Steve Georgiou
BORN: July 21, 1947, London, England
My father was a Greek Cypriot and my mother was Swedish, but for some reason they decided to send me to a Roman Catholic school. I suppose that was the first anomaly of my life. Born Steven Demetre Georgiou, I was brought up Greek Orthodox, so didn抰 take part in the religious rituals at school; you could say it meant I started out life as an observer.
My family weren抰 at all strict, but they did want me to have a good moral grounding - hence their reasons for sending me to a Catholic school. I learned about good and bad, and about morality in general, and religion definitely left a strong impression on me. When a friend of mine refused to kneel at prayer because he didn抰 want to spoil the crease in his trousers, it caused a fracture in our friendship. I must only have been about seven at the time!
Ironically, considering I have now converted to Islam (and am now called Yusuf Islam (Bio)), my upbringing was very anti-Muslim. Essentially, the Greeks and Turks were enemies, so I adopted the stance of my Greek Cypriot father and hated everything about the Turks, including their religion: ‘Islam’, whatever that meant.
There was a Muslim family living near us and, although we never hurled abuse at them or anything like that, we did keep our distance. I grew up in the West End of London. My parents ran a busy restaurant in the upper part of Shaftesbury Avenue and so the atmosphere I was born into was exciting. Life was all lights, hurried people and black taxis. We were close to the theatres and that is definitely where I picked up my interest in the entertainment industry.
I was the youngest of three, and I抦 sure my brother and sister would say I was very spoiled as a result, but I certainly did my fair share of hard work. By the time I was 10, I was already working as a waiter in the shop, clearing away and mopping up, so I suppose that抯 when I first learned how to serve people. Sometimes, I turned the kebabs, but normally things went quite well and, because I was so young, I got lots of tips from the customers.
Being a mixed-race child wasn抰 difficult. The part of London I grew up in was so cosmopolitan that I didn抰 stand out at all. But it was an interesting situation at home. The hot and cold of my parents?different personalities meant I learned to maintain a kind of balance throughout my life. I loved the emotions of my father and the fact that he was so very strong-willed, active and smart. But his temper was sometimes a bit much for some of us. Our mother, on the other hand, was very cool and collected, and always found time to listen.
But I do remember a bit of shouting in our household. I must have been about eight when my parents decided to break up. It was an unusual separation because they both remained in the house. We all lived above the restaurant, with my father taking a first floor room, while my mother took another.
We all shared a single living room but the real centre of activity was the shop, where my parents both continued to work. The only difficulty was the sleeping arrangements. Occasionally, I would become the object of a tug-of-war between them. Because my father usually won, I would end up sleeping
