ADRIAN STREET

I've just started the sixth volume in Adrian Street's biography, "Violence Is Golden." For anyone remotely interested in British wrestling in its heyday, these give a great insight and a reminder of when wrestling was at its peak in this country and Street was at the top of the game. Unusually for such biographies it is refreshing to read his own words rather than some unreadable rubbish cobbled together by some  journalist from old clippings, random interviews and if you're lucky a couple of primary sources. His recollection of that time, seen through the eyes of a working wrestler, is first class, and the books are real pageturners, all still available from Amazon.

The photograph of Street revisiting the mine in which he once worked with his father in his native Wales was widely used in the publicity for a Jeremy Deller exhibition in Mexico City's MUAC, the University Museum of Contemporary Art.  Deller, an installation and multimedia artist was the documentary filmmaker behind "So many ways to hurt you - the life and times of Adrian Street" which plays surrounded by a new mural by street artist Yuka. 
The pit photograph itself is iconic of the early 1970s, and Street a huge influence on the glam rock period. He is local boy made good, head held high next to the slightly bemused miners who no doubt resented his big ambitions and success. He was one of them, but never one of them. The complicated and poignant back story can only be fully appreciated by reading Street's own account of his early life and expectations in "My Pink Gas Mask".