Our amazing Expressman Kretzmer, genius lyricist whose face we can’t forget

There were lots of reasons for us to see Les Miserables, the colossal hit musical that had its premiere exactly 40 years ago today. One of them was Rosemary Ashe.

Rosie, a classically-trained soprano and a fine actress, was married to my friend and neighbour Rod Jones, a colleague on the Daily Express. She played Madame Thénardier in the show that to date has earned £2.3 billion.

Another was that my two sons had French nationality as well as British and were studying in French schools. Surely an acquaintance with Victor Hugo’s sweeping 1862 novel, about a man with a criminal past searching for redemption, would do them good?

A third was that the man responsible for the show’s English lyrics was a former Daily Express theatre critic, Herbert Kretzmer. That was his day job (though invariably it was carried out at night).

He would occasionally poke his head round the door to the newsroom, revealing himself as an elegant dresser with a moustache and thinning crinkly hair, but while I was in the Popinjay or the Olde Bell of an evening, Kretzmer was sitting in the stalls of a West End theatre, notebook in hand, so I never actually met him.

But I liked his reviews – he covered first nights for 16 years – and I was fascinated by his sideline. Kretzmer wrote the lyrics for She, Charles Aznavour’s greatest hit. You know…

“She may be the face I can’t forget,

A trace of pleasure or regret”

A wonderful song. He also composed Yesterday, When I Was Young with Aznavour, which stayed at No. 1 for four weeks. It is said to have been drawn from the breakdown of Kretzmer’s first marriage.

And so we took our seats in the Balcony at the Palace Theatre one evening in the early Nineties and listened to Rosie’s soaring voice wrap itself around us.

Her character Madame Thénardier was the scheming wife of a mean-tempered innkeeper who passes himself off as a hero at the battle of Waterloo.

It was a great show, but long and complex. It provoked  a good deal of fidgeting by the younger members of the Dismore clan. When the curtain fell for the interval they jumped to their feet, relieved and eager to get home.

We had to explain gently that it was only half-time. “Oh, no,” wailed the younger son and burst into tears. I suppose there’s only so much culture we can take at that age.

Since that opening 40 years ago, Les Misérables has been seen by 150 million people and earned awards aplenty, including five Oliviers and eight Tonys to go with the £2.3 billion. It is now back in the West End.

But Kretzmer’s resentment at the way his role in the phenomenal hit show, produced by Cameron Mackintosh, was under-valued is only now coming to light. A piece in The Times by John Nathan last week revealed the backstage tensions.

Kretzmer (Herbie to his friends) who died in 2020, aged 95, was not first choice to pen the English lyrics for Les Mis, which incidentally was a short form that he hated.

The job went first to the poet James Fenton. But his words were deemed not to work. Then Mackintosh remembered that months earlier Kretzmer had pitched an idea to him. Mackintosh said no, but he had asked what else Kretzmer had done.

Of course Kretzmer, by then TV critic on the Daily Mail, had told him about the songs he came up with for Aznavour. Yes, that could work. Surely a man who could write such lyrics, which sat perfectly in the French musical tradition, could bring Victor Hugo alive.

Mackintosh told Nathan: “Herbie has a very strong moral compass as a person. He has the very quality to reflect in popular song and lyric the ethos of Victor Hugo.”

And so Kretzmer joined the team that made Les Miserables one of the most successful musicals of all time. Alain Boublil wrote the original French text; Claude-Michel Schönberg the music; and co-directors were Trevor Nunn and John Caird.

Nathan reveals that Kretzmer’s archive has been donated to Cambridge University Library – and it details the conflicts that went into making the show. Kretzmer was credited as a “translator”. But he wrote letter after letter over many years fighting for recognition of his own creativity.

Kretzmer was a star in Fleet Street but could not claim to be as big a player in the world of theatre as the others behind Les Mis. He left his Daily Mail job to write the show’s English lyrics in five months.

He was incensed by the poor reviews the show got and when he went back to the Mail, he found himself, in one of those quirks of Fleet Street fate, sitting opposite the man whose review hurt him most – Jack Tinker, who called the show “The Glums”.

