Back in 1985, I can clearly remember my father having a Cloud disco console setup in the living room. He used to purchase the latest top 10 singles from the local Woolworths and I recall repeatedly asking him to play one particular record. His response was always the same: “If you want to listen to Roland Rat you can play it yourself”, and that’s where it all began. At the time, my father was running two successful mobile disco businesses in the Forest of Dean; one roadshow was called ‘Dicky Bird’ and the other ‘Body Rock’.

After a few years, in 1988, my parents got divorced. In the settlement, my mother received one of the roadshows and she decided to take on the role of DJ herself, with me acting as her roadie/assistant. We specialised in children’s parties and regular youth club discos. From this experience I became confident enough operating the equipment and talking on the microphone.

In the year 1990 I decided to move to South Wales to be nearer to my father. At this time he was still running his mobile disco business and I started to accompany him, learning how to DJ on a more professional level at adult functions. After a while he decided to hang up his headphones and hand the Dicky Bird business over to me.

I continued to use that name for a few years but then, in 1993, decided to change to something different that would give my business its own identity. I chose ‘Black Panther Discos’, which I thought was very cool at the time. This is the same name that I still use for my mobile disco business, over 20 years later! At around this time I also recruited my own assistant, Shane Davis, who also still works with me to this day.

I met my wonderful wife in 1994 and we immediately hit it off and years later we now have three lovely children. Whilst holding down a daytime job in a warehouse, I continued to DJ at the weekends throughout South Wales and Gloucestershire. Things went very well with my DJ business and it wasn’t long before I decided to take the plunge and become a full-time self-employed DJ. I soon built up the business to the point that I was able to provide three mobile discos on one evening, with other DJs working for me.

Even though the other DJs that I hired were all very good, I still found that most of my customers still particularly wanted me to be their DJ myself. In the end I made the decision to scale back and run just one mobile disco with me as the only DJ and Shane as my regular assistant. This business model seems to work very well for me, as it allows me build good rapport with all of my customers and ensure that the service they receive is always consistent.