I have also started writing my fourth book: Whatever Happened to Mad Mary and the Balloon Man?
A lot of people who read my first book said they enjoyed the autobiography parts but wish there had been more as I’ve had an interesting life, so, with the help of my lifelong friend Nick Wood, I am writing my full life story; here’s a snippet:
“Nick and I were getting very drunk, we had already had two pints at Retro Bar next to Charing Cross station, and now we had moved on to a lovely Italian restaurant down by Embankment. We were just starting our second bottle of wine and we were both laughing, tears in our eyes, because once again Nick had remembered some funny facts about our past which I had completely forgotten about; oh, what a life we have lived.
I have known Nick Wood for decades, since we were about 18 years old, maybe younger. We are now 58 (me) and 62 (Nick).
Even I can recognise that my life has been an extraordinary one, and oh what an adventure it has been. From my difficult, and violent childhood to my early years living on the street working as a rent boy in Earls Court. Happier memories of the old Brighton crowd and all those parties, and the years of Mad Mary and the New Romantics. Those exciting times when Nick and I moved to London, Seven Sisters, the BBC and discovering Whirl-y-Gig and becoming the Balloon Man.
And then the Cranworth Gardens years, Brixton, Heaven nightclub and that difficult druggy period followed by a move back to Brighton and then a year teaching in Africa. Hard times followed, and illness on my return to the UK and then those grey, full-stop years before I discovered Goa. My triumphant return to Whirl-y-Gig decades after we last frequented that magnificent club.
And now, these magnificent happy hippie years living in Hampton, West London, and India; it’s been a magnificent and eventful life.
I remember all those stages of my life, chapters if you will, but Nick remembers all the detail, and after that drunken night with my dear old friend in central London, I realised that this is a story that must be told. So, with a lot of help from Nick with those important details, this is my story. All of what you are about to read really happened, some details may be a little blurry and back to front, but a lot of time has passed, so I hope you will forgive me.
I hope you enjoy my life story as much as I have enjoyed writing it (and living it), if anything it is a story that doubles as a diary of the colourful decades that were the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s and the 2000s (decades that have been full of big world events, both good and truly terrible).
Thanks, Nick for all your input into the writing of this book, and thanks for being my friend for all these years.”