... was working as an apprentice mechanic at the TVR factory in Bispham, near Blackpool, when a client with connections in the music industry heard him singing as he worked and suggested he went for an audition at the D'Oyly Carte opera company. He acted on this advice ... and the rest is history.
Wikipedia relates how Alfie would "[entertain] his colleagues by singing opera arias while he polished the cars", and that he "gave up polishing cars to embark on a singing career". To me this seems like deliberately down–playing his status, to exaggerate the contrast between his former job in the real world and his later stardom. No doubt polishing the cars was part of the job of an apprentice mechanic; but I feel that to describe him as "a car polisher" does him, not to mention his fellow apprentices, less than justice.
TVR's Bispham factory closed in 2006 and was demolished in 2016. Also in 2016, First Minister of Wales Carwyn Jones announced that TVR would build a new factory in Ebbw Vale. In 2017, TVR announced its first new model in a decade: the Griffith – reviving an old company model name. Production was due to start in late 2018, with delivery in 2019.
© Haydn Thompson 2018