大象传媒

As a teenage keyboard player cum stage performer, I was in my father's south London WW2 Concert Party.

Ten enthusiastic artists gave freely of their time to entertain the Home Guard, fire services, hospitals, factories and overnight tube station sleepers. The Broadway Entertainers - entertained.

Rejected from 'call up' led to UK and US Army tours here and abroad. And after the war, a spate of undistinguished radio, TV and stage appearances, followed by working in Tin Pan Alley as 'song plugger' led to songwriting and composing the score of 'Jane Eyre - The Musical' premiered during Ascot week (1961) graced by HRH, family and guests. The musical played in North America and south Africa but failed to reach its full potential.

An engagement in 1958, as lounge pianist at the Royal Albion Hotel, led to relocating from London to take over the Malacca, Duke Street, Brighton, one of the city's first coffee bars. This in turn led to a string of vegetarian health food restuarants along the Sussex coast. The rest, as they say, is history.

Advice to young, ambitious wannabees: recognise opportunity when it knocks, open your eyes, heart and mind, and good luck, that is the way to the stars.

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