Doctors Of Madness and Cabaret Futura founder Richard Strange on punk, performance art and Harry Potter

PETER WATTS

“Kid” Strange in Doctors Of Madness, 1975

RICHARD Strange has a curious knack for being in the right place at the right time. That could be fortuitously witnessing The Beatles’ rooftop concert as a truanting schoolboy in 1969 or, several decades later, landing a part in Tom Waits’ avant-garde opera The Black Rider, having bumped into director Robert Wilson the day before auditions. It’s a talent that’s helped lubricate a diverse career that’s encompassed rock music, theatre, film and TV, involving improbable walk-on roles for everybody from Grace Jones to Captain Beefheart. “I know my limitations,” says Strange, who is currently turning his remarkable autobiography Punks And Drunks And Flicks And Kicks into an audiobook. “I can’t make films or be a visual artist, but I am a fan of collaboration.”