Biography

BORN: Buckingham Road, Brighton (now a home for the mentally challenged)

Date: 4th September, 1954 (Rationing ended the year before!)

Education:

Davigdor Road Infants School (there’s a block of flats there now)

Stanford Road Primary School (passed eleven plus exam)

Brighton and Hove Grammar School (for boys - now BASVIC, a 6th form college)

Southampton University ( 2nd class honours in English Literature)

Jobs before Show-biz : postman, removal man, delivery man, hotel waiter, restaurant waiter, decorator, music bootlegger, sound engineer, theatre director, and dosser supreme.

SHOW-BIZ HIGHS:

1984 – The Brighton Bottle Orchestra win Covent Garden Street Entertainers Award for best Speciality Act. “We were the only bottle orchestra in the world! We would play popular classics by blowing across the tops of carefully tuned bottles.”

1985 - The BBO appear on ‘Game For a Laugh’ ( with Jeremy Beadle) – audience 17 million. “There were three of us at this time and we proved to be the sensation of that year’s Edinburgh Fringe.”

1986 - BBO appear on Terry Wogan’s chat show. “We did two Wogans and appeared on all sorts of other programs. There was even a feature about us in ‘Jackie’, the girls’ magazine.”

1987 - BBO perform for Princess Margaret. “This was the first of our five Royal performances, including twice for Her Majesty.”

1988 - BBO appear at ‘The Just For Laughs Comedy Festival’ in Montreal, Cananda. “There were just two of us now. We travelled to Japan and all over Europe, performing at festivals and on telly shows.”

1989 - BBO feature in The Guinness Book of Records.  “We played 444 Gordon’s gin miniatures for a publicity stunt that got our names in magazines and newspapers all over the globe.”