Cliff Twemlow
Encyclopedia
Cliff Twemlow was an English
actor
, nightclub
bouncer
, horror
paperback
writer
and library music
composer
.
, Manchester
, the son of a merchant seaman. He became a nightclub bouncer, or “Tuxedo Warrior”, in 1950s Morecambe
before this occupation would take him to Scotland
and back to Manchester. Hoping to diversify Twemlow worked as an extra on the television series Coronation Street
and attempted to break into the music industry by composing library music under the pen name Peter Reno. The latter was a hugely successful venture, with Twemlow penning more than two thousand compositions within the space of a few years. Musically self-taught, Cliff composed music using what he referred to as the ‘De Dum Da’ Principal. “I had discovered that with the aid of a tape recorder, I could assemble or compose lyric and tune. My voice would simulate orchestral sounds, giving me an insight as to how it could be arranged. God, the noises were appalling. Um Te Ta, Deeple, Dum Rump Pa Pa! I was in hysterics listening to the playback.” he later claimed in his autobiography. Most of his Peter Reno material was written for the company De Wolfe Music
and used in television (Public Eye, Rutland Weekend Television
, Queenie’s Castle, The Sweeney
) and advertisements. One of his songs “Cause I’m a Man”, written in 1967, later became famous when it was used in the film Dawn of the Dead. A particularly lucrative composition was “Distant Hills”, which was used as the end credit theme of the programme Crown Court
from 1972 to the shows end in 1984. “Distant Hills” would also prove to be Cliff’s only brush with the charts when it was used as the B side to Eye Level- the theme from Van der Valk- a single that enjoyed four weeks at number one in 1973. The same year however Cliff would encounter legal problems due to a song of his - recorded by Salena Jones
- bearing the name ‘Live and Let Die’. Though released shortly before Paul McCartney
recorded a song by the same name for the eponymous James Bond
film, a court case was instigated by the publishers of the McCartney song and an injunction slammed on the Twemlow record. Twemlow’s defence was that it was simply an innocent example of two songs bearing the same title, unfortunately a “James Bond” style pose on the picture sleeve threw doubt on this, and the court found in favour of McCartney’s people. The Twemlow/Salena Jones record was subsequently withdrawn. Unfortunately such problems within the music industry, combined with bad business deals, legal hassles and a divorce from childhood sweetheart Georgina Curly meant Twemlow's music success was short lived and he was eventually declared bankrupt.
One of Twemlow’s songs from this period “Once” from the album Restless Woman (1971), claims
“Once I owned a mansion/ Money couldn’t buy / People used to stop and say / There goes quite a guy/ Now I’m left with nothing/ And I have no place to go/ For when you’re down/ Nobody wants to know”.
In the mid-1970s Twemlow took a variety of odd jobs, including a delivery driver for Lomas and Baynes, a company that specialised in supplying equipment for offices, he also worked for a time as a ferryman on the Manchester Ship Canal
in Irlam
. After undergoing an extreme fitness régime to get back into shape (Twemlow’s exercise sessions - which included jogging with lead weights tied to his legs - were the stuff of local legend) Twemlow eventually returned to work as a nightclub bouncer, taking a 70 pounds a week job, at Peter Stringfellow
's 'Millionaire' nightclub in Manchester's West Mosley Street - this was the real name of the 'The Omega' club referred to in the book, 'The Tuxedo Warrior'. He was married to Judith, who worked as a secretary for a Manchester firm of solicitors and they lived in Whitefield
on the north side of the city.
In the early 1980s he wrote his autobiography The Tuxedo Warrior, which documented his career in the music industry and as a bouncer. In the book's final chapter Twemlow is hospitalised after a fight in a nightclub leaves him with a fractured skull and his family ask him to retire or seek an alternative lifestyle. He refuses and returns to being a Tuxedo Warrior, the book closes with the statement “it is far better to be a resident on the brink of hell, than spend a lifetime in a relentless pursuit of a mythical heaven”.
