Lewis Collins

Lewis Collins (27 May 1946 – 27 November 2013) was an English actor, best known for his career-defining role playing 'Bodie' in the late 1970s – early 1980s British television series The Professionals. Early life Collins was born in Bidston, Birkenhead, on the Wirral Peninsula in Cheshire, now Merseyside. At the age of two he won 'The Most Beautiful Baby in Liverpool' contest. He was educated at Gautby Road Primary School, Grange School in Birkenhead and the Birkenhead Institute School. When he was 13 years of age, his father Bill, a jazz dance band leader, bought him a drum kit. His first gig was playing with his father's band, and he also joined a group of older school pupils to form a band called The Renegades at the start of the Merseybeat music scene in Liverpool in the late 1950s. His passion for firearms started in his youth from a membership of the Liverpool Central Rifle Club. On leaving school, he took an apprentice hairdresser's position at the Andre Bernard Salon, alongside fellow apprentice Mike McCartney (stage name Mike McGear; later a member of the comedy, music and poetry trio The Scaffold). In the same period Collins was writing songs with Mike McCartney, and when the drummer Pete Best was dropped from the Beatles, Mike McCartney suggested Collins as a possible replacement to his elder brother Paul McCartney. Turning down the option of an audition with The Beatles, Collins continued playing music on an amateur basis for a number of local bands, including The Eyes, and The Georgians. In late 1964, Collins quit hairdressing to become the bass player with The Mojos (which his father managed), performing on their charting singles "Goodbye Dolly Gray" and "Until My Baby Comes Home", and moved from Liverpool to London with them when the band appeared to have good commercial prospects. However the band failed to chart again and broke up, and finding himself in the midst of cosmopolitan London in 1966 during the Swinging Sixties, Collins made a living engaged in temping work such as delivery van driving, cleaning windows and being a waiter, before deciding that he wanted to become an actor after hearing a play being performed on the radio.