User:Fatpizzaman

About Me

My name is Dario Western. I was born in Withington in Manchester on 27th December, 1970. I grew up in Withington, but moved to Bramhall in December 1975. My parents are Alan Western (born 22 November 1938, London) and Rowenna Western (born 23 June 1940, Colombo). I attended Hollies R.C. Primary in Didsbury from 1975-1976 and then Cheadle R.C. Primary from 1975 - 1982. In July 1982, my family and I emigrated to Brisbane in Australia and have lived here ever since (apart from spending April - June in Townsville in 1993). In my teenage years, I attended Padua College in Kedron from 1983 - 1988 and graduated in Year 12. Subjects I studied were: Maths In Society, Accounting, Biology, Geography, Music, English and RE in 1986, then changed from Biology to Multistrand Science and Geography to Ancient History when I repeated Year 11 in 1987 and also did Maths 1 for four months in 1987.

Upon graduating from school, I had a variety of jobs, the longest being in the printing industry at Podlich Enterprises from September 1989 - February 1990. I also studied Music Technology for four months at the Conservatorium Of Music under Tim Woodcock from January - April 1989 (this was when they were still based next door to the Botanical Gardens and had the old Quadraphonic studio. The site is now the home of QUT Gardens Point. In 1990, I did small business studies at Gateway TAFE and then in 1991 Certificate in Swedish Massage at College of Alternative Therapies.

Music History

I am also a musician, and I studied piano from 1976 - 1988 doing up to Grade 7 at Trinity College of Music in 1987. When I started high school, I also learned to play violin and did up to Grade 3 with Elsie Parker and guitar with Rick Purdie. I played second violin in the String Orchestra and Symphony Orchestra, and the Symphony Orchestra came first in a music competition in 1985. In 1987, I stopped playing violin and took up trombone under Chris Dodemonte and played in the Senior Concert Band and Big Band.

After I left school, I tried out for a number of bands as a guitarist. One of them was The Technicians, a dance rock band who had a few Brisbane hits on Powderworks and Jade Records. They were led by Andy Richmond and Kat Livingstone who gained national fame for posing nude in Australian Playboy in April 1986. At the time, they were on the verge of signing with True Tone Records which at the time had Stephen Cummings, The Celibate Rifles and The Rockmelons on its roster. Eventually, Andy took on guitar duties himself and renamed the band "Steeltown" and they had a No.1 hit in Townsville in 1991 with "Hero".

In 1993, when I was studying home recording at School of Audio Engineering in Milton, I met fellow student Quan Yeomans and we worked together on a recording for a band he was playing guitar and drums in at the time for our assessment. I don't remember what the band was called, but one of their songs was called "Davy". A few months later, he teamed up with Ben Ely from Pangaea after meeting him on a bus and they formed the band Regurgitator from there. At the end of 1994, they got signed to East West Records (a division of Warner Music) and hit with their debut release "Regurgitator" (aka The Hamburger EP) which contained the hit "Couldn't Do It", a rap/rock song which later got reworked as an alternative rock Bossa Nova parody for their debut album "Tu-Plang". The rest is history.

Other bands I was involved with during the 1990s was West End, a band comprising of my brother Lee on bass guitar and vocals, myself on drums, Daniel Endicott on rhythm guitar and vocals and Ryan Smith on lead guitar. We went from 1991 - 1992 and played a few school concerts when the rest of the band graduated in 1992. Later that year, I formed Blackened with Kim Weston and we did a cover of the Sparks song "So Important" for a video editing project I was doing at Yurri Gurri SkillShare. The song was produced by Daniel Endicott and consisted of her on lead vocals and myself on rhythm and lead guitar, bass guitar, drums, keyboards and backing vocals. We shot the video for it on top of the Carlton Crest Hotel in December 1992 with extras Lee on bass and Stephen Marendy on guitar. It was a one-off project, but I kept the name for a new act that I started in 1995 with Julie Hepburn (vocals), Lee (bass), Danny Phillips (guitar), Nick Titley (drums), Adrian Rickards (keyboards and drums). Other musicians who joined later on were Louise Isackson (vocals), Lisa Falovic (bass guitar and drums), Kate Middleton (keyboards), Tammy Berry (bass). We did an interview on 4ZZZ's Demo Show with Gordon Clarke in late 1998 but split up shortly afterwards. In 1999, Julie and myself decided to change our name to Latex and rebrand ourselves as a glam rock/70's rock outfit and took on Tim McConochie (guitar) and Sharon Lam (bass) as the new backing band. However, we split in April following Julie's and my romantic breakup. I then took to managing garage rock band The Busymen after lead singer Robert Smith had placed an advert for a drummer at Music Worx following the departure of Ben Jones who played in the band when they first started in 1997. At first, I tried to recruit Adrian Rickards into the band as drummer but then settled for Scott Lapthorne who stayed in the band until 2001 when he joined Shutterspeed (and later on The Sunburys). The band recorded their debut single "Hostile" in 2002 on Wild Eagle Records at the legendary Red Zeds Studios with myself doing the recording on a chained high speed dubbing cassette deck outfit as their professional gear was being dismantled with the studio being sold off. The band at the time consisted of Richard Buchanan (bass), Robert Worrall (guitar) and Liam Cusack (drums). I also designed their first web page on Microsoft Network's "Talkcity" pages (their answer to Yahoo's Geocities) then when Talkcity was discontinued, they became one of the first Brisbane bands to use Myspace to promote their brand and music.