Tuxedo Warrior was turned into a film in 1982, however the film chooses to ignore all aspects of Cliff’s life and instead merely uses him as a character in a fictional narrative. In the film Cliff (John Wyman) is an ex-bouncer from Manchester who has opened a bar in South Africa
and becomes involved in diamond smuggling, as well as being torn between two women, an American free spirit (Holly Palance
) and a British compulsive gambler (Carol Royle
). Confusingly the real Twemlow appears in the film as supporting character ‘Chaser’. The only other character in the film taken from the book, in real life Chaser, r.n. Barney Brogan, was an American bouncer who had a violent confrontation with Cliff in 1950s Morecambe. In the book he is described as “a big burly American, around 5ft 11ins. Whose face had taken more second prizes than a blind tomcat in a bowling alley….. Chaser was big and evil.”
Encouraged by the success of the Tuxedo Warrior book Twemlow would go onto write two fiction books for the pulp horror market the Beast of Kane (1983) and The Pike (1982). The Beast of Kane, concerns the Gordon family, who adopt a stray elk-hound that turns out to be “Satan himself, fulfilling an ancient prophecy”. Written in the late 1970s under the title The Dogs of Kane, the book was submitted as a possible film project for Hammer Film Productions
but was rejected. Twemlow then tried to make a film of The Pike, starring Joan Collins
, but the budget could not be raised despite Collins’ star power and Twemlow and Collins promoting the film on the BBC’s Look North programme. During the promotion Joan appeared on a BBC TV Tomorrow's World special featuring the innovative and technically advanced mechanical Pike, made especially for the film. The Mechanical Pike apparently now resides as an exhibit of robotics in Japan
In 1982/83 Twemlow acted in, wrote and composed the music score for the movie “GBH”, one of the earliest British films to be shot on videotape. Considered to be far more accurate in depicting Twemlow’s life than the Tuxedo Warrior film, GBH features him as Steve Donovan aka “The Mancunian”, a world weary nightclub bouncer hired to protect a club from a London gang. The film’s well remembered video cover features a blood splattered Twemlow holding an axe with the tag line “more brutal than The Long Good Friday”.
The theme song of the movie, written by Cliff was actually a ballad depiction of how Cliff was in real life, the lyrics "he walks tall with his head held high, before he backs down he would rather die, he's a mean machine, none tougher than, the man, man, man, man-cunian man!" were EXACTLY how Cliff lived his life. To those who REALLY knew him, rather than those who knew him vaguely or claimed to know him; his true friends who lived day by day, shoulder to shoulder with him through the 1980s and into the 1990s saw him live by his words and actually led by example, often daring to venture where others genuinely feared to tread. GBH led to Cliff Twemlow appearing in 12 more movies shot as video features plus a plethora of movie-shorts and MajorVision special interest films.
These included Target Eve Island (1993) co-produced with Martin de Rooy in Grenada and Barbados, The Ibiza Connection in 1994 with his close friends [Steve Powell] and Sir Brian Sterling-Vete, in 1985 Cliff worked closely with Brian in an attempt to produce the movie called 'The Blind Side of God' with former Coronation Street star Peter Adamson
, the film was later produced in conjunction with Dave Kent-Watson but Peter Adamson did not appear in the finished DKW version.
Late in 1986 Cliff produced and starred in Moonstalker - AKA 'Predator' alongside Cordelia Roche and his old friend Brian Sir Brian Sterling-Vete in the role as 'Bager', the Psycho killer of the movie. This movie was shot by David Tattersall
(Director of Photography - DOP) - David then went on to eventually become the DOP on The Green Mile, Con Air, Star Wars 1 and 2, The Young Indiana Jones and most recently The Day The Earth Stood Still.
Cliff took a short break in December and January 1985 and 1986 when he was invited to join his friend Brian Sir Brian Sterling-Vete in Iceland
, this is where Brian was co-producing a play, [Trafford Tanzi] with Jon Paul Baldwinsson of the Icelandic National Theatre. It was there that Cliff met Brian's old friend and 4 time World's Strongest Man, [Jon Pall Sigmarsson]. More information is on the web site www.bs-v.tv which is the official website of one Cliff's closest friends through the 1980s and into the 1990s, Sir Brian Sterling-Vete; Cliff's other great friend Stuart Hurst should also be consulted as he also worked super-closely with Cliff right through to the very end.
