Tommy Steele

Thomas Steele OBE
Tommy Steele performing in in 1957
Background information
Birth name	Thomas William Hicks
Born	(1936-12-17) 17 December 1936 (age 80) Bermondsey, London, England
Genres	Rock and roll, skiffle
Occupation(s)	Singer, actor
Instruments	Guitar, banjo
Years active	1956–present
Labels	Decca, Columbia, RCA Victor
Associated acts	The Steelmen

Thomas Steele OBE (born Thomas William Hicks, 17 December 1936) and better known as Tommy Steele is an English entertainer, regarded as Britain's first teen idol and rock and roll star. He reached number one with "Singing the Blues" in 1957, and The Tommy Steele Story was the first album by a UK act to reach number one.

Steele's film credits include Half a Sixpence, The Happiest Millionaire and Finian's Rainbow, and he has made many stage tours in the UK. He is also a songwriter, author and sculptor. His claim to have shown Elvis Presley around London has been challenged by more than one source. In 2012, Steele was among the British cultural icons selected by artist Sir Peter Blake to appear in a new version of his most famous artwork – the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album cover – to celebrate the British cultural figures of the last six decades.

Steele worked in various jobs, including a brief period as a merchant seaman. He wasn't eligible for national service because, at eighteen years old, he was diagnosed with cardiomyopathy. In his autobiography, Bermondsey Boy: Memories of a Forgotten World, he reports that he failed the medical because he had flat feet. Whenever not working, he played guitar and banjo and sang in two coffee houses in Soho, the 2i's Coffee Bar and the Cat's Whisker, both as a solo performer and with Wally Whyton's Vipers Skiffle Group.