On October of 2014, we did a short promotional trip to New York and London, making some TV appearances to promote an upcoming tour set to take place the following year.
On October 3rd, we flew to London to do a couple of tunes on the Ken Bruce Show for BBC radio, followed a couple of days later by a bit on Graham Norton's Show. The other guests on that show were to be John Cleese and Taylor Swift.
I settled into my place at my keyboard and soon Ms. Swift arrived at the studio. She walked directly in fron my station at the keyboard on her way to the desk where Mr. Norton was planted. I remember feeling somewhat intimidated by the sheer length of her legs, which were longer than my attention span. Which, in turn, led me to a moment of reflective inspiration.
If Graham Norton really wanted to have some fun with his guests, I conjectured, he would be well-served to have Mr. Cleese teach Ms. Swift how to do his epic “Ministry of Silly Walks” bit. It seemed that this could be the greatest piece of business involving the use of legs east of the Rockettes.
I continued to imagine that scenario for most of the time we were doing the show, but there was no one to whom I could float my suggestion, and I saw little likelihood that anyone would care to react to a crazy idea from the piano player, so I swallowed my thought and played my part. (I did, however, manage to grab a photo of myself seated on the show’s set, which sharp-eyed viewers might be able to recognize on the cover of my “Jazz Time” album.)
But to this day, whenever I look at the video of our appearance on the Graham Norton Show, I stubbornly cling to my vision of Taylor Swift’s impressive legs in the Cleese pose pictured here. You’ll have to do the same, because it's never going to happen.