Graham Mabbutt, best known in Bedford as the man who navigated the John Bunyan Boat project to become the most successful town centre tourism operation, has died after a long illness.
With Graham at the helm of the organisation, the boat has taken 40,000 people on trips on the River Great Ouse, repaid all its start-up loans, recruited scores of volunteers and most recently won the Queen’s Award for Voluntary Service
in May.
Earlier, Graham and team won a Pride in Bedfordshire award in 2013 for Raising the Profile of the Town.However, there was very much more to Graham – his home was decorated with Silver, Gold and Platinum discs dating back to his days in the record business. And his collection of 5,000 ‘vinyls’ would spin the heads of today’s retro collectors.
Graham started selling record players in the Co-Op in Abingdon Street, Northampton in the late 1950s becoming Manager of the Record Bar in 1965. In 1969 he moved to Carlow Radio (a familiar name to older Bedford record buyers). There he worked with a young man who now runs the Motown discos on the John Bunyan Boat: DJ Keith Stewart.
In 1973 Graham joined Magnet Records where his first big job was promoting the newly named Alvin Stardust (formerly known as Shane Fenton) and his record My Coo Ca Choo, followed by the No 1 Jealous Mind. Other groups at the time were Bad Manners and Match Box.
When interviewed by ‘Beds Bulletin’ in 2019, Graham talked about his career in the music business: “As regional promotions manager it was my job to get all these new commercial stations to play our records – giving free copies to DJs. Eventually I became General Manager of Magnet Records. During the 1980s our biggest name was Chris Rhea and I put together an album of his greatest hits: New lights through Old windows.
“Company owner Michael Levy became a millionaire when he sold to Island Records. He is better known now as Lord Levy supporter of Tony Blair. I stayed on at Island for a six month hand-over working on the new look CDs as well as cassette tape and record packaging.”
As the music business was spinning off in new directions, Graham came to land locally in politics for the LibDems, first as a parliamentary candidate in Northampton, then Milton Keynes and finally Mid Beds. He served as a Councillor for Olney until 2006 including as Cabinet Member for Transport and Strategic Planning – gaining useful insights in setting the course for the waterway project which he had joined in 2002 as a volunteer.
From 2002-2011 he worked as a paid political adviser in Northamptonshire where his skills in consensus-building were put to good use. Then he ‘retired’ to Lavendon, Milton Keynes and devoted his time to the boat project.
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