Ray, born in Wembley in North London, is the son-in-law of the famous French chanteur, the late Boby Lapointe. Over the past quarter century Ray and his wife Martine (Ticha) have made their home in the Languedoc, in southern France. Here he has made a name for himself as a singer, jazz musician, local personality and all-round eccentric.

Ray - whose extravagant moustachios and generally dishevelled appearance have earned him the description "a cross between Asterix the Gaul and an unmade bed" - is a former bricklayer, merchant seaman, stuntman, Twickenham rugby player and Borstal boy. "I've had a colourful career," he admits cheerfully, "and I'm not ashamed of any of it, including my tearaway youth."

On the musical scene, Ray is known from the Languedoc to Switzerland. No local fete is complete without his own special brand of comedy and music which captivates audiences even as they stuff their ears with cotton wool.

Ray - a star singer Although Ray had no formal singing training, he was certainly judged good enough to sing in the choir at his school - Alperton Secondary Modern. It gave him enough of a taste for the limelight to go on and train with The Wembley Dramatic Arts centre.After leaving school, Ray sang jazz and played percussion with The Grand Union Canal Skiffle Group. They used to play working men's clubs - in the interval - and came second in a West London skiffle competition in the late 1950s.

He did occasional gigs both in the UK - he played the Moist Hoist in Ealing, an early haunt of another band, called The Rolling Stones - and in the United States, but it wasn't until he went to France in the 1970s that his musical career really took off. After meeting pianist Roland Goddard (who gave Ray a new name - Ray Trop (which means 'Ray Too Much' and is also a pun on 'retro') they toured together playing jazz in such illustrious spots as Papagayo Chez Regine in St Tropez and Le Duc de Lombard in Paris.

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Cercle Occitan Ray is also a leading light of his local Cercle Occitan - a group which meets regularly to revive and sustain the traditional language and culture of the Languedoc

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Ray the stuntman Ray's stunt work ranges from riding to fighting and falling, from television to film in both the UK and France.
	He appeared in the Cliff Richard film 'The Leather Boys' riding a motor bike. This was filmed in and around the "infamous" Ace Cafe, and on horseback as a Napoleonic doctor in the French television series 'Lucien Creveche'.
He has been seen in the film 'Wojeck' and in the 1960s television series 'The Saint', where he once fell out of a window as stunt double for Roger Moore.

Ray - with stage presence Ray and his band Ray Trop (a French pun on the word rétro) can be heard regularly singing in the streets and in the salles de fetes of local towns and villages. He is also a regular featured guest singer with the band Hot Strings, with whom he has released the CD 'I Saw Stars' (produced by Jazzology of New Orleans). They have toured Switzerland together every year for the past ten years.

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Ray and Howard Buten The idea of setting out on a solo horseback trek is a long-held dream for Ray. He has been riding since childhood: "My sister and I used to go out to Denham and take lessons from a Mr. Bounds," he recalls.
The idea of a ride in aid of autism came to him in Paris when he met Buffo the clown - otherwise known as Howard Buten - who was giving a performance for this cause. Howard Buten, pictured left, a clinical psychologist, is the founding clinical director of an institution in France.

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