For the latest of his profiles of famous people with links to SE London and north Kent, Ken Tracey looks at a musical maestro from Greenwich.

Jools Holland, pianist, composer and TV presenter, once shocked an audience by roaring onto the stage of London’s Marquee Club on a Triumph Bonneville motorbike.

Julian Miles Holland, born January 24, 1958 in Blackheath, lived with his parents through an A to Z of addresses before arriving at 19 Courthurst Road, Greenwich.

He was six and post-war Greenwich was a playground of bomb sites for the daring Julian - he was once rescued from a flooded basement by a passing policeman.

His grandparents lived nearby at 7 Hassendean Road and it was on their blitz-damaged piano that he discovered that he could play by ‘ear’.

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He attended Invicta Infants School and Sherrington Junior School. Both also attended by Glenn Tilbrook who, then unknown to Holland, later joined him as a member of the band Squeeze.

He went on to Shooters Hill School and enjoyed the theory of his musical passion but didn’t take the O Level.

By this time, he had been asked to leave due to wayward behaviour and saw no value in exams.

At St John’s Church Hall, he hung out with music-loving bikers including a friend who groomed his hair with sump oil. In this dodgy company he preferred the name ‘J’.

He and his young mates, in awe of the gang, went scruffy in leathers and were tagged the Bus Greasers, because lacking bikes, they had to travel by bus.

Mutual friends saw the talents of Holland and Glen Tilbrook and brought them together. They shared high levels of skill and Tilbrook’s girlfriend polished up the lads and renamed Julian - Jools.

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The south-east London boy played again in Greenwich, at the Dome on Millennium Eve, watched by billions of people worldwide.

He was awarded an OBE and is a Deputy Lieutenant of Kent. He lives with his wife Christabel and their four children.