WELL, here we come again! Or perhaps in your case - there we go again! Confused? Sorry. Let me explain. . .Almost immediately (it seemed) we finished filming Mrs. Brown we were off again - on another Stateside tour.
     Forty cities in 52 days! Ranging from Calgary up in Canada down to Honolulu in Hawaii. Did we see you? Did you see us? Let's hope so.
     Anyway, we were working on Mrs. Brown You've Got A Lovely Daughter (to give her her full title) almost literally up to the moment we boarded the 'plane for New York's Kennedy Airport. And after ten solid weeks (and by solid, I mean sometimes seven days a week) the boys and I were really sorry to say goodbye to her.
     It was a ball all the way through. To begin with, we had a really swinging director. SAUL SWIMMER. From Uniontown, Pennsylvania. Who's won loads of film awards and just finished a mammoth TV special on the life of MIKE (Around the World in 80 Days) TODD - with a cast that reads like a show biz Who's Who and narration by LIZ TAYLOR.
     Saul really spoke our language. I don't just mean English. I mean ours - yours and mine and the boys'. He said, right at the beginning, "This one's for the real HERMAN'S HERMITS fans. It's going to be exactly on their wavelength.
     "It's not a lot of old men making a picture about they they think young people are all about. It's for real."
     And we really think it is!
     The girls, for one thing, are wearing the most fabulous clothes - the way the birds in London are really wearing them. Or should I say will be wearing them?
     Because we had some of the finest fashion-magazine consultants advising us. So we're about a year and a half ahead in fashions!
     AND it's all in color!
     But Saul was so right about the music, too. You've seen some of those "pop films" with the groups just doing what everybody can see them doing on television? Or films where everything stops while the stars take time off from the plot to sing a song? Well, that's not for Saul.
     "The music's got to push the plot along," he decided. "I don't want this to come out 'stagey.' The music must never hold up the action."
     So though you'll be hearing us all right, we won't be "performing" at you. We'll be too busy getting on with the plot!
     But we've got eight originals in it. PLUS A Kind of Hush - we thought you'd like to hear that one again! - and of course the title song Mrs. Brown.
     Reason we had to work seven days a week is because Saul was so keen on location work. And so were we! It got us out of the studio on those sweltering summer days we seemed to keep having. And Sunday was usually the only day the places we chose were quiet enough (and empty enough of traffic and rubbernecks!) for us to get to work.
     You'll see a lot of London in the picture. In fact, a lot of London that a lot of Londoners (dig this prose style!) don't often see. (In fact - to be honest - a lot of London that I had never seen before.)
     We did a hilarious scene with STANLEY HOLLOWAY in Covent Garden Market - the great open space bang in the middle of town where all the fruit and vegetables for all of London's restaurants, hotels and shops arrive in the cold light of dawn.
     And there's shots of good old Father Thames very different from the picture postcards - the seedier bits, where the derelicts try to snatch a free night's kip. And shots of the real old pubs where the Cockneys still get up and belt out songs or do a Knees Up Mother Brown (different Mrs. Brown, this one!)
     Some of it was a revelation to me. And ALL of it was a revelation to Saul. Who'd never been to London before. (I bet he knows it better now than most Americans!)
     Of course, we just HAD to ask him did London really swing?
     He was a bit cagey at first. And of course, he didn't get much chance to go swinging. Like the rest of us at the end of the day, he'd just get home, take a bath, and conk out!
     But I heard a reporter ask him just this question. And he told him: "Boy, so far as this picture is concerned - I can assure you London really swings!
     As I said before, we really had a ball shooting it. But it was great to start this tour and get back to playing to real live audiences instead of just a camera. And great to come back to America - you know how I love traveling - on a tour that's taken us from East to West and far North to deep down in Hawaii.
     BUT!!!
     (Let me just whisper it!- It'll be great to have just a few days off, swimming and lying in the sun, when our tour ends in Hawaii in September!
     So long!

Just relaxing

After telling us not long ago that he'd given up smoking, it now seems Herman's started again!

While he was filming, Herman had to get up early every morning

The camera ready to roll, Herman quietly thinks over his lines.

Herman starts his special motorcycle which you'll be seeing in the film.

Filming over, Herman plays the maching in the studio canteen.