The Novello Awards

Nick Hemming a guitarist and song writer, virtually unknown until recently when his song was put up to the Ivor Novello Awards, is likely to win over two other songs by more famous groups/people - Elbow and the Last Shadow Puppets.
I wrote a small booklet some years back on the life of Ivor Novello and wondered if there was any interest out there in the great wild pop-loving world in the man himself; so I asked some young people in the local pub and discovered that no one knew who he was, though the barmaid said she had heard of the Ivor Novello awards.
Nick Hemming's attempt at breaking into the big time reflects Ivor Novello's own big break with what was his first song, or one of his early ones. His mother, a famous chorus leader in the early part of the 20th Century told Ivor that she intended to write a patriotic song for the troops at the front in the First World War. She intended to call it "The Flags are a'flying". Ivor was horrified at the thought that she might make an absolute fool of herself so he wrote one himself: "Keep the Home Fires Burning" which became a tremendously successful song, financially for Ivor Novello as well as for John McCormick, the famous Irish tenor who recorded it and made, he himself said, £20 000, a goodly sum in those days.
Let's hope Nick Hemming, an unassuming young man who has no great ambitions to be famous but no doubt would welcome some "ready", is similarly successful with his song: "The Last of the Melting Snow".
Good title.