When Cliff and Brian Returned to the UK, Cliff set to producing The Eye of Satan (1987) in which Cliff plays a mercenary with satanic powers along side glamorous co-star Ginette Gray, Tokyo Sunrise with Director Robert Foster in 1988 and Firestar: First Contact (1991) in which Cliff and Oliver Tobias
battle alien monsters with a superb performance from Stuart Hurst.
After working on Tokyo Sunrise with Robert Foster and Brian Sterling-Vete
, Cliff appeared in several special interest films produced by his friend Brian Sir Brian Sterling-Vete on the MajorVision label (now on DVD) these included 'The Power to Win, 'The Ultimate Self Defence' and 'Fitness Over Forty'
The pioneering feature films, some shot on super-low-budgets and mostly filmed in and around Manchester, continued until his premature death from a heart attack in 1993. Since that time the films produced by Cliff together with his production team and the regular members of 'the cast' have been honoured by the [British Film Institute] and in Julian Granger's book.
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
actor
Actor
An actor is a person who acts in a dramatic production and who works in film, television, theatre, or radio in that capacity...
, nightclub
Nightclub
A nightclub is an entertainment venue which usually operates late into the night...
bouncer
Bouncer (doorman)
A bouncer is an informal term for a type of security guard employed at venues such as bars, nightclubs or concerts to provide security, check legal age, and refuse entry to a venue based on criteria such as intoxication, aggressive behavior, or attractiveness...
, horror
Horror fiction
Horror fiction also Horror fantasy is a philosophy of literature, which is intended to, or has the capacity to frighten its readers, inducing feelings of horror and terror. It creates an eerie atmosphere. Horror can be either supernatural or non-supernatural...
paperback
Paperback
Paperback, softback or softcover describe and refer to a book by the nature of its binding. The covers of such books are usually made of paper or paperboard, and are usually held together with glue rather than stitches or staples...
writer
Author
An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...
and library music
Production music
Production music is the name given to recorded music produced and owned by production music libraries and licensed to customers for use in film, television, radio and other media.-Introduction:...
composer
Composer
A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...
.
Career
Twemlow was born in HulmeHulme
Hulme is an inner city area and electoral ward of Manchester, England. Located immediately south of Manchester city centre, it is an area with significant industrial heritage....
, Manchester
Manchester
Manchester is a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. According to the Office for National Statistics, the 2010 mid-year population estimate for Manchester was 498,800. Manchester lies within one of the UK's largest metropolitan areas, the metropolitan county of Greater...
, the son of a merchant seaman. He became a nightclub bouncer, or “Tuxedo Warrior”, in 1950s Morecambe
Morecambe
Morecambe is a resort town and civil parish within the City of Lancaster in Lancashire, England. As of 2001 it has a resident population of 38,917. It faces into Morecambe Bay...
before this occupation would take him to Scotland
Scotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...
and back to Manchester. Hoping to diversify Twemlow worked as an extra on the television series Coronation Street
Coronation Street
Coronation Street is a British soap opera set in Weatherfield, a fictional town in Greater Manchester based on Salford. Created by Tony Warren, Coronation Street was first broadcast on 9 December 1960...
and attempted to break into the music industry by composing library music under the pen name Peter Reno. The latter was a hugely successful venture, with Twemlow penning more than two thousand compositions within the space of a few years. Musically self-taught, Cliff composed music using what he referred to as the ‘De Dum Da’ Principal. “I had discovered that with the aid of a tape recorder, I could assemble or compose lyric and tune. My voice would simulate orchestral sounds, giving me an insight as to how it could be arranged. God, the noises were appalling. Um Te Ta, Deeple, Dum Rump Pa Pa! I was in hysterics listening to the playback.” he later claimed in his autobiography. Most of his Peter Reno material was written for the company De Wolfe Music
De Wolfe Music
De Wolfe Music is the originator of what has become known as production music as it was established in 1909 and began its recorded library in 1927 with the advent of 'Talkies'. The library consists of over 80,000 tracks, all pre-cleared for licensing and synchronisation...
and used in television (Public Eye, Rutland Weekend Television
Rutland Weekend Television
Rutland Weekend Television was a television sketch show on BBC2, written by Eric Idle with music by Neil Innes. Two series, the first consisting of six episodes, the second of seven, were broadcast, in 1975 and 1976. A Christmas special also aired on Boxing Day 1975.It was Idle's first television...