In 2000, Robert Smith encouraged me to try and get a new lineup for Latex going. I found a new vocalist Bonnie Moir after meeting her at a gig that Lavish and Rhubarb played at the Royal Exchange Hotel on 10th February 2000. We became fast friends and started jamming and writing together at her place in Norman Park, which I eventually moved into after leaving Spring Hill. Bonnie had an interesting collection of electric guitars, a Behringer vocal microphone and a multi-track mixer/cassette combo. I wrote a lot of songs whilst living with her, however her health problems at the time put the bite on her being able to perform live.

Not to be discouraged, I started a new band in early 2001 called Lassivious which was a reaction against manufactured girl pop bands like Bardot, Cherry and Jackson Mendoza who were more about fashion and style than musical originality. The first lineup consisted of vocalists Eliza Abbate, Kitty Stevenson, Trish Bathersby and Jane (last name unsure) and myself on guitar. Unforunately, three of the members were into the occult and had several personal problems which hindered the band's progress. I tried again with a new name Laissez-Fayre and lineup change in 2006 consisting of Vettey Jones (vocals), Kym Kruse (organ), Lindy Rakatau (drums). We made some demo records at Kym's place and took on Megan Longley on bass before this lineup also disintegrated. In 2009, I started the third lineup with Nova Ceira (vocals) and Amanda Clark-Brewer (keyboards and vocals) and did some live studio recordings on YouTube and a couple of performances at Balkaz and Mt. Cootha before Amanda moved to Melbourne in 2010 and Nova left to pursue other interests. The fourth lineup consisted of Shelley Morris (drums), Cassie Trent (trumpet and vocals), and Kate McMillan (viola) and we recorded 6 songs in my dining room in Bethania in January 2013. One of them "Nekkid" went viral on YouTube and even outdid the song "Cross My Heart" by The Veronicas in the viewing stakes for a while, notching up over 115,000 hits until the video was falsely reported as being 'pornographic' and deleted. I tried to appeal the decision, but had no luck.

On the day of Laissez-Fayre's first proper gig (at Northey Street City Farm) in November 2012, I took part in the video clip for "Neighbour Neighbour" by Violent Soho after bassist Luke Henery had contacted me on Facebook and invited me to take part because he said the band were nude advocates and he wanted the director to film me swimming nude in the pool on the site. Unfortunately, the scene didn't make it to the final product so a few months later he messaged me again and asked me to be the leading man for their next clip "In The Aisle" in which he wanted me to recreate the Brisbane leg of the World Naked Bike Ride which I had been running on and off since 2007. The clip ended up getting played on the Morning Show, as well as reaching No.1 on the 4ZZZ charts and getting steady airplay on Triple J and Triple M. As a result, the band went from being a cult underground band for 9 years to becoming a household name with the following single "Covered In Chrome" becoming their signature tune and the album "Hungry Ghost" becoming their first hit album peaking at No.6 in the ARIA Albums chart and No.2 in the Australian Artists Albums chart.

Acting History

I come from an acting family. My parents have both done acting and my sister is a professional actor. My first acting part was in 1975 at a Christmas concert at Hollies R.C. where I played a doctor for the song "Miss Polly". In 1979, I joined the Brookdale Social Club's youth theatre group and played a jury member in the play "Who Stole The Tarts?" after turning down a part in the play South Pacific which my Dad was in. The following year I played a citizen in the play "The Maid Of Burgos". In 1984, I played a boy soprano in a production of "The King And I" at the Mormon Tabernacle in Kangaroo Point which my Dad's boss at the time Owen Pershouse was a bishop for.

