Ronnie Golden’s journey has been a long and fascinating one. From opening shows for Tom Jones, Scott Walker and Engelbert Humperdinck as a teenage guitarist, he worked with David Bowie in his Beckenham Arts Lab days then went on to form cult late 70s renegades Fabulous Poodles whose album Mirror Stars outsold both The Clash and The Jam in America in the early 80’s.
Within a few short weeks of that band’s demise he was doing stand-up at London’s Boulevard Theatre alongside Comic Strip regulars Rik Mayall, Ben Elton, a nascent French and Saunders and Alexei Sayle and performing a legendary Buddy Holly in the first series of BBC 2’s The Young Ones. He remains the only original member from The Comic Strip team to still be actively working on today’s comedy circuit. There were several guest spots and cameos: he played Tracey Ullman’s son inC4’s first Friday Night Live then performed with Mac McDonald in Saturday Live and was a detective and then a doo-wop singer in a couple of Lenny Henry Shows. His voice, regularly heard on Spitting Image was featured on the No.1 single The Chicken Song/We’re Scared Of Bob.
Radio jingle writing won him an award for most interesting use of music in Independent Radio Awards in the early 90s for 60sec acapella song for Ariel Automatic and his harmonica could be heard on TV’s Finger of Fudge commercial(!!)
He’s played an MI6 agent in the 1986 movie The Fourth Protocol (with Pierce Brosnan and Michael Caine,) a heroin addict in C4’s How Much Is Too Much? won awards for composing advertising jingles, and is a much sought after voiceover artist.
His 6 piece R&B/Soul outfit Ronnie and the Rex still perform their Club Senseless nights in N. London and the West End and, over the past five years, have recorded four series of Radio 4’s The Right Time for which Ronnie wrote songs and sketches.
He performed standup in Brit.Com at the Montreal Just For Laughs Comedy Festival in July 2003 as well as a reprise of the Leonard Cohen show with Arthur.
A winning combination with comedy legend Barry Cryer has yielded several successful Edinburgh Festival shows and a live cd: Rock ‘N’ Droll on Laughing Stock Recs. They regularly perform their 2 hour show in theatres across the UK.
At 2004 Edinburgh Festival he played a drug-addled, alcoholic, self-destructive blues singer Prince Royale in ‘noir’ boogie woogie / blues musical The City Club which became a small budget Hollywood movie entitled Dark Streets. He collaborated on the score for this with composer / musician James Compton.
He appeared in Radio 4 sitcom Ed Reardon’s Week and recently on the panel show Act Your Age and has guested in several series Radio 2 music / comedy show Jammin’ .
Ronnie has just returned from a series of shows at the Edinburgh Festival . First A Fender, his first ever solo show, is an autobiographical guitar lesson and he hopes to tour the UK with it.
New Zealand-born composer Mark Hardy invited Ronnie to contribute vocals to his songcycle Listen To Me which was released late 2010.
The City Club, blues/boogie musical, is opening for off-Broadway previews at the Minetta Lane Theatre in Greenwich Village, New York at the end of March 2012. Alongside a whole bunch of songs he’s written for the project he has two great new numbers Copacetic! and Why Did It Have To Be You? the big soul ballad which closes Act One.
He continues to write and tour with Barry Cryer.
