The Rub-Up Upbringing. St Lucia. School

I was born Roger Charlery on February 22, 1963, at 51 Grantham Road in Sparkbrook, less than two miles from Birmingham city centre. I didn't have a middle name. Mum said I was called 'Roger' after the actor Roger Moore. My dad was a big fan of the television series The Saint, which was first broadcast on October 4, 1962, the day before the first Beatles single, 'Love Me Do', was released. We lived in my uncle's house and Mum and Dad rented a room from him when they first came to England a few years earlier. It was a big four-bedroom house and we had one room downstairs; four of us in one room. You may have thought after my sister, Equilar, was born in 1961 that these sleeping arrangements would have acted as a natural form of contraception. They didn't. I came along two years later. The house belongs to my auntie now and I have always felt that there is something important about the property. I was born there and I wouldn't mind dying there. The house number '51' is significant too: 5 + 1 = 6. I've noticed a pattern in my life of '6's, and '7's: flight numbers and hotel rooms I stay in always add up to six or seven; I was born on the 22nd day of the 2nd month: 2 + 2 + 2 = 6. The Beat's first hit single, 'Tears Of A Clown', peaked at number six in the UK charts. I feel comfortable when I see a six or a seven. I see them as good numbers.

My parents, Anne Marie Louison and John Baptist Charlery, met around 1957 in St Lucia, a French-speaking island in the Caribbean, where they had two daughters Sandra (b. 1958) and Annie (b. 1960). Greta, my half-sister, was born to a different father in 1955. St Lucia is a Catholic island. The British and the French ruled there for over four hundred years. Seven times British. Seven times French. It gained independence in 1979. Twenty years earlier, in 1959, when the British government were calling out to the Empire countries for labour to run the National Health Service and British Rail, Dad came to England followed by Mum in early 1961. They travelled alone and Greta, Annie and Sandra were left with my grandparents; I would be almost four before I met them. In St Lucia, family was tight-knit and everybody looked after everybody else's kids. You would never have a problem with babysitting. Many St Lucians came to London when they arrived in England. I don't know why Mum and Dad settled in Birmingham. All they wanted to do was work and make enough money to bring over their children from the Caribbean.

Dad was a musician. My older cousins would say, 'Your father used to play a mean saxophone. He also played the guitar, but as soon as he came to England he gave it all up to work in a factory.' There was a heavy machine factory in Deritend and all I remember is him saying he worked on a capstan lathe. Dad always used to dress smart in a tie and shirt and jacket. He would say, 'I've come here to make money.' He may have put his instruments away but he remained a total music lover. The living room at home was filled with records and he had an eclectic record collection. It was the first time I ever heard the funk of James Brown or the pop of Manfred Mann or Motown. Dad also listened to a lot of country and western. Artists like Charlie Pride, Jim Reeves, Patsy Cline and Tammy Wynette. I used to love Brenda Lee, especially the saxophone parts. He also used to listen to a lot of African music. I'd get into the catchy rhythms but I didn't have a clue what they were singing about. I don't think Dad brought any records with him from St Lucia. Most of his records were collected in England, probably because most calypso records were pressed in London, before being shipped out to the Caribbean. Records were played on the stereogram downstairs. It had valves so you had to wait fifteen seconds for the large dark wood unit to warm up. It had a great bass sound. We weren't allowed to touch it but music was always in the house.

I first heard ska from Mum, and at parties when I would have been about six or seven. All the relatives took it in turns to have everybody round. We would go to Uncle Henry's every other weekend. His real name was Hesbury, but everybody called him Henry. He had a big detached house in Palmerston Road, which he would open up and blast out calypso and reggae records with the odd country and western tune thrown in. The adults would usher us kids out of the living room so they could dance but it was always exciting to watch them through the crack in the door. There was a dance called the 'rub up' where a male and female would dance pretty close to each other, whining and grining in time to the music. It was very sexy. Along with records like '007' by Desmond Dekker and 'Double Barrel' by Dave & Ansell Collins, I must have heard 'Cherry Oh Baby' by Eric Donaldson a billion times. It was a classic tune and it would be played five times straight. It was a perfect tune for the 'rub up'. The parties would go on till two or three in the morning. We would fall asleep in one of the upstairs bedrooms and in the early hours be woken and have to struggle back home, half asleep.

When I was about four years old my parents sent me and Equilar to St Lucia. They wanted to save up enough money to bring all five of us back, 'To live,' as they used to say, 'a better life in England.' I wasn't old enough to appreciate their sacrifice or to even understand why Mum and Dad weren't coming too. We were simply told we were going to live with Grandmother and then we would come back to England with our sisters. That was a shock in itself – 'I've got three more sisters!' How you take that in as a four year old, I don't know.

I don't recall much detail about the voyage to the Caribbean except Equilar and I had a guardian allocated to us and I remember being lifted up onto the boat by a stranger. I was scared because of the water and I was crying. The man said, 'You'll be all right.' On the ship we were handed these strange-tasting eggs. I didn't know what they were but they tasted wonderful. All the kids slept together in a huge room...