Gary Frederick Holton, was born on 22 September 1952 in London and grew up in the slums of the East End, and kept a raucous cockney accent. However at 16, already turned on by acting, he went on to work with the Royal Shakespeare Company at Stratford. At seventeen, he joined for two years the touring company of ‘Hair’. He then also appeared in different UK television series from 1979 up to1985.

    But Gary Holton was more wellknown as singer, songwriter and musician. He was a spectacular front-man for the ‘Heavy Metal Kids’ band, which formed in 1974. As a vocalist, he proved himself a popular cult glam-rock icon. We could see him everywhere, always wearing his black Argyll wellies on, always turned down, as some British workers typically did. That was part of himself. The newspaper ‘The Sun’ even called him ‘The Trendy Tramp’ in July 1974. The band got a success much more in Sweden, than in UK, apart in 1976 for the single ‘She's No Angel’. Between 1975 & 1978 when the band broke up, Gary was partly a member of it and partly out.

In 1980-81, Holton hooked up with Norwegian artist Casino Steel, and released a couple of albums, still famous in Norway. Their musical style was country rock with strong punk influences. They then created "Rig Rock", symbolizing a successful partnership across the North Sea, the oilworker being the modern-day cowboy.

    Some time after, in 1983, Gary Holton got a real success as an actor, playing the part of Wayne Winston Norris in the comedy drama called : Auf Wiedersehen, Pet. He played a Cockney carpenter who liked women, music, and drink, which was actually very similar to his off-screen personality and reflected the difficult life, in the early 1980s, of Britain honest workers, screwed by the system, and conducted to unemployement.

    But Holton died midway through the second series of Auf Wiedersehen, Pet, in 1985. The producers used dialogues already recorded to allow the series to be completed, and the third episode, in 2002 with all of the surviving cast members was a success and Gary, despite being dead for seventeen years, was not forgotten.

    Gary Holton had been a drug user for several years after experiences through the music scene and was addicted to heroin. He had considerable debts and two bankruptcies. He was found dead by his girlfriend, Janet Mclllewan, in his bed on 25 October 1985. He had died from an overdose of alcohol, morphine and cannabis.