Bernard William Jewry was born 27 September 1942 in Muswell Hill, North London. Moving to Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, at a young age where his mother ran a boarding house frequented by musicians and entertainers appearing locally,Jewry attended the Southwell Minster Collegiate Grammar School (now Southwell Minster School) in Southwell, Nottinghamshire, near Newark-upon-Trent, as a boarder. He made his stage debut in pantomime at the age of four. In the early 1960s, Shane Fenton and the Fentones were an unknown teenage band who recorded a demo tape and mailed it in to a BBC programme with the hope of being picked to appear on television. While awaiting a reply from the BBC, the band's 17-year-old singer Shane Fenton (whose real name was Johnny Theakston) died as a result of the rheumatic fever he had suffered in childhood. The rest of the band (guitarists Jerry Wilcock and Mick Eyre, bassist Graham George Squires and drummer Tony Hinchcliffe) decided to break up, but then unexpectedly received a letter from the BBC inviting them to come to London to audition in person for the programme. Theakston's mother asked the band to stay together, and to keep its name, in honour of her son's memory. Jewry, who was a roadie with the group at the time, was asked to join the band and to use Shane Fenton as a pseudonym The combo had a handful of hits in the UK Singles Chart, basing their sound on that of the Shadows: "I'm A Moody Guy", "Walk Away", "It's All Over Now" and their biggest hit, "Cindy's Birthday". These and their subsequent misses were all on Parlophone Records. During the early 1970s, however, he acquired a new persona, Alvin Stardust, cashing in on the glam rock bandwagon. His new name was given to him by Peter Shelley, the co-founder (with Michael Levy) of Magnet Records, who had found himself unable to continue as Alvin Stardust when "My Coo Ca Choo" charted in 1973. Hal Carter, Fenton's manager, suggested his client as a substitute. Stardust had further chart successes with the hits "Jealous Mind" (UK No. 1."You, You, You", "Red Dress" and "Good Love Can Never Die". In total, he amassed seven Top Ten entries, in a chart span lasting almost 25 years (source Wikipedia)