, Queenie’s Castle, The Sweeney
The Sweeney
The Sweeney is a 1970s British television police drama focusing on two members of the Flying Squad, a branch of the Metropolitan Police specialising in tackling armed robbery and violent crime in London...
) and advertisements. One of his songs “Cause I’m a Man”, written in 1967, later became famous when it was used in the film Dawn of the Dead. A particularly lucrative composition was “Distant Hills”, which was used as the end credit theme of the programme Crown Court
Crown Court (TV series)
Crown Court was an afternoon television courtroom drama produced by Granada Television for the ITV network that ran from 1972, when the Crown Court system replaced Assize courts and Quarter sessions in the legal system of England and Wales, to 1984....
from 1972 to the shows end in 1984. “Distant Hills” would also prove to be Cliff’s only brush with the charts when it was used as the B side to Eye Level- the theme from Van der Valk- a single that enjoyed four weeks at number one in 1973. The same year however Cliff would encounter legal problems due to a song of his - recorded by Salena Jones
Salena Jones
Salena Jones is an American jazz and cabaret singer.-Biography:Born Joan Elizabeth Shaw in Newport News, Virginia, same home town as Ella Fitzgerald. "I loved Sarah Vaughan so much and adored Lena Horne's elegance, I put them together as ‘Salena.’ It looked good...
- bearing the name ‘Live and Let Die’. Though released shortly before Paul McCartney
Paul McCartney
Sir James Paul McCartney, MBE, Hon RAM, FRCM is an English musician, singer-songwriter and composer. Formerly of The Beatles and Wings , McCartney is listed in Guinness World Records as the "most successful musician and composer in popular music history", with 60 gold discs and sales of 100...
recorded a song by the same name for the eponymous James Bond
James Bond
James Bond, code name 007, is a fictional character created in 1953 by writer Ian Fleming, who featured him in twelve novels and two short story collections. There have been a six other authors who wrote authorised Bond novels or novelizations after Fleming's death in 1964: Kingsley Amis,...
film, a court case was instigated by the publishers of the McCartney song and an injunction slammed on the Twemlow record. Twemlow’s defence was that it was simply an innocent example of two songs bearing the same title, unfortunately a “James Bond” style pose on the picture sleeve threw doubt on this, and the court found in favour of McCartney’s people. The Twemlow/Salena Jones record was subsequently withdrawn. Unfortunately such problems within the music industry, combined with bad business deals, legal hassles and a divorce from childhood sweetheart Georgina Curly meant Twemlow's music success was short lived and he was eventually declared bankrupt.
One of Twemlow’s songs from this period “Once” from the album Restless Woman (1971), claims
“Once I owned a mansion/ Money couldn’t buy / People used to stop and say / There goes quite a guy/ Now I’m left with nothing/ And I have no place to go/ For when you’re down/ Nobody wants to know”.
In the mid-1970s Twemlow took a variety of odd jobs, including a delivery driver for Lomas and Baynes, a company that specialised in supplying equipment for offices, he also worked for a time as a ferryman on the Manchester Ship Canal
Manchester Ship Canal
The Manchester Ship Canal is a river navigation 36 miles long in the North West of England. Starting at the Mersey Estuary near Liverpool, it generally follows the original routes of the rivers Mersey and Irwell through the historic counties of Cheshire and Lancashire. Several sets of locks lift...
in Irlam
Irlam
Irlam is a suburban town and unparished area within the City of Salford in Greater Manchester, England. At the 2001 census it had a population of 18,504. The town lies on flat ground on the south side of the M62 motorway and the north bank of the Manchester Ship Canal, and is west-southwest of...
. After undergoing an extreme fitness régime to get back into shape (Twemlow’s exercise sessions - which included jogging with lead weights tied to his legs - were the stuff of local legend) Twemlow eventually returned to work as a nightclub bouncer, taking a 70 pounds a week job, at Peter Stringfellow
Peter Stringfellow
Peter James Stringfellow is an English nightclub owner.-Early life:Stringfellow was born on 17 October 1940 to Elsie and James William Stringfellow , a steelworker...
