A week after the Kenny Live appearance the album "What Colour Is The Wind" was at number one in Ireland, the music listings site TE reported in 2005, displacing Garth Brooks and holding off Celine Dion and The Chieftains. He was 53, according to Wirral Council's account. "I taught about six days after that. They gave me early retirement and off I went on the road," he said.

At the UK Country Awards in 1995 the song won best single and best song by a British songwriter, and the album won best album by a British act. He later became the 25th inductee into the British Country Music Hall of Fame, in 2011, and released a live album with the Liverpool Philharmonic in 2016.

Ritz, Telstar and the 2009 Return of His Copyrights

The success came with a contract that cost him control of the recordings. His official biography says he signed the world copyright of his Ritz albums over to the label, along with some of the songs he wrote while signed there. When Ritz UK went into liquidation in 2000 or 2001, owing money to creditors including him, the back catalogue passed to Rosette Productions, the renamed Ritz Ireland.

He moved to Telstar Records in 2001 and again signed over the world copyright. Telstar went into liquidation in 2004, and this time he bought those albums back from the liquidator. He then signed with Clerkin's new company, Rosette Records, and licensed the former Telstar catalogue to it. In 2009 the two men agreed to return the world copyright of all his albums to him, and in 2010 he signed with Demon Records, which repackaged the catalogue. The official count stands at 22 albums, two comedy albums and three DVDs.

"No, I'm From Birkenhead": The Opry, the Farewell Tour and the Freedom of Wirral

He appeared for three nights on the Grand Ole Opry as George Hamilton IV's special guest, according to his official biography. When the Mayor of Wirral, Brian Kenny, presented him with the borough's highest honour in 2026, he told guests that the Opry had introduced Landsborough as being from Liverpool and that he had corrected it in front of the audience: "no, I'm from Birkenhead."

In late 2018 he announced that he would stop touring after a last run of Irish dates in January 2019. "It is an elongated farewell and I could maybe be coaxed back," he told the News Letter. "I made the decision with great regret and sadness but there comes a time when you have to call it a day."

He still lives near Birkenhead, in a house he used to walk past on his way to school as a teacher who could not afford the bus fare. "It's not a mansion but it's far better than anything I thought I'd ever have," he told the Irish Examiner. He describes himself in the same interview as a Pentecostal who prays every night. He and Thelma have three adult sons and, as of 2017, five grandchildren.

In 2024 a local vote picked him to be painted on the side of Birkenhead North railway station by the artist Paul Curtis. In March 2026 an extraordinary meeting of Wirral Council agreed to make him an Honorary Freeman of the Borough, and the ceremony followed at Wallasey Town Hall, with Ricky Tomlinson and Jimmy McGovern among the guests. Accepting it, he thanked Thelma and his family and called it one of the best days of his life.

Sources

• Biography
• Charlie Landsborough bestowed with borough's top honour | Wirral View
• Charlie Landsborough takes to the road again
• Charlie's last tour before he hangs up his guitar
• What Colour Is The Wind singer Charlie Landsborough makes Irish return - The Irish News
• Charlie Landsborough: The power of perseverance - 10 January 2018 Premium
• The shape I'm in: Charlie Landsborough
• TE Archive - CHARLIE LANDSBOROUGH - Musician At The Top