Gary Le Strange

The Byronic Lord of Pop

January 2003 - August 2006... Sort of...

It’s difficult to know what to write about Gary Le Strange. When I started making this website, the initial idea was to tell “the full story, warts and all” including a detailed examination of why I became Gary Le Strange and why I’m not him any more. But having written at least four versions of this introductory page already and realising it’s holding up the rest of my life (not to mention that every single draft of this introduction has been monumentally depressing), I’m going to cut straight to the good stuff and give you...

Ten Amazing Facts About Gary Le Strange!

1. Gary Le Strange was a comedy character created by the British actor and comedian Waen Shepherd. That’s me!

2. Le Strange was based partly on the lives and careers of several singers and musicians from the British New Wave and New Romantic scene of the late 1970s and early 1980s (gleaned from information in books like Marc Almond’s Tainted Life and TV programmes like The Madness of Prince Charming) and partly on events which had transpired in my own life, but thankfully nobody ever picked up on that last bit.

3. Though the idea had been around since 2000, my first appearance as Gary was in March 2002, as part of a show I did with Simon Farnaby called Peterford Golf Club. The convoluted idea was that the golf club’s entertainments manager, Quentin, had discovered a tramp sleeping in a bunker on the green and, upon realising he was the once-famous New Romantic pop star Gary Le Strange, convinces him to perform at the club’s cabaret night. After performing his Top Thirty hit Sex Dummy, the drug-damaged Le Strange then loses his cool and attacks Quentin with a spoon.

4. The name “Gary Le Strange” was culled from the names of three well-known 80s pop stars: “Gary” Numan, Simon “Le” Bon and Steve “Strange”.

5. By 2003, I’d refined the character to a more nuanced state and performed a one-man show at the Edinburgh Fringe called Polaroid Suitcase. Against all odds, it was a resounding critical and commercial success, and I left Edinburgh clutching the Perrier Award for Best Newcomer, fighting off strong competition from Alex Horne, Miles Jupp and Michael McIntyre. But that was seven years ago and they are all now infinitely more successful than I am.

6. The twelve months following the Perrier win in 2003 were among the most productive and lucrative of my life - I was never out of work, with constant gigs, a national tour and multiple TV and radio slots, including two series of Radio 2’s The Day the Music Died. I also landed a development deal with the BBC, which resulted in three half-hour scripts and precisely no TV programmes whatsoever.

7. Over the course of four years, I recorded and released three full-length CD albums of songs under the name Gary Le Strange - Polaroid Suitcase, Face Academy and Beef Scarecrow - each the official soundtrack to a different live show. They are no longer available on CD but I’ll be remastering them all for download purposes in the near future and certain tracks can be heard here, here and here.

8. Gary’s downfall began in August 2004 with his second show Face Academy, mainly thanks to the venue (The Pod Deco, its name be cursed for all eternity) going bankrupt without having handed over my ticket sales. As a result, my wife and I found ourselves thousands of pounds in debt, I fell out with my management and ended up with a chronic sleeping disorder which could only be combatted through several years of rampant alcoholism. Being Gary Le Strange was never much fun after that.

9. One of the best things I ever did was a short-lived comedy night called Club Le Strange at The Albany in Great Portland Street, hosted by Gary with regular contributions from Oram & Meeten, The Trap and loads of other brilliant leftfield comedians, which ran monthly from October 2004 to December 2005. Sadly I never felt comfortable being the compere and my raging desire to be free of Le Strange meant the whole thing collapsed.

10. Despite the fact that I deliberately and definitively killed Gary Le Strange off in my 2006 show Beef Scarecrow, I continued to perform as him for at least a year, filming a bunch of videos for ITV’s Comedy Cuts and recording the beginnings of two more albums. Eventually though I agreed with myself that Gary’s time was long gone and it was probably best to call it a day.

And that’s just the start of it! Over time, I’ll be adding more stuff to this section. But for now, here’s a small selection of music, writing, videos, audios, press and pictures. And if that’s not enough, you can always peruse his old website at www.garylestrange.co.uk.

Music
Download songs by Gary Le Strange