For a few short years in the early 80s, Ricky Gervais was a wannabe popstar. The duo he had with Bill Macrae was called Seona Dancing? Ring a bell? Nah, it comes up blanks with everyone.
Seona Dancing released two singles. Neither impacted but the first ‘More To Lose’ was a hit in the Philippines. The word on the street is that ‘More To Lose’ was as big as Peter Gabriel’s ‘In Your Eyes’ or Joy Division’s ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’ to Manilla teens at the time.
The second and final single ‘Bitter Heart’ did better in the UK than the first. It cracked the Top 100 reaching no 79 in 1983.
Seona Dancing are not on Spotify but you can find then on YouTube.
Gervais and Macrae formed Seona Dancing in 1982 when they were students at the University College London. Ricky sang, Bill played keyboards.
To put Seona Dancing into perspective, the biggest selling hit of 1982 in the UK was Dexy’s Midnight Runners ‘Come On Eileen’. It was the year Culture Club had their first ht with ‘Do You Really Want To Hurt Me’, Yazoo were breaking with ‘Only You’ and ‘Don’t Go’, ABC, Haircut 100 and Soft Cell were a thing and Duran Duran, Human League and Adam Ant were some of the biggest acts on the planet.
Ricky Gervais told Time in 2017 that he was glad he didn’t become a pop star because he would be dead now. Had be become a pop star there would not have been ‘The Office’ or ‘After Life’ either.
No-one seems to know what happened to Macrae. Word is he works in IT. When Gervais was asked about him on television recently his answer was “I hope he got fat too”.
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