They were “looking into each other’s eyes”, Kretzmer told Nathan.

“I forgave because I had to. He recanted years later.”

*****

Has there ever been a better TV series – so true, so gripping and so human – than Blue Lights?

The BBC drama set in Belfast follows the fortunes of police officers from their beginning as raw recruits. It is set in the present day but the plots are lent extra jeopardy by the gritty legacy of The Troubles. Expect ambush, car bombs and Kalashnikovs.

We are on Series Three and I’ve finished it already – devoured it with back-to-back episodes in three sittings. The plot concerns a ruthless drugs gang operating across the border with the republic.

As always, children are sucked into the criminal activities, as dealers or runners. And Belfast bigwigs with money but no moral compass are snared by their own depravity.

The writing, by Declan Lawn, Adam Patterson and Fran Harris, is novelistic in its breadth and owes some of its quirky detail to the show’s creators, Lawn and Patterson, quizzing real police officers before each new series.

It is brilliantly acted and it would be unfair to pick out any of the stars for special praise – they’re all that good. But Michael Smiley, as Detective Chief Inspector Paul “Colly” Collins, head of a police intelligence unit, is superb as a weary, cynical spook.

Roll on Series Four.

*****

The desperately sad news that rugby World Cup winner Lewis Moody has Motor Neurone Disease has ramifications far beyond his own dreadful plight.

It could be the last nail in the coffin of rugby as we know it. The game’s administrators are already facing a class action by more than 520 players who claim not enough was done to prevent or mitigate the concussions they suffered on the field.

Moody was known in the game as Mad Dog for his fearless tackling and his willingness to put his body in harm’s way. He never flinched, never shirked. Now he is paying the price.

He has not so far joined the class action, saying: “My decisions were my decisions. I was a lunatic on a rugby pitch.”

But he supports the action brought by fellow players including his team-mate Steve Thompson, who says he has no memory of the 2003 World Cup final he helped to win.

Whether Moody, who spoke bravely and movingly to the BBC about his diagnosis, changes his mind or not, he will be seen as a high profile victim of the sport’s macho culture, which puts great value on shuddering collisions and “big hits”.

Those who run the game fear the far-reaching, perhaps existential consequences if they lose the court fight to come.

I love rugby. I played as a schoolboy and I took my sons to play mini-rugby for London Scottish, coached sometimes by the great Gavin Hastings.

They were looked after with scrupulous care. Even so, I’m not sure I would feel wholly comfortable with them playing now. The whole point of rugby is collision and we now know beyond doubt how dangerous that is.

*****

France has lost another Prime Minister. He was their fifth in two years – and he lasted a month.

They’re getting through them faster than the Daily Express got through editors.

It’s not just France, though. Our own PM, Sir Keir Starmer, is staring down the barrel as MPs become restive over Labour’s dire showing in the polls.

The official leader of the Opposition, Kemi Badenoch, is said to be in trouble too. Half of Conservative Party members want rid of her before the next General Election.

Only Reform UK’s Nigel Farage is feeling secure. There’s no one else remotely capable of selling their policies the way he does.

I’m no fan of Starmer. But what’s the alternative? Angela Rayner? Andy Burnham? David Lammy? Sadiq Khan? Purrr-lease! Be careful what you wish for.

As for Badenoch, she can do it. She’s a proper Tory. Give her time.

And that’s the point here. Democracy has changed. Everyone wants everything fixed NOW. No one’s in any mood for patience. They all want instant gratification. Our leaders are realising that while they might be in power, they’re not in control.

Thinking about this, I can’t help recalling the quote by Jean-Claude Juncker, head of the European Commission, that appeared in the Daily Drone recently: “We all know what to do, but we don’t know how to get re-elected once we have done it.”

*****

I took No. 2 son for lunch in our local. We ordered at the bar and I asked for steak pie with mashed potatoes and mushy peas.

The barman looked at me and said: “No chewing, then.”

He’s lucky he said it with a sly smile.

RICHARD DISMORE

8 October 2025