In the mid 1950s my dad  Charles was stationed in Korea  attached to the Royal Signals as a despatch rider, singing semi professionally-mainly on Phillip Morris sponsored radio shows for the armed forces.

(*He later sung duets with another army pal-Terry Parsons,who was later to find fame as Matt Monroe.)  Matt was a really lovely man & my dad and Matt stayed friends for the rest of their lives.   In those days money was tight, it was about choices, when I was born my dad couldn’t afford to spend years chasing stardom as a singer so settled into mundanaiety with a succession of different jobs to make ends meet.

He always loved music and had a superb knowledge of the subject-my mum was like-minded. My dads forte was the movies, he LOVED movies, you could quote him ANY movie title and he would tell you when it was released, who was in it, who wrote the music…etc..as well as various titbits of interesting info.

  
In 1963 we moved to Twickenham, Middlesex from Battersea, London..one of my first young memories is of walking down Church Street in Twickenham and hearing “I want to hold your hand” by the Beatles  blasting out of a café!

Shortly afterwards one of my mums new pals, Carol Mar (father Jack ran the Eel Pie Island Hotel), invited her on a night out.  I was smuggled along to watch this band at the hotel (I later found out they were called the Rolling Stones).  I remember being a little puzzled as to why the lead singer kept making faces when he sung..;-)

**Interestingly,shortly afterwards,my mum had a job at St Marys College in Strawberry Hill where the groundsman was Joe Jagger (Micks dad)-and my mum met Mick a few times. (She said he was very posh..;-)

*About the same time a young Rod Stewart was found drunk by Long John Baldry, singing on Twickenham rail station, and his career began.

Twickenham/Teddington/Richmond were of course full of rising stars-Marc Bolan was regularly at Richmond ice rink, Twiggy lived down the road from us, Benny Hill lived in Teddington, Tommy Cooper could often be found in the Tides End Cottage and Angler's pubs and became a friend of my dad's..the local club in Staines-“Sergeant Peppers” was oft full of stars, Tom Jones, George Best etc..

Hylda Baker, the actress, was often to be found in the “Cherry Tree” pub just before Twickenham green..

Pete Townsend used to play pool in the Crown in St Margarets…and so on.

By the age of eight,I had the most fantastic autograph collection (I loved collecting things..) you could imagine-sadly lost many years ago..