You May Be Pretty, But I Am Beautiful: The Adrian Street Story

Exactly who or what is Exotic Adrian Street? Well if you don't know, let me introduce you.

I started learning about Adrian Street probably in the early 1980's.

I was a huge wrestling fan, at that time we recieved news about wrestlers

outside of our territories mine being the North East territory that WWF covered.

We would learn about them through the wrestling magazines.

And there's this really odd-looking, unique fellow.

And he's clearly...

Well it's not clear what he is, you know.

He's androgynous. He has a valet.

He, he's wrestling some of the great stars from around the world

there's some classic photos of him with Randy "Macho Man" Savage with Dusty Rhodes.

And as I get into wrestling I learn

that not only is he flamboyant performer but he's an amazing artist and he's one

of those legendary figures in our business who can hurt you really bad

really quickly.

And that's fascinating.

When you can paint and destroy

you create and destroy almost at your will, that that makes for a great story.

Exotic Adrian Street is me.

In fact I am Exotic Adrian Street.

Never ever...

met anybody exotic as I am.

In fact...

I was gonna say I'm perfect but,

the only thing that stopped me from being perfect is my modesty...

I'm too modest for my own good.

The Exotic Adrian Street.

He's such a big name

and he's achieved so many amazing things that he's a guy synonymous with

British wrestling certainly and to a wider extent global wrestling.

He was cutting-edge,

and he was doing it at a time where you really shouldn't been doing what he was doing.

He was pushing that boat, and then kept pushing a little bit more.

And not many people would do that.

It was a very close-knit community.

There were a lot of families all living in the same kind of environment.

Neighbours were very neighbourly.

I can remember my Dad coming home from the pit, quite dirty really, all covered in coal.

We'd have the tin bath put out in front of the fire,

it was that kind of a environment you know, it wasn't as sophisticated as today.

Everybody relied on everybody else more or less.

This is one of the first photographs,

obviously Adrian a baby, with older brother Terrence.

My Father at the time...

was a prisoner war with the Japanese.

Every time I saw anybody in uniform, I'd go up to them and say...

My Dad's a prisoner of war with the Japanese...

When you leave will you go and get him and bring him back?

I really wanted a Father.

But when he did come home,

the first time I ever met him was just like maybe a few weeks before my fifth birthday.

And for whatever reason my Father didn't like me.

And, it wasn't too long before, before I actually learned I didn't like him either.

Adrian was as he is now, quite unique.

He would be the one that would go off and do his own thing.

Always in trouble...

As far as I can recall, the tales my Mum used to tell,

whatever neighbourhood catastrophe would be happening...

Adrian was in the midst of it.

When I was a young kid during the war,

there was only one thing I wanted more than to be than to be a Red Indian.

I wanted to be the best, the most famous Red Indian chief in the World.

They were colourful, they wore the makeup.

They wore the feathers in their hair and all that kind of stuff,

the war bonnets.

I really wanted to be a Red Indian chief.

I can remember my Mother making...

Oh, I loved this suit.

It was grey with beaded work and red fringes on it.

My Mum made that for Adrian along with the feather headdress

so Adrian was now...

the... the Indian chief he wanted to be.

When I graduated from the infant school which was way over there,

to the Junior School which was here,

I wanted to make a great first impression.

And I went to school stripped to the waist, with just a pair of short trousers on.

I had my face painted with all the most garish colours

I could find in my paint box

and I filled my hair with a lot of chicken feathers

so... so that I would give the impression

that I wanted to make whenever I entered the school.

I want them to realise that I was a great Cherokee warrior.

Unfortunatly, the Headmistress didn't sort of recognise

the effort I made, and she said

"Go home you silly little bugger and put on some warm pale face clothes and wash your silly face."

I had a friend named Peter Inge

who was really into wrestling and he was trying to interest me in wrestling,

I was trying to interest him in bodybuilding.

Anyway, I was over in Ebbw Vale one day

and I noticed an American wrestling magazine and I thought, oh I'll buy that Peter.

And I bought it and on the way, on the bus back I flipped through it, I was hooked.

Forget about the Red Indians I wanted to be a professional wrestler from then on.

He didn't want to do go down the mine pit a, it was dirty, but it was the silicosis.

Because every, all the miners suffered from silicosis.

And he didn't want that.

It was dead men's shoes in your father's footsteps.

If dad worked in the pits, you went into the pits.

If your dad worked in steel works, you went into steel works.

If your dad worked in industry, you went into industry.

The kind of people that he worked with were quite opposite to him.

For example, they liked smoking and...

and drinking sort of that kind of background.