's 'Millionaire' nightclub in Manchester's West Mosley Street - this was the real name of the 'The Omega' club referred to in the book, 'The Tuxedo Warrior'. He was married to Judith, who worked as a secretary for a Manchester firm of solicitors and they lived in Whitefield
Whitefield, Greater Manchester
Whitefield is a town within the Metropolitan Borough of Bury, in Greater Manchester, England. It lies on undulating ground in the Irwell Valley, along the south bank of the River Irwell, south-southeast of Bury, and to the north-northwest of the city of Manchester...
on the north side of the city.
In the early 1980s he wrote his autobiography The Tuxedo Warrior, which documented his career in the music industry and as a bouncer. In the book's final chapter Twemlow is hospitalised after a fight in a nightclub leaves him with a fractured skull and his family ask him to retire or seek an alternative lifestyle. He refuses and returns to being a Tuxedo Warrior, the book closes with the statement “it is far better to be a resident on the brink of hell, than spend a lifetime in a relentless pursuit of a mythical heaven”.
Tuxedo Warrior was turned into a film in 1982, however the film chooses to ignore all aspects of Cliff’s life and instead merely uses him as a character in a fictional narrative. In the film Cliff (John Wyman) is an ex-bouncer from Manchester who has opened a bar in South Africa
South Africa
The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...
and becomes involved in diamond smuggling, as well as being torn between two women, an American free spirit (Holly Palance
Holly Palance
Holly Palance is an American actress.Palance was born in Los Angeles, California, the daughter of the actor Jack Palance and his wife Virginia Baker. Holly was the first of three children born to the couple, followed by Brooke Palance in 1952 and Cody Palance in 1955...
) and a British compulsive gambler (Carol Royle
Carol Royle
Carol Royle is an English television actress.Royle was born in Blackpool and studied drama at the Central School of Speech and Drama. She is probably best known for her leading role as Jenny Russell alongside Simon Cadell in the BBC sitcom Life Without George which ran for three series from 1987...
). Confusingly the real Twemlow appears in the film as supporting character ‘Chaser’. The only other character in the film taken from the book, in real life Chaser, r.n. Barney Brogan, was an American bouncer who had a violent confrontation with Cliff in 1950s Morecambe. In the book he is described as “a big burly American, around 5ft 11ins. Whose face had taken more second prizes than a blind tomcat in a bowling alley….. Chaser was big and evil.”
Encouraged by the success of the Tuxedo Warrior book Twemlow would go onto write two fiction books for the pulp horror market the Beast of Kane (1983) and The Pike (1982). The Beast of Kane, concerns the Gordon family, who adopt a stray elk-hound that turns out to be “Satan himself, fulfilling an ancient prophecy”. Written in the late 1970s under the title The Dogs of Kane, the book was submitted as a possible film project for Hammer Film Productions
Hammer Film Productions
Hammer Film Productions is a film production company based in the United Kingdom. Founded in 1934, the company is best known for a series of Gothic "Hammer Horror" films made from the mid-1950s until the 1970s. Hammer also produced science fiction, thrillers, film noir and comedies and in later...
but was rejected. Twemlow then tried to make a film of The Pike, starring Joan Collins
Joan Collins
Joan Henrietta Collins, OBE , is an English actress, author, and columnist. Born in Paddington and raised in Maida Vale, Collins grew up during the Second World War. At the age of nine, she made her stage debut in A Doll's House and after attending school, she was classically trained as an actress...
, but the budget could not be raised despite Collins’ star power and Twemlow and Collins promoting the film on the BBC’s Look North programme. During the promotion Joan appeared on a BBC TV Tomorrow's World special featuring the innovative and technically advanced mechanical Pike, made especially for the film. The Mechanical Pike apparently now resides as an exhibit of robotics in Japan
In 1982/83 Twemlow acted in, wrote and composed the music score for the movie “GBH”, one of the earliest British films to be shot on videotape. Considered to be far more accurate in depicting Twemlow’s life than the Tuxedo Warrior film, GBH features him as Steve Donovan aka “The Mancunian”, a world weary nightclub bouncer hired to protect a club from a London gang. The film’s well remembered video cover features a blood splattered Twemlow holding an axe with the tag line “more brutal than The Long Good Friday”.
