Barney Ashton-Bullock makes a dramatic comeback to his home town on the evening of September 12th when he himself performs the critically acclaimed Edinburgh Fringe Festival song-cycle ‘Torsten The Bareback Saint’ that he wrote for Erasure frontman Andy Bell. Barney grew up between his mother’s home at Fisherman’s Walk and his Grandmother’s seasonal B&B in Westby Road, just a stones throw from the Shelley Theatre where his homecoming performance will take place as one of the highlights of the forthcoming Boscombe Fringe Festival.
“I remember Boscombe being a seaside town in its own right and it being jam-packed every summer until about the late 80s. Obviously its very much changed and when a friend told me that it is now one of the most impoverished suburbs in the South West, well, I must admit I was sad. That is why I am delighted to help this exciting Boscombe Fringe initiative”.
Barney was a pupil at St.Peters School in Southbourne and at the Princes Annexe of Bournemouth College in Knyveton Road, but it was his longstanding membership of the now demised Bournemouth Centre For Community Arts during his teen years where he learnt the possibilities of music and drama that have stood him in good sted for the career he developed thereafter.
“The BCCA in the 1980s was a crucible from which poured production after production of alternative edgy work. I stared attending courses there in 1981 and had my final play produced there in 1995. I went on to represent the country twice through the self-style ‘national theatre of new writing’, London’s Royal Court Theatre and had about a dozen plays performed at London Fringe Theatre venues”.
Barney currently runs a record label Strike Force Entertainment with such legendary signings as Marc Almond, Jimmy Somerville, Hazel O’Connor and Erasure’s Andy Bell. But his interest in music was first awakened by buying ex-Jukebox singles in the 1980s from the Southbourne newsagents, Grand Avenue News, then owned by the present Bournemouth mayor, Chris Mayne, where he had a paper round. Impromptu gigs followed in the Fisherman’s Walk bandstand with other members of the Bournemouth Youth Theatre Enthusiasts.