Well he was very health conscious,

always has been.

So, hence a lot of people thought that he never worked down the pit

because he could never be associated with that kind of a lifestyle.

As regards to the hard work, because it was hard work...

Adrian reviled in that because it was part of, of him being able to show people

what he could do strength-wise seeing that, remembering that he was quite young.

He was one that would do what he wanted to do in his own way

and that's the way he grew up, and that's the way he's developed and he's still the same.

["Mutilation Mambo" by Adrian Street and the Pile Drivers]

I mean the last thing I wanted was to work in a coal mine.

It's dark down there and I needed a spotlight.

I was made to be seen.

["Mutilation Mambo" by Adrian Street and the Pile Drivers]

I do identify with that iconic image of Adrian at the mines with his father.

I remember seeing it and just thinking to myself,

what manner of human being is this? Because it was such a sharp contrast you know,

there's, you know the... the dad and this, you know,

dangerous, desolate, occupation

and Adrian with the eight inch platforms, you know

being glam rock before glam rock even existed.

And it's just, it's just so cool.

It was almost like a space man come out of somewhere or another dimension or something,

and sort of landed straight back, right in the middle of this kind of...

...in this pit in Wales.

It's a great shot you know, I've got I've got it from a wall because it's really weird,

when you tell people like, you know, when people say, "Who's that?"

I say, well that's my Dad and my Grandad,

it's like you know. It certainly takes some explaining I think that picture.

The first title that, that, that I held was the European Middleweight Championship,

Then I actually won the World Middleweight Championship,

I know that you don't have middleweights in the, in the States,

and that's one reason why I gave up the title to come here.

But as far as a heavyweight titles are concerned,

I've held the the European Heavyweight Championship on five different occasions

and I've never ever been beaten for it.

When he was asked where he would like a photograph taken

when his name became famous he said "I'd like to go back to where I started off."

And there he is showing what he managed to achieve.

Such an amazing shot of the juxtaposition between this, gritty, Welsh, working-class, coal-miner,

with his mates who'd kinda, kind of had his life set out before him

before he even knew it, and would have said no this is your life your life is

to go down the mine and that was probably planned for Adrian too

but then when you look at what Adrian did and brought that crazy outfit down the mine

and stood with his dad and took that picture, I think it really symbolized how insane

Adrian's dream was in the first place to go out and try something like that

but also it shows the...

what was so significant about him with wrestling fans,

because that, that insane character versus the the working-class man,

which was the majority of wrestling fans in that era, was kind of what made him

stand out and so different and so beloved or so hated whatever the case may be.

It just shows how much Adrian made an impact on popular culture,

to a stratospheric degree. Particularly for his time.

There's a scene in "Zoolander" where,

Ben Stiller's character does exactly the same. He has a career as a male model

in that film and his father completely disapproves, so he decides to take it to him

as a what, almost that rebellious nature kept coming out on him to show him,

look at me I've done this, you said I couldn't

and that's pretty much inspired by Adrian.

Adrian did exactly that.

Anyway, I ran away from home when I was 16 years of age.

I went to live in London, I almost starved to death.

I've slept on park benches and everything like that.

But if I'm determined to do something, I'm gonna do it or die trying.

No matter what you do,

reach for the stars. If you land on the moon, then you've gone f.

And that's what he's done.

He's basically, he reached for the stars and he's got there.

What he would have become if he hadn't moved away from that mining village,

who knows.

I think he would have been destined to be in show business anyway,

That was his character.

That was what he was determined to do,

you have to take your hat off too him.

["Shake Wrestle 'n' Roll" by Adrian Street and the Pile Drivers]

I was really working out hard like two and a half three hour sessions...

on the mat wrestling, as well as lifting weights.

With the result I was hoping to gain weight because when I went to live in London

I weighed a hundred and seventy six pounds...

But I ended up going down 144.

I'm mean ten stone four pounds.

But I was in such good shape that a friend of mine

suggested I should try the bodybuilding magazines,

and quite honestly I was earning more money posing for Man's World,

Modern Man, some of the American magazines and what have you,

than I was when I first started wrestling.

He was clearly determined, he clearly wanted it and

I think most wrestlers today think the business is a little bit too easy to get into.

He was a tough guy and he went through a part of wrestling

where you had to be a tough guy to survive.

You people might regard this moron as an idol.

But where I come from

the likes of Austin Idol they wouldn't even make a good toilet cleaner. No way.

Are you a man or a coward?

You're already here. I've come over 3,000 miles to relieve you of that.

You're a coward Austin unless you put that challenge up.

You're a coward.

Well he's taken the challenge.