A charmed life

""I was born on 23 July 1947, yellow with jaundice and delivered by forceps. Maybe my reluctance to enter the world was a premonition of the incredible adventure my life would be ... "" "Cut to 26 years later - "At the record shop signings I did to promote the single, 'Essex Mania' was taking hold, we stopped the traffic in Bond Street and lay besieged in Lewisham High Street."" "By 1973, David Essex was starring in the number one London stage show Godspell, had the number one movie and soundtrack album with That'll Be the Day, and topped it all off by writing and recording his first number one single, the classic 'Rock On'. Months later, he was number one in the USA, having sold over twelve million copies worldwide." "It was all a far cry from his early days, rooted in poverty in East London, where he and his mother were forced to live in a workhouse while his father struggled to find them the money for a home of their own. Here, in his autobiography, David Essex recalls both the fun and the frustration of those early days, his time hop-picking with his gypsy relatives in Kent, his early love of football and his desire to be a professional player. And how all that changed when he bought his first drum kit and started playing with local blues and rock 'n' roll bands."--Jacket.