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Lee Marvin
Born February 19, 1924, in New York City, Lee Marvin quit high school to enter the Marine Corps and while serving in the South Pacific was wounded in the Battle of Saipan. That sounds pretty heroic until you realise he was wounded in the buttocks. He spent a year in recovery before returning to the…
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Roscoe Fatty Arbuckle
A comic genius from the golden age of the silent cinema, the Prince of Whales was the first comedian ever to be hit by an on-screen custard pie. He was working as an overweight plumber in 1913 when he was discovered by Mack Sennett. He had come to unclog the film producer’s drain but Sennett…
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Allan Williams
The first manager of a Liverpool combo known as The Beatles. This plumber and owner of the Jacaranda club was the man who took them to Hamburg in 1960 and set them on the road to a relatively successful career. He first met the Fab Four when they came into the Jacaranda and was the…
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Smith Wigglesworth
A world-famous Christian evangelist and one of the few men named Smith with the power to raise people from the dead. Born in Yorkshire in 1859, Wigglesworth was picking crops for a living at the age of six and working 12 hours a day in a woollen mill by the age of seven. His family…
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Joe Cocker
One of rock and roll’s enduring performers, Cocker has survived the sixties, a low period in the seventies, made a comeback in the eighties, and continues to be a solid and consistent performer in the nineties and on into the 21st century. Known for his gutsy, gravelly, vocal style, Joe started out in Sheffield in…
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G Gordon Liddy
The former FBI agent who helped plan the Watergate break-in has capitalized on his burglary legend and taken his political views to the airwaves. George Gordon Liddy’s ultra-conservative radio talk show based in Fairfax, Virginia is broadcast on 232 stations nationwide. Liddy was convicted for his role in the Watergate break-in, for conspiracy in the…
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Simone DeCavalcante
AKA Sam DeCavalcante. AKA Sam the Plumber. He was the boss of the Mafia’s New Jersey based DeCavalcante Family from the 1960s until the mid 1970s. In 1961, the FBI planted a listening device in DeCavalcante’s plumbing supply shop, and recorded him discussing criminal activities with other Mafia members and with politicians until they removed…
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Zinzan Brooke
Former New Zealand rugby captain Zinzan Brooke was a plumber before he turned to playing his sport full-time. The number 8, reckoned by many experts to be one of the all-time greats, played 82 times for the All Blacks, scoring 190 points in the process and captained his country on many occasions. Zinzan was born…
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Ozzie Osbourne
Born in 1948 in Aston, Birmingham as John Michael Osbourne, the fourth of six children. The Osbourne family lived in poverty and a crowded house. Ozzy was beaten regularly by his father, mainly for behavior such as trying to kill his siblings. Constant fighting and arguing between Ozzy’s parents about their financial situation finally prompted…
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Rashid Abdul Dostum
General Dostum is the whisky-drinking former plumber who rose through the ranks of the Afghan puppet army that the Soviet Union ran in Afghanistan in the 1980s. He was eventually appointed head of Khad, the hated Communist secret police agency, where he had ample opportunity to indulge his penchant for ruthlessness and savagery. Dostum is…