Cliff Twemlow

Music

In the early 1960s Twemlow began a successful career composing library music under the names Peter Reno and John Agar. His music was used in TV programmes (e.g., Public Eye, Rutland Weekend Television, The Benny Hill Show, Queenie's Castle , The Sweeney), feature films (e.g., Zeta One (1970), Secrets of Sex (1970), Deathdream (1974), A Touch of the Sun (1979), Dawn of the Dead (1978)) and TV commercials. He wrote "Distant Hills", the end credit theme of the ITV programme Crown Court (1972–1984), which was issued as the B-side to the Van der Valk theme "Eye Level" (Columbia DB 8946^[3]).

In 1973 he encountered legal problems with his song "Live and Let Die", recorded by Salena Jones. Although released shortly before Paul McCartney recorded his song with the same title for the film Live and Let Die (1973), McCartney successfully took out an injunction against Twemlow.^[4]

Writing

In 1980 Twemlow published his autobiography The Tuxedo Warrior^[5], which documented his career in the music industry and as a bouncer. The book inspired the film Tuxedo Warrior (1982), which however ignores his life and instead uses him as a character in a fictional narrative.

He wrote two novels: The Pike (1982),^[6] of which he announced a film version^[7][8][9] but failed to secure funding,^[10][11] and The Beast of Kane (1983).^[12]

Film

In 1983 Twemlow wrote, produced and starred in G.B.H. Grievous Bodily Harm,^[13] one of the earliest British films to be shot on video, which sold over 10,000 copies in its first month of release.^[14][15] He starred in nine more films until 1992, produced a pilot for a TV show, and appeared in several special interest training films produced by Brian Sterling-Vete on the MajorVision label includingThe Power to Win, The Ultimate Self Defense and Fitness Over Forty.^{[citation needed]}