Book – The Show Must Go On – Travels of the Tattoo Producer

Tippermuir Books have published a new book about the Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo.

This latest is written by former producer Brigadier Sir Melville Stewart Jameson, KCVO, CBE, CStJ offering his unique insight into the event which attracts 220,000 people to see it on the Castle Esplanade each August.

“By God! I don’t think it would have been done if I had not been there!” So said Wellington after Waterloo, the victory he called “a near-run thing”. Nor, perhaps, would the Edinburgh Military Tattoo have been done in 1995 if Brigadier Mel Jameson had not been there – in Perthshire, with a brigade to command too, as if that weren’t enough.

But he was willing to say ‘Yes’ when asked to take over when the producer suddenly fell ill – not conveniently at the last minute, but seven months out, when little had been settled, or even begun.

The 1995 Tattoo which followed was a triumph, and two years later Mel Jameson became its official producer.

Recognising that after the horrors of the Second World War the Edinburgh Tattoo had always been meant to show off the “scarlet, gold, musical and ceremonial” image of the British Armed Forces, he concluded that his mission must be to find the most interesting and exciting acts and bands from home and from overseas.

This is the story of his decade in that quest – the ups and downs, the pleasures and the pains, the dramas, delights and disappointments; the travel, the people, the sights and sounds. Few can have seen or heard what Sir Melville Jameson has. And all recounted with the lightest of light touches that has always been his trademark. 

Mel was born and brought up at his home in Perthshire and attended Glenalmond College. In 1965, he was commissioned into The Royal Scots Greys from the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. He commanded his regiment between 1986 and 1988. On promotion to brigadier, he was appointed Commander 51 Highland Brigade based in Perth in 1993. In 1995, however, he was selected to be the producer of The Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo, and, in 1997, he left the Army early to assume the official appointment of producer and chief executive. In 2007, he retired from The Tattoo but continued to act as a consultant for military musical events and tattoos across the world.

He co-produced the first Kremlin Tattoo on Red Square in Moscow in 2007. He was the producer of The Royal Windsor Tattoo under the direction of The Royal Windsor Horse Show. Later, he was consultant producer for The Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Pageant, Her Majesty’s 90th Birthday celebrations and her Platinum Jubilee celebration.

For many years, he was the senior adviser to The Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo and is presently the senior adviser to The Basel Tattoo in Switzerland.

The Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo: ‘The Show Must Go On’ Travels of The Tattoo Producer.