Shakin' Stevens I REMEMBER…

Shaky was the UK's biggest-selling singles artist of the 1980s. Still charting each year with his Christmas classic, Merry Christmas Everyone, the Welsh singer shares his memories of an incredible career…

- Jack Watkins

…THE HOME I GREW UP IN WAS VERY SMALL. It had three tiny bedrooms and was in the Cardiff suburb of Ely. I was the youngest of 13 children, and eight of us shared one box room and small bedroom. They were so small there was no space for a wardrobe. You hung your clothes on the back of the door.

…WE ALL SANG IN THE HOUSE. We all had good voices in my family and I was singing from an early age. Although I was born in 1948, there are 25 years between me and my eldest brother, and so the house was full of records from the 1930s to the 1960s.

I grew up listening to a wider range of music than my contemporaries. People like the great early country singer Jimmie Rodgers, Joe Turner, the Big Bopper and Little Richard.

…ONE OF MY FIRST BANDS WAS CALLED THE DENIMS. I wasn’t wearing the denim that became my later look then, so what a coincidence that was! We played school halls and weddings. We never made any records, but we did at play the famous 2i's Coffee Bar in Soho where Tommy Steele and Cliff Richard had performed a decade earlier. This was in about 1964. We were on for an hour and a half and got paid £4.

…DOING LOTS OF JOBS BEFORE I TURNED PROFESSIONAL MUSICIAN. I left school at 15 and worked on building sites and in warehouses, did window cleaning and was an apprentice upholsterer, which I liked because I was learning a trade. I’d be doing that during the day and the gigs at night. Hard work, but you get back what you put in. Finally, in 1969, I was able to pack it all in and concentrate on music full-time.