Artist News

Rick Astley doesn’t mind being called Dick Spatsley

By Andy Malt | Published on Friday 10 June 2016

It’s something we’ve all wondered at some point over the last 25 odd years, did Rick Astley mind being repeatedly called Dick Spatsley by Smash Hits back in his (and its) heyday? The answer, for your information, is “no”.

I mean, obviously it’s no. How many times has Rick Astley shown that he’s fine with jokes that he’s the butt of? He once turned up to accept an award for being the greatest artist of all time, knowing fully that it was a joke and no one thought that. So, yeah, “Dick Spatsley”, just another little thing that Rick thinks is a bit of a laugh.

“I even credited one of the songs I’d written to Dick Spatsley”, he tells the BBC. “So Dick has earned quite a bit of publishing royalties over the years, actually”.

Just in case you’re a cynical type (unlike us), thinking now, ‘Oh yeah, right. I bet he’s just putting a brave face on it’, a quick search confirms that there is a songwriter registered with PRS called Dick Spatsley, responsible for co-writing ‘The Love Has Gone’ from Astley’s 1987 album ‘Whenever You Need Somebody’.

Asked if he has any other pseudonyms, he adds: “I met Nick Ashley, the fashion designer, years ago and we realised that both of us get mistaken for each other. Especially in Japan – because his name is pretty hard to pronounce there, and so is mine. I’ve been called ‘Lick Ashtray’ in Japan”.

To our knowledge, Lick Ashtray has no songwriting credits.