I regard that statement from my eldest sister as a magnificent compliment.

As the sixth – and last – of my parents’ children, I was born in March 1962 in the St. Ann’s area of Nottingham; a tough, resolutely working-class area named after the well whose water was legendarily attributed with miraculous healing powers. Our close-knit community featured in a 1969 television documentary focusing on the social depravation as the threatening spectre of the demolition of ‘the St. Ann’s slum’ hovered.

As a naturally flamboyant child, I wore my mam’s earrings, and slopped around in her white high-heel shoes into which she’d stuffed scrunched-up pages of the Nottingham Evening Post to make them fit me. I draped my shoulders with my gran’s fox fur, and paraded with mam’s handbag over my arm, my neck dripping with a sparkling static waterfall of her dress jewellery. However, although I adored watching the glamorous high-kicking dance troupe the Tiller Girls on television, I had no desire to be a girl.

Spellbound after seeing Marc Bolan on Top Of The Pops when I was eight, my imagination exploded and I created wigs from strips of crêpe paper, and fashioned glitter-encrusted capes from old net curtains. My feet shod in shiny black leather women’s boots donated by my eldest sister, I decorated my face with sequins and eyeshadow that I made from crushed pastel crayons. Thus clad in my jaw-dropping outré garb, I escaped into a phantasmagorical superstar life polar to the distinctly un-superstar environs of our council housing estate, much to the consternation and bemusement of the local populace.

To further illustrate this, during an unexpected encounter in a gay pub in the mid-1980s a younger St. Ann’s inhabitant told me how inspirational I was as he’d watched me from afar:

“But you didn’t give a shit, did you? You still did it. I remember one Sunday afternoon walking past you with me mam and dad and you were just standing there on the corner with a great big wig in red and yellow strips of that paper stuff, and glitter under your eyes and a great big patchwork cape and purple trousers tucked into women’s boots. And three big lads come past you from behind and belted you across the back of your head with a massive stick. And you just stood there, like…defiant. And my dad said, “Serves him right, the fucking poof. I don’t know what’s the matter with his parents. If he was my lad I’d kick the shit out of the bent bastard.” And all the time I’m thinking, like, wow, just look at him.”

His conclusion, “You were like our very own Quentin Crisp” left me speechless for one of the very few times in my life.

Several decades later I discussed those formative years of my ramshackle glam drag with a friend. He raised an eyebrow. “A lot of us gay boys tried on our mother’s shoes when we were young, but you, my dear, you took dressing up to a whole new level.”

Books were always present in our cramped, two-up, two-down Victorian house as my parents were avid readers, and members of the local library. As soon as I became of literary loaning age, my mam enrolled me into the ranks. Benefitting from such positive parental encouragement, I read voraciously, and wrote with a matching zeal. I had no hesitance in transferring the visions in my head into the written word and, appreciating this, my mam and dad bought me a beautiful orange Petite typewriter. 

Music features extensively in my memoirs as it has been an obsessive driving force for as long as I can remember. My first turn-ons were from the record collections of my two elder sisters: The Beatles ‘She Loves You’, The Rolling Stones’ eponymous LP, The Kinks, Donovan, The Who, Laura Nyro, and the glorious catalogue of singles on the Tamla Motown label. My mam’s contribution was of crooners including Nat ‘King’ Cole, Mel Tormé, and Englebert Humperdinck, whilst my dad was responsible for my precocious appreciation of jazz, opera, and classical composers. 

In 1976 the napalm blast arrival of Punk Rock bore incredible significance for me, and instinctively I embraced its do-it-yourself ethos that energized me into designing my own clothes and creating fanzines. Four decades later I was invited to contribute my unorthodox history to the Punk: Rage & Revolution exhibition during its Nottingham tenure.

During my career in music retail I was asked to write monthly record reviews for the gay periodical Outright!. As I began to report on more diverse subjects I progressed to the position of co-publisher. There is a dedicated page on this site to this period.

Pressing the fast forward button, I contributed my life experiences to the 2019 ‘Desire Love Identity’ anthology which empowered me to begin writing my memoirs in full. That Boy Of Yours Wants Looking At was published in November 2021. 

I had no intention of being a one book wonder! The following volume, Chucking Putty At The Queen, was published just in time for Christmas 2024 and heralded by a full capcity launch evening at Five Leaves Bookshop that was live streamed around the globe.

I am currently enjoying writing for volume three, and should doubt nag me that anyone would want to read more, I gain reassurance by revisiting the dozens of positive reviews for the first two books which can be read here.