But, when the call finally came from Andy Stephens in the winter of 2005, there were some in the Erskine Road office who took the news lightly.

They were heard to say, “Oh yeah?” This time though pop’s most reluctant superstar was deadly serious. He wanted to launch a tour to beat them all, in order to celebrate his 25 years in the business. And he wanted Marshall Arts to mastermind it. “It was a privilege that he chose us for the job,” says Jenny Marshall. “After such a long break, these things are never taken for granted.” Two meetings later – one in London and the other in Los Angeles with Michael and Michael Lippman – and the tour was fully routed and all 48 dates placed with some of the best promoters in Europe. They included Rune Leme in Norway, Thomas Johansson in Sweden, Leon Ramakers in Holland, Jim and Pete Aiken in Dublin, Peter Rieger in Germany, Andy Bechir in Switzerland, Jackie Lombard in France, D’Alessandro e Galli in Italy, Pino Saggliocco in Spain, DKB in Denmark and Herman Schuerremans in Belgium. “Preparing the routing was tough due to the venue availability for that time of the year, but the venues and promoters pulled together to make it happen,” says Dixon. By April, a full five months before the first show, 650,000 tickets went on sale and were snapped up within hours. The high level of public excitement was shared by many of the individual promoters too.

“We’re very fortunate that many of the acts we work with are real icons,” adds Dixon. “But when George walked out onto some of those stages you could see that some of the most hardened producers could barely hold it together. The idea of George Michael appearing at their gig, in their territory, after so long was almost too much for them.” The 25 Live tour kicked off in Spain on September 26 and Barrie Marshall has been on the lion’s share of the subsequent dates, invariably travelling with the crew to ensure that he is at every venue bright and early in order to ensure that everything is just so and to live up to his reputation for attention to detail. George’s touring entourage numbers 16 performers, 8 buses and 17 trucks. The 65-man crew is led by Tour Director Ken Watts and production manager Mark Spring and who can be relied upon do a fantastic job night after night. But even that doesn’t mean that Marshall is ready to take his eye off the ball. This is par for the course for the man his wife Jenny is happy to call a workaholic and who is routinely never in the office for more than a week or so a month when tours are happening – but in there seven days a week when they‘re not, and then rarely home before midnight. What has made the last three months particularly unusual has been the fact that Marshall Arts has also had Pink, Herbie Hancock and Randy Crawford and Joe Sample out on the road at the same time as George Michael.

A bit like London buses – you wait for one and then …, is the way Jenny Marshall describes it, although it’s been taxis and planes which she’s been booking to get her husband to as many of these shows as humanly possible. When he has been unavailable, Doris Dixon, who joined Marshall Arts as a book keeper in 1978 and is now one of the company’s three directors, has also been criss-crossing the continent sorting out all those last minute wrinkles. The UK legs of the tour have been less immediately stressful of course. Four nights in Earls Court, three in Birmingham, five at Wembley Arena, three MEN Arenas Manchester and one SECC dates in Glasgow have meant that Barrie Marshall has seen his own bed at least a couple of times. But it’s the very last date, scheduled for the Roundhouse on December 20, which promises to be the most fulfilling and possibly the most complicated. It will be a private show which George will give for free to nurses, as a way of thanking them for the care given to his mother who sadly died of cancer. Tickets have been made available through a special draw on George’s website, which have required applicants to register their credentials. It has been a complicated process in which Marshall Arts with management have been closely involved. Perish the thought that something might go wrong on the night. But even if it does, you can be sure that Barrie Marshall will be there on the door to sort it all out.