I was always in bands before I left the police force and within two weeks of resigning I had joined a local band which was going to be the nucleus of Dave Dee, Mick, Beaky, Dozy and Titch. Titch and Dozy had a different drummer and singer and I joined as a rhythm guitarist. One day the singer didn't show up for a gig and I did most of the singing. He never got back in the band, simple as that.

I wasn't at it, we went to it after the crash had happened. I was a police cadet then not a pc. It's been well documented that Eddie Cochrane and Gene Vincent were in the car. We sussed they were musicians soon after we got there because there guitars and gig things all over the road and in the car. We had to take everything back to the station and then realised that it was Cochrane's guitar. I was a huge fan of both him and Gene Vincent.

We always were different. We did Hamburg along with the Searchers, Jerry And The Pacemakers and Billy J Kramer but when the Beatles took off in 1962 we got left at the starting point. We were known as Dave Dee And The Bostons then and working five or six days a week but we just couldn't get arrested when it came to record companies. We went to most record companies, because in those days you didn't send anything in, you had to go in and do a record test. You used to pile up outside the studio where there would be about ten other bands waiting to be auditioned. They'd give you fifteen minutes to set your gear up, strut your stuff and get out. We had comments like, "Don't call us, we'll call you", "Gentlemen, we suggest you cut your instruments up because you'll never have a hit record." We didn't let it put us of though as we knew one day we would make it. In those days you had dance halls and we would be the support to the top of the bill. When we were on, no-one would dance because there was so much going on on stage, humour, action, all sorts of stuff.

There were so many bands not getting work and they went to Hamburg because you could work at the German Top Ten Club or Star Club for two months at a time. OK, so the money was lousy but it was a great source of inspiration for the bands because you used to have to play fifty minutes on and ten minutes off. Some days you'd play for fourteen or fifteen hours. I remember when JF Kennedy came into Hamburg harbour in 1963 and the first Beatles album had come out. Out of boredom from playing the same thing every night we got hold of a Beatles album and played everything off it to break the monotony. All the American sailors were coming in and that was their first taste of the Beatles. They used to come up to us and say, "Gee, what's that music you're playing?" We used to tell them it was the Beatles and they'd ask, "Who are The Beatles?"

That was 1964 when we were doing a summer season at Butlins in Clacton. We used to get Thursday night off and the only way we could make money was to moonlight. We had a gig offered to us in Swindon supporting the Honeycombs. They'd just gone to No.1 with 'Have I The Right'. We went on and did the first hour and Dennis Dell who was the singer of the Honeycombs then went backstage and said to their managers, 'Look, you've got to go and watch this band'. We got a tug into the dressing room afterwards and they said 'We can get you a recording deal'. They gave us their card and told us to come and see them in London. Two weeks later we were doing a gig in Friern Barnet so we thought we'd go and see them. They wrote us a song and put us in with Jo Meak who was the producer for the Honeycombs but we didn't get on with him very well and he threw us out.

He had very strange recording techniques. He wanted us to play the song at half speed and then he would speed it up and put all these little tricks on it. We said we couldn't do it that way. He exploded, threw coffee all over the studio and stormed up to his room. His assistant came in and said, "Mr Meak will not be doing any more recording today." That was it. We lugged all our gear out and went back home.

Yes. We'd already started to make indents. We went on Ready Steady Go with 'No Time'. They didn't normally do this way but we actually did a live audition in the foyer of the television studios. They saw it and told us that they'd put us on. So, that's how we got on Ready Steady Go with a song that wasn't a hit.

It was what we always believed we would have. We never doubted that we wouldn't make it. About a month before 'You Make It Move' went into the charts we were ready to pack it in. We went to do a gig in Manchester and we had two shillings, old money, between the five of us and we were sitting in a cafe, drinking two cups of coffee between the five of us. We looked at each other and said, "We can't go on like this. We have to pack it in". But as luck would have it, 'You Make It Move' went into the charts at No.17.

We started to make and design all our own clothes. We used to go out and buy the material, do the drawings and send them up to a lady in Cheshire who used to make them for us. She was a friend of one of the band members's girlfriends. Every time we did Top Of The Pops, Carnaby Street used to send their spies down to see what we were wearing and within a couple of days you would see our stuff in the windows.

We never realised what kind of influence we were having. People like Hendrix were all starting to wear that colourful, glam stuff. I don't think there was a band before us who had done anything like that. We were also doing Latin stuff before everyone else. If you listen to 'Save Me' we've got all the latin percussion on it but we didn't really know what we were doing except that it was different from everyone else. Then in 2000 the latin influence comes in with Ricky Martin but we had already done it thirty years before.

Yeah, Dozy, funnily enough. I took a big chunk out of his chin. It was just before we did our first Top Of The Pops and he went on with a great big cut on his face. He's forgiven me now though.

We used to collaborate with Howard and Blakely, our managers and songwriters. They would give us a part of a tune and a lyric and we would take it away and tweak it in the studio. All our stuff was done in three hour sessions, A side and B side and then we'd go in the next morning and mix it.

I'd been with the boys for ten years and if you live in someone's pocket for that long it takes its toll on you and them. I started looking for other challenges. I wanted to act, I wanted to do cabaret and the easiest thing was to leave the band. Music had started to move on too. Bands like Led Zeppelin and Free had started to come in and I thought for our sort of music the writing was on the wall. In retrospect, I think we could have gone on and done some other things. Some of our B sides were nothing like the pop singles that we made. I think we may have been able to take them onto another level.

Disappointed. Worried about what they were going to do. We managed to stay friends with each other. We all came from the same town, our parents knew each other. It was something I had to do. Whether, in retrospect it was the right thing to do, we'll never know.

I did a couple of films and a couple of things with Frankie Howard and Ned Sherrin. I did a lot of cabaret and television presenting in Germany. I presented The Beat Club which was a big show over there. I could never really handle theatre auditions and I basically blew them, apart from one when I had just decided to take another job as a label manager for a record company. I had gone along to an audition in Covent Garden for a musical and because I had accepted this other job I went in not giving a damn. That was the first time I'd gone to an audition and they'd loved it. It was for Grease. Bill Kenwright's never forgiven me for turning it down. They offered me the part of the second lead and Richard Gear got the main part. Anyway, I went off to Atlantic Records to be a label manager.

I'm back on the road with the boys at the moment. We're on a seventy-day tour.

Not the original Beaky as he lives in Spain. We're having a lot of fun doing it. I do a lot of work for a music charity and I spend one day a week as a JP in court.

Seeing my parents proud of me having thought I would never make anything out of the music business. When I was a kid I loved jukeboxes and I always wanted to walk into a coffee bar and for someone to put one of our records on. I walked into a transport cafe on the A3 and someone had put on 'Hold Tight'. That was a moment.