Afternoon with Peter White

An afternoon with Peter White on Wednesday 19 April 2023 at 2.30pm at St Philip's, Salisbury Road, Tonbridge. 

Admission £3 for visitors, free for Singalong members.

Below is some information about his background, but it modestly omits his escapades with the likes of Little Richard. Duane Eddy, the Jackson 5, Graham Nash and John Lee Hooker

‘Born in Catford, in the days when it was a verdant landscape of fragrant blossom and crystal-clear streams, Peter was educated in spite of the Judd School, Tonbridge, and soon joined a variety of ‘pop groups’, as we young people call them; highlights included a year’s residency at a blues club in Wardour Street, but not the famous one.

Setting off to cycle round the world, he got no further than hitching to Morocco. After spending the summer of 1969 there, he returned in time to see Bob Dylan on the Isle of Wight, before joining the Immigration Service at Heathrow, and then at Felixstowe, which whiled away the next thirty-seven years, and enabled him to work in the world’s most interesting countries - Belgium and Sweden.

Playing to pub audiences to overwhelming indifference, he encountered one Ivor Biggun, more acceptably known as Doc Cox, from Esther Rantzen’s ‘That’s Life’, who invited him to join the deservedly underrated Trembling Wheelbarrows, east Suffolk’s number one comedy rock/country band in their price bracket. To wide-spread alarm, this lasted nearly ten years.

In advanced old age, he continues to play sessions in the ever-decreasing number of  Suffolk pubs which are still open, but looks forward to treating Tonbridge to some of his curiously unsophisticated guitar, mandolin and dulcimer.’

Of interest to Tonbridge historians, Peter's 28 x great-grandfather was Richard Fitzgilbert de Clare, 1st Earl of Tonbridge, who built the original castle. 

Come and join the Singalong group for an entertaining afternoon of good music and merriment - U3A members only. Admission by booking in advance only, by Saturday 15 April at the latest - numbers allowing. Booking through John Lawrence singalong@tonbridgeu3a.uk  - please include your telephone number, so that we can arrange advance payment and then send you a numbered email for admission.