The theme song of the movie, written by Cliff was actually a ballad depiction of how Cliff was in real life, the lyrics "he walks tall with his head held high, before he backs down he would rather die, he's a mean machine, none tougher than, the man, man, man, man-cunian man!" were EXACTLY how Cliff lived his life. To those who REALLY knew him, rather than those who knew him vaguely or claimed to know him; his true friends who lived day by day, shoulder to shoulder with him through the 1980s and into the 1990s saw him live by his words and actually led by example, often daring to venture where others genuinely feared to tread. GBH led to Cliff Twemlow appearing in 12 more movies shot as video features plus a plethora of movie-shorts and MajorVision special interest films.
These included Target Eve Island (1993) co-produced with Martin de Rooy in Grenada and Barbados, The Ibiza Connection in 1994 with his close friends [Steve Powell] and Sir Brian Sterling-Vete, in 1985 Cliff worked closely with Brian in an attempt to produce the movie called 'The Blind Side of God' with former Coronation Street star Peter Adamson
Peter Adamson
Peter Adamson was a British stage and television actor. He is best known for playing the character of Len Fairclough in the long-running television series Coronation Street from 1961 to 1983.-Life and career:...
, the film was later produced in conjunction with Dave Kent-Watson but Peter Adamson did not appear in the finished DKW version.
Late in 1986 Cliff produced and starred in Moonstalker - AKA 'Predator' alongside Cordelia Roche and his old friend Brian Sir Brian Sterling-Vete in the role as 'Bager', the Psycho killer of the movie. This movie was shot by David Tattersall
David Tattersall
David Tattersall BSC is a noted British cinematographer. He has worked on many big-budget films and has won an Emmy Award for his cinematography on the The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles television series...
(Director of Photography - DOP) - David then went on to eventually become the DOP on The Green Mile, Con Air, Star Wars 1 and 2, The Young Indiana Jones and most recently The Day The Earth Stood Still.
Cliff took a short break in December and January 1985 and 1986 when he was invited to join his friend Brian Sir Brian Sterling-Vete in Iceland
Iceland
Iceland , described as the Republic of Iceland, is a Nordic and European island country in the North Atlantic Ocean, on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Iceland also refers to the main island of the country, which contains almost all the population and almost all the land area. The country has a population...
, this is where Brian was co-producing a play, [Trafford Tanzi] with Jon Paul Baldwinsson of the Icelandic National Theatre. It was there that Cliff met Brian's old friend and 4 time World's Strongest Man, [Jon Pall Sigmarsson]. More information is on the web site www.bs-v.tv which is the official website of one Cliff's closest friends through the 1980s and into the 1990s, Sir Brian Sterling-Vete; Cliff's other great friend Stuart Hurst should also be consulted as he also worked super-closely with Cliff right through to the very end.
When Cliff and Brian Returned to the UK, Cliff set to producing The Eye of Satan (1987) in which Cliff plays a mercenary with satanic powers along side glamorous co-star Ginette Gray, Tokyo Sunrise with Director Robert Foster in 1988 and Firestar: First Contact (1991) in which Cliff and Oliver Tobias
Oliver Tobias
Oliver Tobias is a UK-based film, stage, and television actor and directorBorn Oliver Tobias Freitag in Zürich, Switzerland, he is the son of Austrian-Swiss actor Robert Freitag and German actress Maria Becker. He came to the United Kingdom at the age of eight and trained at East 15 Acting School,...
battle alien monsters with a superb performance from Stuart Hurst.
After working on Tokyo Sunrise with Robert Foster and Brian Sterling-Vete
Brian Sterling-Vete
Brian Sterling-Vete is an English author, Guinness World Record Holder, motivational speaker, Award-Winning Film-Maker, TV presenter, stage, film and television actor, stunt performer, martial arts expert, and entrepreneur.-Background:Brian Sterling-Vete was born in the Rusholme and...
, Cliff appeared in several special interest films produced by his friend Brian Sir Brian Sterling-Vete on the MajorVision label (now on DVD) these included 'The Power to Win, 'The Ultimate Self Defence' and 'Fitness Over Forty'
The pioneering feature films, some shot on super-low-budgets and mostly filmed in and around Manchester, continued until his premature death from a heart attack in 1993. Since that time the films produced by Cliff together with his production team and the regular members of 'the cast' have been honoured by the [British Film Institute] and in Julian Granger's book.
