Fade to Black chronicles the lives and deaths of more than 1,200 movie personalities, Included are not just the big stars but a wealth of important characters from the history of film. Some achieved world fame or great power. Some were consigned to obscurity after one scandal too many. Other hid dark secrets that would only emerge after their deaths.
BORN in London, I was raised in the tiny hamlet of Harold Hill in Essex and educated at a Jesuits boys' grammar school. Aged 15, I wrote a quiz for the late Jeremy Beadle on the London radio station LBC. Two years later, I was the biggest outside contributor to the best-selling Hunter Davies's Bigger Book of British Lists.
My own first book - 50 Fantastic Hits - was published when I was 24. I have since written fifteen books, often with a showbusiness theme. I am the author of biographies of Julia Roberts (2003) and Judy Garland (2007); a history of television scandal (TV Babylon in 1997); three editions of a best-selling encyclopaedia of film stars Fade to Black (2000, 2003, 2005) with a fourth edition due in 2010; a guide to the films of Marilyn Monroe (2000); Essex Murders (2007), a book about homicide in that county for which I also took many of the photographs; Assassins and Assassinations (2008), a look at 25 of the most notorious plots; The Arsenal Companion (2008), the first of two books on the north London footballing giants; 501 Most Notorious Crimes (2009); Arsenal On This Day (2009) and Cricket On This Day (2009). My forthcoming books include Cricket On This Day 2 (2010), Firsts, Lasts & Onlys: Cricket (2010), Firsts, Lasts & Onlys: Football (2010)and Firsts, Lasts & Onlys: Golf(2010).
I have contributed to the following books: Hunter Davies's Bigger Book of British Lists (1982); Poison Pen The Unauthorised Biography of Kitty Kelley by George Carpozi Jr (1992); Clinton Confidential The Climb To Power: The Unauthorised Biography of Bill and Hillary Clinton by George Carpozi Jr (1995); Tom Jones: Close Up by Lucy Ellis and Bryony Sutherland (2000); The Pocket Essential Marx Brothers by Mark Bego (2001) and White Slave: The Autobiography by Marco Pierre White and James Steen (2006).
In the mid-1980s I wrote many of the questions for the television quiz show Pass the Buck (hosted by George Layton for Thames Television). I also wrote a number of unbroadcast shows - you could say I have been involved with more pilots than a kamikaze squadron. Of the shows that did make the air, I wrote for Jeremy Beadle's Today's the Day (TV-am), Today's the Day (BBC), Ultra Quiz (TVS) and University Challenge (Granada for BBC).
I was the editor of Crime Stories, Man About Town and M-Zone. I have worked for several magazines and newspapers including The Sunday Telegraph, The Daily Telegraph, The Sun, Daily Mail (where for two years I was stand-in editor on the gossip column Wicked Whispers), OK! (where I was a columnist for three years), Sunday Express, Punch (where I was a reporter-feature writer and occasional stand-in deputy editor), Idols, Maxim, For Women, Video World, Hotel & Caterer, City AM (where I was the chief sub editor), thelondonpaper and, most recently Master Detective where I write "Paul Donnelley's Murder Month", a column on criminal history.
I divide my time between a book-lined flat in Essex and Oran, Algeria's second biggest city. I am presently at work on a number of non-fiction books.
