A little about me and djing part one.

0:00 Bit of my life story

Alright folks, quite a few people have been asking me how I got into DJing. So in this one I'm going to sort of explain a bit of my life story and the old DJing and everything else that's gone in my life. Right, well, I got bullied at school due to the fact that I looked like a girl, had curly ringlets you know and... He possibly is in and around Australia now with his sister, and sadly I think his mum died, and his dad was a very strange bloke. But Scott, if you're listening or if anyone knows Scott Dunn, who used to be in Clan Doverie from 1980, or he was prior, he was there before me, but he was there while I was there, from 1980 to 83, let me know. But while I was there I met two other guys, Andrew Molino and a guy called Arthur from Malawi.

2:42 Work norway, holiday camp, double deck

And between the three of us, we loved soul, we loved R&B and that sort of stuff. I mean, the tracks out at that particular time were Prince 1999, there was the Gap Band Outstanding, which is outstanding, and one of my classic songs, Brothers Johnson's Stomp. And Andrew Molina, what he used to do, he used to bring back these cassettes from France. The DJ Tutor is one of the most popular DJs in the world. Then my mum, bless her heart, I can remember taking her to Shrewsbury and going into this music shop and buying this mixer and a couple of turntables, or double deck then it was, beg your pardon, and me trying to mix on this double deck thing with a tiny little pitch control, tiny little dial like that. And like I said in one of my videos, if you try to speed up the deck or slow it down...

So that's where I learned the old pitch thing, because that was the only way of being able to do mixing. So what it started and how it started was really just buying lots of records and doing sort of the occasional party for friends and family. And then I can remember doing a wedding and I had a mate of mine, Hugh Tipton, bro Hugh, came along with me and we did it in Towin. That was quite a nightmare because it was up about 50 flights of stairs. I had a load of records off a friend of mine, some 7-inch singles and it was rock around the clock and all that sort of stuff. But that was fun, it was interesting. In the mid-80s then, I became a red coat, blue coat, whatever you want to call it, and I worked on a holiday camp in Cornwall called Mullion Holiday Camp or Holiday Village or whatever it was. And I was the DJ and haven mate and I got sacked from there.

5:36 It was a very memorable occasion for me

Because I was always by the pool, ironing up the totty. And I got sacked from there in August and basically that was me at the hoot. It's like what do I do? And contacted an agency and they said yeah you can work in Norway because the idea then was basically you had to have a contract to work in Norway, at least a six month contract to get in there. So of course you had to have six places to work because what they used to do over there, I don't know if they do that now, but you'd be in a nightclub. For a month, then another DJ would be your nightclub and you'd just move on like so. But there was a DJ who was ill, so I was allowed to take his place, so that was the way I got in there.

So in September of that year, which I think it was 1987, I ended up working in Frederikstad in a nightclub called Punkton, which was hell of a place. It was in the middle of a hotel and nice sound system. Looking back now, I mean the light show was brilliant, but basically it was just pin spots. I don't think we'll go there actually, because we're not talking about that, but it's a problem that still persists. Anyway, after that I came back over here and then I ended up working in the Isle of Man. I worked over there in 1989 when Islop won the TT races and his average speed was 118 miles an hour, even around corners which is amazing.

And I worked in the Continental Hotel, which was quite bizarre because it was full of people from Liverpool in the kitchen and waiting staff and whatnot. And just a good fun. Good fun. It was a very memorable occasion for me. And then ended up working after that when I got back into England on the mainland. In Oswestry there was a place called The Empire. Worked there, worked in Hereford in the Crystal Rooms.

Then in the early 90s I did a tour of Germany on the British Army barracks. Went with a friend of mine, rode a car off over there on lots of ice and that was a bit of a nightmare. Drove back with the steering wheel knackered and the car kept on moving that way and I had to continually pull it that way. That's fine isn't it but not when you've got to drive 500 miles and then you get back home. At goodness knows what time in the morning and your mum and dad are there and say hi I'm back they go oh brilliant you're back yes lovely to see you by the way I've written your car off yeah it wasn't good um so anyway so I did that uh where are we now that was Germany uh and then early 90s I met my wife now Lisa the love to bits and she went over with me for a second time and what is fantastic is that we actually worked in Berlin

We worked in an actual place where they used to build tanks in the war. And I can remember going up in this lift, taking all my gear in this lift and the lifts go, you know, there's only a candle in the corner for your light. And we plugged all of our stuff in and we blew the main fuse. Bit of a nightmare but that was good fun because loads of cheap booze. Buffet was fantastic the first night but after you've done about five or six gigs... All the buffets were the same. Not saying that the food in the army is crap because it's really nice, but when you've had about 10 on the trot, it gets a bit too much. Right, I'm going to stop this one now because I'm running out of time and we shall continue this on the next video, so bye for now.

This transcript was produced automatically from the audio of the video and may contain mistakes.