From rugby coach to pantomime dame: a Hong Kong-based Briton retraces his unusual journey
The villain in this year’s Hong Kong Players’ pantomime and self-professed ‘cockney geezer’ talks about his love for playing the dame and how he moves seamlessly from satin dresses to rugby jerseys
School of hard knocks I was born in Brockley, a poor part of southeast London, in 1958. Millwall (football) fans were the biggest hooligans on the estate. It was deprived and violent, ripe for modernisation, but there was honour amongst thieves. Everyone looked after each other.
My dad, who was a bit of a villain, died at 38. I was six, my brother was two and my sisters were 10 and 12. Mum had some sort of breakdown. Dad left her debt and four kids to raise. Mum didn’t do much mothering in the regular sense, but always tried to help everyone, giving what she didn’t have or looking after others’ kids. Sometimes, eight kids would be running around in our small two-bedroom council house that had a bath in the kitchen.
I rarely went to primary school until the final year. Lorraine took over, aged six I was told I was the man of the house. We had to devise strategies to survive. Despite this, there were positives in my upbringing. Lorraine was the first girl at our school to go to uni. She was my role model and inspiration and in many ways still is. I had a lot of catching up to do in the last year of primary school and then went to Sedgehill Comprehensive, in Catford, with 2,500 kids, the same one as Lorraine.
The sounds of war At Sedgehill, both my drama and (physical education) teachers helped channel my energies. They developed something they saw in me. The two contradictory interests have continued throughout my life. My first theatre break was on the sidelines of Oh! What a Lovely War when I was 11. I was a great mimic, so they got me to do the sound effects like bombs, machine guns, trains and grenades. When they called me on stage to take a bow, I was hooked.
