Saturday 30 March 2013

Cliff Twemlow - The Tuxedo Warrior

The Tuxedo Warrior is one of the names applied to doormen, and one man who was more than a doorman, was Cliff Twemlow.  Cliff was born in Hulme, Manchester in 1936.  He started his first job as a doorman in 1952 at the tender age of just 16, in Morecambe.  He left there after some time due to a nasty fight with his head doorman, and made his way up to Glasgow.  His doorman activities came to an end after he was nearly castrated in a huge fight in a ballroom, and somebody hit him with a broken glass.  The fight started when the infamous local rough nuts, the Cameron Brothers arrived back in port off their merchant ship.  Being a sassenach made him a target for goading from the Camerons.

    After emerging from hospital he went through numerous jobs and over the years, a couple of marriages.  At the age of forty, he needed a job and so went back to working as a doorman at a posh nightclub in Manchester.  He worked out constantly, to stay in shape, and after a couple of years, he decided to make films cheaply with his friends.  These were shot on video which was extremely cheap, and used some professional actors and extras he knew.  He composed the films` music scores despite no musical knowledge, arranged all the fights, and starred in thirteen low budget thrillers, such as Tuxedo Warrior, GBH, The Mark of Satan & Lethal Impact.  One man who appeared in many of these films was reknowned Kung Fu instructor, Steve Powell, from Manchester.

     Cliff also did scores for other films and programmes, wrote two novels(I have "The Pike"), but in 1993, at the age of 57, Cliff passed away from a heart attack.  Some clips from his films can be viewed on YouTube.

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