It was a topic which never came up on the many talk-shows in which he had taken part during his long and intermittent career. In fact, he didn’t regard it as a career at all. He had been lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time: he had landed a minor role in a television series which had lasted a season, and in which he had sung a song. The song had become the surprise hit of the summer, climbing up the charts and displacing the inevitable American single from the top spot.

Zeno found himself a celebrity, even winding up on the road with Billy Fury. His voice outside the echo chamber was hardly equipped for the rigorous tour of the coastal cinemas in which he gyrated, but he persevered. His sullen look pleased the entrepreneur, and his hangdog expression brought instant gratification to the teenage groupies of the time.

Zeno was smarter than most of his hip-swivelling contemporaries, and remained level-headed in spite of the groundswell of adoration. While others partied late and slept soundly—their new surnames and pancake make-up intact—until late afternoon, he rose early. Investing his money in odds and ends he felt would suit the home he shared with his mother, he explored the many antique shops sprinkled around the provincial town in which he woke. It didn’t take too long for him to recognise the discrepancy between provincial and London prices, and soon the charabanc conveying the bevy of pop swans was also transporting Zeno’s finds.

The personal manager who had rechristened him (he had been magically transformed from Jenkins to Studd) and the other acolytes—Biberfeldt, Solly and Crump had become Ripp, Havoc and Stiff—introduced Zeno to the gay underground of West End dealers, and he soon became a freelance supplier of antiques to the trade who just couldn’t find the time to scavenge the provinces themselves. It was a role that suited him, combining as it did his natural interest in unfamiliar places with an uncanny knack of finding pieces almost at will, sometimes from only a pencil sketch or a long look at an illustration.

“You sure you’ve no family in the trade, dear?” one slightly miffed queen had asked when Zeno had materialised a striking piece of Boulle marquetry after a one-nighter in Hastings. Zeno had grinned lopsidedly. It was a mannerism he had been told passed for an answer—and he was surprised that most times it did. He didn’t have family ‘in the trade’, but his lighterman dad—now passed away, God bless him—would have been amused to hear it. Zeno himself wondered at his luck and the ease with which he had adapted to life on the road.

On the advice of one of his newfound dealer chums, he began investing the bulk of his rock-and-roll loot in small terraced houses in Fulham, so when his star set, unlike his other stellar chums who turned to mini-cabbing, Zeno Studd was able to continue living in some style. After his marriage, he was even able to purchase the grand Kensington house in which he awoke on the morning of the night.