(Sydney, December 6th, 2011)

Hi everybody,

“And so, this is Christmas….” (to quote the great John Lennon).

Yes it’s December 2011, and it’s been quite a year! For me 66 shows in a year is some kinda performance record (though I reckon in the 70’s I probably had at least one ‘just as busy’ year). I do remember UK tours with 3 shows a night in theatres, across 40 or so nights, and US tours with back to back travel overnight in buses for three months that made me dizzy. So perhaps superlatives should not be used here. Maybe it’s just a normal showbiz workload, but me and the Australian band have performed a total of 58 public shows throughout Australia shows this year, which is pretty full on for a 63 year old – so forgive me for feeling a little knackered!

While travelling, I’ve enjoyed reading all your comments during the past months. It seems you all enjoyed my shows, but to those of you outside Australia, I’m sorry I have not had the opportunity to play anywhere else this year (except of course the Colombo, Sri Lanka concert in June). Such has been the local demand, I suppose, so you could say that my gamble to re-locate down here has more than paid off. Still, I aim to rectify matters next year, and there are some 2012 UK and European shows under discussion right now.

I have to say a hearty thanks to my 2011 touring colleagues. My band: Paul Berton (guitars), Bill Risby (keyboards), Mark Kennedy (drums), and James Gillard (bass), have been great. And the horn section: Stewie Kirwan (Trumpet/Flugelhorn) and Ross Middleton (Sax/Flute), have been there with us on 18 of the shows as well – thanks guys! My crew: Damien Young (Sound Engineer/Production), Matthew ‘Falcon’ Mifsud (Stage Manager/Band Technician),  Andrew Johnson (Monitor Engineer, Trucking, P.A. and Lighting hire), Dylan Shepherd, Alex Foster and Lyndon Buckley (Lights), and Steve Copeland (Tour and Personnel Manager) all deserve hearty thanks. Thanks too to support act Andrew Lawson, ably accompanied by guitarist Gabor Josika. Together we have been one big happy family, and everywhere we travelled we’ve performed to fantastically enthusiastic audiences in packed venues. That’s what makes the job so worthwhile, in my book…

Indeed, the ‘40th Anniversary Tour’ has been a roaring success. Now we’re putting that to bed and planning 2012, including more shows, some exciting new projects, and a new record – so watch this space, as I’ll keep you all informed on the front page – as soon as my new dates, news and other activities come up…

For Christmas I have a new record out. It’s called “Coming Home For Christmas”, and I wrote and produced it, with the Australian live band supporting me. It tells the story of a soldier on the frontline in Afghanistan, about to be drafted home, but wishing he could take all the other soldiers with him… It’s already released here in Australia on the Myer “Spirit Of Christmas” album, and it’s also available as an online single in the UK on Cooking Vinyl. For the UK release, I’m donating all the profits to ‘Help For Heroes’ (a very worthy concern). Here’s the story of that: “http://www.music-news.com/shownews.asp?H=Leo-Sayer-announces-download-only-single-for-Help-For-Heroes-campaign&nItemID=45674“

I’ll sign out by wishing you all a great Christmas and very happy holidays (sunny ones, if you are in Australia or the tropics, or white ones for the folks up north). I’m off on a big break to Indonesia this week, and then to China (my first visit there, which is exciting), so I’ll wish you all love and peace for the festive season and a fabulous 2012, with all success and happiness you can possibly dream of!  I hope to see you all during ‘the year of the dragon’.

Thanks to you all – my very dear fans and followers…

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This is the new look ‘leo sayer.com’ – the official website and home of all things “leo”, so if it’s your first visit, here’s a few guidelines.

I think a website is like a virtual “world”, an entirely new home, an exhibition in the ether, and a different (and maybe fresh) way of looking at a life or career – well anyway, that’s the theory behind ‘leo’s room”.

Run your mouse or curser across the home page and you’ll see you can instantly locate various categories of the site by clicking and selecting highlighted images or icons.

These categories are also listed on top of the room, and here’s more on them:

News. You’ll find up to the moment news of my activities and my latest message to you on the news page.

Messages. The message page works much like before – here I invite you to send me a message, ask me questions, or create a forum or topic for discussion. Please keep your posts limited to one person per posting name. It’s not intended as a conversation page between friends – it’s a discussion group, so please when replying to a post, stick to the discussion topics. The site is monitored by the website facilitators (not only me) and we will remove multi posters who use more than one log in name, and all those who profess or pretend, incorrectly, to be the site moderators. Furthermore, we will not tolerate rudeness, offensive language, insults or bad manners, so if you want your message to be shown, you must adhere to these rules.

I will endeavour to reply to as many of your questions as frequently as I can.

Live news. This now has it’s own section too – with details of upcoming concerts and appearances.

Audio player. Here you can listen to tracks on the media player. This features a personal selection various tracks from the archives or recent live material, which will be updated from time to time.

Biography (The Story So Far). This has been carried over from the last edition of the site, and has the entire story of my life and career, with accompanying pictures.

Discography. It’s all new and details the hits and chart positions of my albums and singles in the U.K., the U.S.A., and Australia, also the territories they were released in.

Lyrics. Some of you may remember these pages from before, so I’ve brought ‘em back and brought them up to date – all the lyrics of every album and single track released are shown here.

Photographs. Here’s a new style gallery in an easily navigable format. It’s split into two categories: My career, and Recent Activities. I’ll be up dating these with new pics galleries from time to time.

Press Articles. I’ve been collecting these for some time, so I thought it’d be cool to share some of these with you. They run all the way from 1972 to the present day, telling my story from various other perspectives.

Store. Coming soon… Here there’ll be a chance to purchase merchandise like T-shirts, caps and other ‘leo’ branded items, and buy CD’s and DVD’s. We’ll supply and ship internationally from this site, so look out for this to be up and running soon.

Links. Here you can find other points of contact, for professional enquiries, bookings and such like. Also here are some of my favourite sites to visit, and the home sites of many of my favourite musicians and work colleagues.

I do hope you all enjoy the new pages and generally have fun with the material here.

“leosayer.com” has a truly international fan base, so I hope that the content here applies to all of you.

I can only apologise that if some of my releases are unknown to you, this is because they have not been made available worldwide. It’s just the way this business is, I’m afraid. Some territories don’t agree in taste with the other ones, but thanks to the web, the world is getting smaller and most of my releases can be found on the internet or by downloading, which I think is great.

Okay, that’s about it for now.  Keep watching this page for further developments ‘cos the ‘Show” is definitely still going on.

All the best….