SMITH OF THE STAR - The remarkable life of David Pidcock
IT'S been a remarkable journey.
From poverty and coal-picking in Handsworth to a Peak District cottage via a pop career, flim-star girlfriends, country houses and millions won and lost.
David Pidcock has sung with Joe Cocker, talked with Tony Benn and Muhammed Ali, worked with Osama Bin Laden's brothers, stayed in Ghandi's house and travelled to most countries on the planet.
Not bad for a lad who started out as a butcher's apprentice with a velvet voice and a desire to change the world.
But, at the age of 67, David Pidcock believes his biggest challenge is ahead of him.
A convert to Islam in 1975 David, or Daud to give him his Muslim monicker, wants an end to what he sees as the world's domination by banks and bankers.
And he believes he has the answers to recession and the financial turmoil of the past two years.
Too good to be true? Not according to father of two David who knows a thing or two about 'money supply' issues having, he says, lost 400,000 to the banks in dubious circumstances. He's hoping to put his views to the electorate before the General Election in May when he hopes to stand in Sheffield as a candidate for the Islamic party Of Great Britain.
"The secret is the control of the money supply," he said.
"We can resolve the world's financial problems in 24 hours. Debt and interest are choking the world. Debt causes war, famine and impoverishment to people everywhere."
But it's not always been politics and religion with David Pidcock.
In the 1960s the golden voice that customers at Harry Marcroft's butchers would hear floating across The Triangle on Handsworth Road almost made David's fortune.
"I left school at 15 to work in the butcher's shop across the road from where we lived, my mum thought it would give me a trade and I could keep an eye on my brothers and sisters at the same time.
"I had been a singer at school and when I started to sing in the evenings and I got on to the circuit of pubs and clubs in Sheffield like Handsworth WMC and Darnall and Park and Arbourthorne Club.
"People round at that time were Dave Berry, Johnny Tempest, Frank White. I used to know Joe Cocker, we would see each other at the Penny Farthing night club. Peter Stringfellow and his brother were around at that time as well.”
A big, quietly spoken man David Pidcock still has the deep, resonant voice of a Pat Boone or Matt Monroe that earned him an EMI recording contract in 1968 alongside fellow talents Englebert Humperdink, Shirley Bassey, Tom Jones and Des O’Connor and made him a hit in the pubs and clubs of the north.
But he didn’t like the way he was being manipulated or what he saw as the seamier side of showbiz life and dropped out of the entertainment scene.
Although it did give him a relationship to remember with former TV Avengers girl and recent Emmerdale star Linda Thorson who played Tara King in the series..
“I met Linda Thorson on a flight to Canada but I’d already seen her when we worked on some of the fashions for The Avengers at the company we set up in Canada. We became good friends and I went out with her for two years. We were in to jazz and poetry and she used to watch our new band, Seabird.”
Perhaps surprisingly for such a serious and studious man David Pidcock is full of one one-liners, puns and stories. As we sit in the book-strewn kitchen of the stone cottage he shares with wife Shelagh, his conversation travels as far and wide as he has himself.
From the remains of Noah’s Ark in Turkey to Napoleon’s Islamic conversion of 1798, from David Rockefeller to Arthur Scargill, Thomas Jefferson to his acquaintance with a former CIA head Miles Copeland - but all with a common theme.
Money. Banks and money. Banks and power, influence, corruption and money.
“I was defrauded by the banks on three occasions,” said the man who made millions from buying and selling engineering equipment around the world and who once owned Bramley Park near Rotherham and a house in the south of France.
“When I went to the bank for information on companies that wanted to buy machinery from me the bank told me the companies were sound but when I sold the machinery their cheques bounced and the companies went under.
“I lost machinery worth hundreds of thousands of pounds but the banks were able to take the value of that machinery for themselves.
“Since the 1828 Statute of Fraud Amendment Act, banks have been able to give references to enable a third party to obtain goods, services or money.
“This meant that I delivered my machinery and then when the company went bust, the machinery was used to pay the company’s debts to the bank. Altogether I lost 400,000.”City should release its own money
THERE is one sure and certain way out of economic recession for Sheffield.
The city should mint it's own money.
So says David Pidcock, Sheffield-born economist, writer, engineer and Muslim who's faith outlaws the charging of interest.
"Sheffield introduced quantitative easing in 1600 and issued its own money. Sheffield could do it again now.
"All you have to do is issue money with no interest to the bank, spend it into circulation and retire it through taxation and money supply problems are solved.
"There is no need to borrow money and pay interest that only serves the banks."
But how can such a simple solution have been overlooked by economists and politicians for centuries?
"Thomas Jefferson knew this and said 'The main threat to the population is debt. It has drenched the earth with blood and crushed its inhabitants under burdens ever accumulating'.
"President Lincoln knew it and John Kennedy knew it and they were both shot. Economists like John Maynard Keynes and Ricardo put these ideas forward but that part of their teachings is not taught in economics classes, they are misrepresented and their works discredited because of that.
"There have been two world wars to get us out of depressions, this is not an accident.
"The Bank Of England, the banker's bank has actually become the Government's Government. The banks run everything, there is no secret in this.
"We have to break that stranglehold for people to be able to live their lives in freedom."
Working link to family of terrorist leader
DAVID Pidcock has known Osama Bin Laden's family for years.
The world's most notorious terrorist and the man thought to be behind the twin towers atrocity of September 11, 2001, Bin Laden comes from a large and wealthy Saudi family.
"I have known the Bin Laden family since 1975. They run one of the biggest Caterpillar earth moving fleets in the world with over 1,000 machines," said Muslim convert David Pidcock.
"They are one of the richest families in Saudi Arabia and I have met and worked with some of Osama's 11 brothers but I do not know Osama, he was always the rebel."
Although he believes in the Musilm Sharia Law - which calls for severe and often brutal punishment of criminals including the chopping off of hands for thieves who steal when they are not destitute, David Pidcock - or Daud Musa Pidcock to give him his Muslim name - has no time for 'extremists'.
"The trouble with the Arab-based Muslim character is that it has become sullen and Talibanised. They have become unhappy because they've been kept away from common sense. Such Muslims have lost the plot or sold the plot.
"They are prepared to be blown up for Islam but they're not prepared to practise it. How can they blow up themselves and innocent bystanders and think they're doing the right thing?
"It's impossible, it's totally wrong. The Koran says that if you kill a man you take his sins upon yourself."
Former Roman Catholic David converted to Islam in 1975 when he became disillusioned with the western way of life.
"When I was out there I met Sheikh Kamil Wadud, an American Miuslim convert who inspired me. We talked for two days and two nights on religion, politics and Islam and I decided to convert to the Muslim faith.
"I knew there had to be a better way, I'd seen enough of corruption in the West to realise that you don't have to open every door in an asylum to know that you're in a mad house."
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