Nudist History

I became interested in nudism as far back as 1979 when I saw the documentary "Let's Go Naked" on the BBC in early January, but I didn't get into it until April 1990 when I attended a swim party at Sunrays in The Gap at David Speechley's Swim School. It took a few monthly visits for me to become comfortable with nudity. In 1991, I went to the Alexandria Bay Olympics for the first time with a couple of friends and it was great fun. There were about 600 people there that day, several of them being families. A couple of months later, I attended Pacific Sun Friends for the first time and after suffering a mental breakdown in July that year, I started to attend on a regular basis to improve my mental health. I also wrote for Australian Sun & Health magazine on a regular basis up until the magazine's demise when it changed ownership from Les & Jan Hotchkin to Rod & Sarah Tyldsley (later Scriven). Sun & Health's deputy editor Les Rootsey started a new magazine The Australian Naturist in 1998 which I have also written a number of articles and letters for. With the advent of the internet, I joined the mail list NNN List run by Charles Daney and then Ausnude (originally on The Watch until I relaunched it on Google Groups following the death of its admin Grant Parnell in 2010). In 2000, I launched my first ever online nudist community NAVEL (Naturists Advocating Vegetarian & Ecological Lifestyles) on Ninemsn Communities until it was closed in 2003 when MSN discountined the pages. It was based on a short-lived fanzine of the same name by Austin resident Michael Bluejay who published a couple of issues following his disillusionment with The Naturist Society and AANR's lack of vigilance in protecting children from sexual predators and swingers at American nudist clubs and beaches and not taking more of an interest in green issues. In 2007, I launched the Brisbane Naturists community on Facebook which is still thriving today mainly as an online group although we do have some real life meetups. This community also has profiles on Flickr, Instagram, Google Groups, Meetup, Reddit, and Twitter.

Whovian History

I am a long time fan of Doctor Who. The first story I remember seeing was The Monster Of Peladon in 1974 and then The Ark In Space in 1975, which I vividly remember for the scene when Noah gets bitten by the Wirrrn larvae and keeps his hand in his pocket for the rest of the episode until the end when he takes it out to find it covered in alien flesh made out of green bubble wrap and tries to get rid of it. Other stories that made an impact on me were The Planet Of Evil (one of my all time favourites and one of the most terrifying stories ever produced), The Android Invasion, The Brain Of Morbius, The Masque Of Mandragora, and The Deadly Assassin.

Though I didn't become a major fan until 1981 when I saw the Patrick Troughton story The Krotons as part of BBC 2's special "The Five Faces Of Doctor Who" which ended with the last Tom Baker story Logopolis which ushered in Peter Davison as the fifth Doctor. In 1982, I wrote my first Doctor Who script "The Monster Of Doom" and submitted it to the show "Jim'll Fix It" but nothing ever came of it. Four years later, another English kid called Gareth Jenkins got his wish to come true when his 10 minute story "In A Fix With Sontarons" was broadcast with Colin Baker as the Doctor and Janet Fielding as Tegan because his then co-star Nicola Bryant who played Peri Brown was on holiday at the time. Later that year, I wrote another story featuring the third Doctor and Jo Grant for a writing project in Year 7. During 1983 - 1987 I wrote several other short fan fiction stories like "The Zebadees", "Return Of The Fendahl", "The Children Of Death", "The Disease Of The Daleks", and one in 2006 called "Gymnopolis" (but my computer crashed during the writing and never managed to retrieve it).

I got to meet Peter Davison at Myers in Chermside in 1983 when he presented The Logies that year, and in 1999 I met Frazer Hines at a meetup in Central Station. I also met Jenna Coleman in 2017 at Oz Comic Con at Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre.

In 2007, I restarted the Brisbane Doctor Who Fan Club with my childhood friend Andrew Ainsworth 20 years after he left Windsor with his family, and hadn't seen him since then. We have occasional meetups in the City as well as having had picnics and home screenings. At first we started it on Yahoo! Groups and then launched an official website and forum, before finally forming a Facebook group and page where it still exists today.

Massage History

I first studied Swedish Massage under the late Errol Lawes at College Of Alternative Therapies in Ashgrove, and then Certificate 4 in Aromatherapy in 1998 under Kathy Parrot at Australian College Of Natural Medicine in Stones Corner. In 2004, I did a Diploma in Balinese Bodywork at Chakrafield Therapies in Stafford under Desiree Trinetti. I have also studied Reflexology at Sandbag in Sandgate and did a Lomi Lomi workshop at ConFest in December 2007.