I used to see Adam Faith quite regularly on Saturday mornings, usually round the Clock Tower or in Churchill Square or sometimes wandering down Duke Street towards the Lanes. This was during his Budgie years when he had a house just outside Brighton. He always went out dressed the same way as he appeared in the TV series, denim jeans and matching jacket and I’m pretty sure, red Chelsea boots. He’d have his entourage of pretty girls and a couple of minders. I, at that time, eschewed such obviousness, preferring the more singular approach. Subtlety, as ever my watch word there was, I always felt, mutual respect….

Maralyn, my girlfriend, on the other hand, managed to get a lot closer to him – At that time, she had a holiday job working in a photo lab in West Street and Adam was a regular customer. Whenever he came in, word would go round and the girls would all vie with each other to get to the counter first. Not the pushy type, she never actually managed to serve him, however, some time later she did came very close to striking up a conversation with him.

Just down from the Photo Lab was a popular sandwich bar and one lunchtime Maralyn was in the queue. Glancing over her shoulder, who should be standing behind but, yes that’s right it was young Adam. As she stood there waiting he lent towards her and asked what the time was, before she could look at her watch and respond, another older lady beside them, who Maralyn thought rather too quickly, jumped in with ‘’it’s almost twenty to one, Deary ‘’  In my experience it’s often the  more mature women you have to watch.

Some years later in the late 80s, I worked in Croydon and one morning I was having a coffee in a little Bakery come Café at Crossways with a colleague,  Mary Ann Winterman. (my office was then in some Portakabins in the adjoining Addinton Park, which Steve G, if he reads this will remember well). Anyway, who should walk in to get some Fondant Fancies and a large Bloomer, yes none other than my mate, Adam. Older and carrying a bit more weight but still just as handsome, at first I wasn’t sure it was him, but the voice, when he spoke, was just the same – pure East Acton.

By this point Mary Ann and I had finished our coffees and I was going to go over and say hello but I could see he was in a hurry and so instead we just we followed him out of the shop. The last I saw of him was as he jumped in his bottle green Roller convertible and cruised off down Kent Gate Way……… with the roof down of course.

What a nice chap………..