When the British first discovered and colonized Australia, naturally they spent most of their time trying not to be murdered by it but in the 1950's it was a relatively nice place so my family left the UK and moved to Australia when i was five years old and by the age of 14 i had made a few singing appearances and entered a music contest which i won and the prize was a trip back to the UK to record a single which was never released but it got my name out there and i spent the next 5 years touring nightclubs in Europe as a Country and Western singer and i released a few singles and even got to represent the UK at the 1974 Eurovision Song Contest but as i got more successful the American country singers didn't like the idea of a Brit, or an Australian, singing country tunes as they thought country music should only be sung by hot American women, those they could watch and indulge in activity likely to cause chafing.
Turned out that the general listening public didn’t care about what the country audience thought or that i didn't sing in their backwater, stump jumpin, redneck jibber speak and the Yanks really got the hump when i beat the big Country names to the Grammy for my country hit 'Let Me Be There'.
It was during a party at Helen Reddy's place that everything went up a notch and i met producer Allan Carr, who was looking for an actress for his film version of a Broadway play and despite being 28 and being asked to play someone 18, he offered me the role of Sandy in Grease.
In the original version of Grease, the Sandy character was actually Sandy Dumbrowski and not from Australia, but from the good ole US of A and although i tried, i couldn't shake my Australian accent so the character changed from the sweet and innocent American Sandy Dumbrowski to Sandy Ollson from down under and on release i was a full-blown movie star but not everybody was happy about my success.
I was up to my elbows in Grease but my record company still demanded 2 albums a year from me so i ditched the Country and Western and went pop and despite Grease making me famous enough to allow me to consider retiring without ever having to set foot on a movie set ever again, nobody said this was a career path that i probably should have been followed as i signed on to appear in the roller skating disco musical extravaganza Xanadu, just as the craze for Disco and roller skating faded and it bombed, winning the Golden Raspberries for the worst film of the year and i admit it was rubbish so if you unfortunately have a copy in your DVD rack, pick it up, take it outside and dropkick it over your neighbour’s fence.
Although my movie career was as shaky as the guy who played Kenickie's acting, my singing career was still going well and then i released the song physical and with lyrics such as only talk when were horizontal and let me hear your body talk it was pretty obvious what i was singing about but it was banned from being played on some American radio stations so i said no, you got it all wrong, don’t wet your big boy pants as it's about aerobics and shot a video of me and some men doing exercises and they went, oh okay then.
In the mid 80s i was being squeezed out by younger up-and-comers so planned to embark on a Greatest Hits tour but in one week i received the news that my father died and i had breast cancer.
I did have it treated and continued to perform but it came back in 2013 and again had it successfully treated but when it said you're the one that i want for a third time it was untreatable and i sadly died, not as sad as Grease 2 but close.
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