When Tony Ellingham hit the big time in the late 1960s he didn't have a care in the world, but he did have one problem - his stage name. Instead of the name his mother gave him he was told to go by a different one.
Something cool and sexy, something which would grab his fans' attention and portray him as an icon of Sixties' chic. His new name was Dorian Gray.
"I was a young man, it was terribly embarrassing and a lot of my friends took the mickey" admits Tony. "It comes from an Oscar Wilde tale about a man who never ages until he sees a picture he had for years. Must have seemed like a good idea at the time."
But since a notable evening in 1968 when he was spotted by Manager, Roger Easterby, during a performance at The Moat Hotel, Wrotham, fame and almost a fortune followed.
Dorian Gray's first record "Behind The Tear" didn't quite rip the charts open but it did lay the foundations for the next one - a top 40 hit "I've Got You On My Mind", which was written especially for him by Roger Greenaway and Roger Cook. This was backed by fast beat number "Move On", co-written by Roger Easterby. Click on "Media/Music" in the navigation menu to hear these two tracks.
He appeared on Top of the Pops (with his name shown in the TV listings at the time), toured the country with the likes of Tom Jones and Cilla Black and had his fair share of pretty girls running after him.
The two Rogers, who were then using the name "David and Jonathan", were so delighted at the way Dorian handled the number that they immediately wrote another for him - "Love Is All It Should Be", but unfortunately this failed to make the charts.
Thinking about the good old days, he says: "At one stage my record was always on pirate radio stations. You heard it everywhere and it was a real joy. I had a fantastic year of fame and was always appearing on TV. But then the law clamped down on pirate radio and that was the end of my career, because no-one was hearing the music. I always thought that, if the radio station had not been closed down, I would have been a millionaire by now!"
But he has no real regrets. "At least I managed to do something most musicians will only dream of, even if it was just for a while."