
“…it’s all about hard work…”
He came from Guernsey via London’s West End and arrived here in 1970 for a role in The Boyfriend. He never left. He fell in love with South Africa and in return South Africans loved him. He danced into our lives with a ready smile, strutting across the stage in high heeled boots as the narrator in ‘Joseph ‘, singing with his opera trained voice in West Side Story. With matinee-idol good looks teenage girls queued for his autograph and a chance to brush against a star. He has shone from the silver screen, twirled his cane and doffed his hat in cabaret, charmed viewers on television and even given his smooth voice to vinyl, shooting to the top of the charts.
With entrepreneurial zeal he didn’t stop at the last autograph signing; he built the Sound Stage Theatre in Midrand and for the next nineteen years played to packed houses, shows of his invention, unforgettable, nostalgic, rollicking – ‘every show a winner’.
Inspired by Australia’s Tap Dogs Richard created African Footprint with the thought of taking South Africa’s talent and culture to the rest of the world. A costly gamble that paid off. It played to the royals and to date he has taken this electrifying show to countless cities on seven continents.
He arrived in his adoptive country with an abiding gift of giving. In the 70’s he put together the first All Star soccer game at the Orlando Stadium, he raises monies for the Theatre Benevolent Fund, Hospice, Rotary ….the list goes on and on. In spite of being a family man with a wife and two daughters, he has gambled fortunes on productions, having the faith to know, each will always be a winner.
interviews

Richard performing in the PIETER TOERIEN show STARTING HERE STARTING NOW, Intimate Theatre, 1976

Richard in OH COWARD with Ronnie Scott Dodd and Judy Page