Acting roles
- Coronation Street (mid-1960s) ... Extra
- Tuxedo Warrior (1981/2) ... Chaser
- GBH (1982) ... Donovan
- Mason’s War (1982/3)
- Target Eve Island (1983, uncompleted)
- Adventures of Red Rooster (1984) (Unreleased TV Sitcom)
- The Ibiza Connection (1984) ... Wolf Svenson
- Harrising Moments (1985, uncompleted)
- Moonstalker (1986)
- The Blind Side of God (1987) ... Johnny Zero
- The Eye of Satan (1987) ... Kane
- Assassinator (1988) ... Devlin
- Tokyo Sunrise (1988, uncompleted) ... Johnny Zero
- GBH2 Lethal Impact (1991) ... Steve Donovan
- Bad Weekend (1991) ... Hawk
- Firestar First Contact (1992) ... John Trooper
Peter Reno Albums
- “Z-Patrol” (1967 De Wolfe MusicDe Wolfe MusicDe Wolfe Music is the originator of what has become known as production music as it was established in 1909 and began its recorded library in 1927 with the advent of 'Talkies'. The library consists of over 80,000 tracks, all pre-cleared for licensing and synchronisation...
; with Reg Tilsley) - "Inter City" (1967 De Wolfe; with John Reids, Jack Trombey)
- "Bossalena" (1967 De Wolfe, with Keith Papworth and Edward Ward)
- "Mini-Skirt" (1967 De Wolfe, with Les Reed, Reg Tilsley)
- There’s a World Going On (1967 De Wolfe, with Reg Tilsley and others)
- "Lucky Me" (1967 De Wolfe, track ‘intimate’ only)
- “Traveling Light” (1967 De Wolfe)
- "Polaris" (1967 De Wolfe)
- “For the Young” (19?? De Wolfe: with John Reids)
- “Big City Story” (1968, De Wolfe)
- “More Electric Banana” (1968, De Wolfe) (songs “Street Girl” “Love, Dance and Sing” only)
- “Inherit the Wind” (1968, De Wolfe)
- “Colours” (1969, De Wolfe)
- “Blue Pacific” (1969, De Wolfe)
- "Loony Tunes" (1969, De Wolfe)
- “TV Suite Vol 2” (De Wolfe 1970, with Johnny Hawksworth)
- "Sweet Chariot and Friends" (1970, De Wolfe)
- "Key Largo" (De Wolfe 1970, with Reg Tilsley)
- "Tilsley Orchestral 9" (1970, De Wolfe with Reg Tilsley and D Bradford)
- “Sunspots” (De Wolfe, 1971 with Johnny Hawksworth)
- “Sit Back” (Hudson music 1971)
- “Illinois” (De Wolfe 1971)
- “Alibi” (De Wolfe MusicDe Wolfe MusicDe Wolfe Music is the originator of what has become known as production music as it was established in 1909 and began its recorded library in 1927 with the advent of 'Talkies'. The library consists of over 80,000 tracks, all pre-cleared for licensing and synchronisation...
1971 with Johnny Hawksworth) - “Restless Woman” (De Wolfe 1971)
- “Times Two” (De Wolfe 1971, with Keith Papworth)
- “Afro-Rock” (De Wolfe 1971, as Vecchio)
- “Native Rhymes” (De Wolfe 1972)
- "Wheel of Fortune" (1972 De Wolfe, with Reg Tilsley)
- "Great Day" (1972 De Wolfe, with Simon Haseley)
- “Quartet of Modern Jazz Vol.2” (1972, De Wolfe)
- “Tete a Tete” (1972, De Wolfe with Reg Wale, Simon Haseley)
- “City Scene” (De Wolfe 1972 with Keith Papworth and Jack Trombey)
- “Junction” (De Wolfe 1973)
- "Synthesizer Contact" (De Wolfe 1973)
- “Syndrome” (De Wolfe 1973 with Reg Tilsley)
- "Hot Breath" (1974 Hudson Records, with Reg Tilsley)
- "Super Ride" (1974 De Wolfe, with Barry Stoller)