LIONEL BART
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Lionel Bart was born in Stepney, died in Acton and for a time was King of everything between. As well as Oliver! the best British musical ever, he was also responsible for a score or so of songs you know and love like Living Doll, Little White Bull and From Russia With Love. Rich, funny and achingly fashionable, he threw the best parties attended by everybody from Noel Coward to Judy Garland via Alma Cogan and the Beatles. For a week or so, he managed the Rolling Stones. After pouring all his hope and most of his money into the legendary flop Twang!! he drank for fifteen years after which a modest bounce back to fame, fortune and sobriety brought a sort of peace.

David Stafford is a writer and broadcaster whose disparate career has taken in documentaries, drama and comedy for TV and radio, collaboration with the comedian Alexei Sayle, and a long running weekly column in The Guardian. These days he co-writes with his wife, Caroline. Fings Ain't Wot They Used T'Be, their biography of Lionel Bart was published in 2011.