General Interest

Born and educated in Northampton, Jonathan Adams (1931-2005) is perhaps most popularly remembered as the original Narrator in Richard O’Brien’s cult musical The Rocky Horror Show. But before becoming an accomplished actor of stage, screen, television and radio from the late 1950s, he developed his talent as a surrealist artist at the Chelsea School of Art and, while studying there, sang his own songs in college shows. Later, during National Service in Penang, he painted, sketched, composed songs and put on weekly radio shows.

At that time he wrote to his father that his head was ‘crammed full of all kinds of things: acting, piano-playing, singing, painting, writing – I want to do everything.’ And it is that eclecticism that pervades his memoirs, which are, as the title suggests, an embroidered, heightened, dramatised collage of memories, impressions and anecdotes, shot through with the surrealism that also found expression in his art.

As he writes in the Preface: ‘I don’t know who I am – I’ve never known who I am, so while reading these memoirs be advised that, besides being an artist, I am an actor – a breed of whom it is often claimed has no identity of its own. In my trundling perambulations through life and in my observations of the Passing Parade, perhaps I will not only reveal myself to you, but also reveal myself to me. Fearful thought!’

‘Jonathan Adams was the very first narrator of The Rocky Horror Show and, for my money, the very best. His hang-dog, bloodhound looks, combined with his dead-pan and impish wit, provided a gravitas unequalled through the following years. A good man, a nice man, a kind man. It was a pleasure to know him.’
Richard O’Brien, actor and creator of ‘The Rocky Horror Show’

 ‘Jonathan Adams was the best kind of English actor, laconic, ironic, witty and stylish. More than that, though he lived in the thespian world notoriously filled with rancour, jealousies and dislike, he himself was a gentle and an infinitely kind man of great good humour. To read his story is an unalloyed pleasure.’
John Nettles, actor.

COLLAGE OF A LIFE
Memoirs of an artist, actor and humorist

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