The day Barrymore had me exiled to Skegness

IF it weren't for Aggy Holland's stagefright it might all have turned out differently for Peter Diamond. Aggy, real name Arthur, had persuaded Pete to take part in a talent competition at the Astoria in Darlington, singing the Everly Brothers' hit All I Have to Do is Dream, accompanied by the dance hall's resident band.

Pete wasn't at all keen, but it was for a bet, after all.

"I was very timid but Aggy would sing anywhere," he recalls. "But as soon as we started, he lost his nerve and ran off and I was left on my own. I wouldn't let myself go off stage, so I carried on."

At the end of the contest the band came up and told him he had won. The prize was to sing with them once a week at the Astoria, so beginning a 45 year career in showbusiness. It has seen him perform all over Europe - he's particularly big in Germany - and appear on Opportunity Knocks, winning twice and only missing the hat-trick through a faulty clapometer. He has taken second billing to Les Dawson, and started a fight as Catherine Zeta Jones looked on. His run-in with Michael Barrymore wasn't so rewarding.

Now, after a lifetime travelling the world, he's 60 and back home in Darlington, his career brought to a premature end by a third stroke, depriving him of full use of his left side. He still has hopes of performing again, but it will be strictly on a part-time semi-professional basis. It seems an appropriate time to look back on what can only be described as an eventful career.

While Aggy Holland may have been the catalyst, chances are Pete would have ended up on stage anyway. While he was an apprentice fitter at the old North Road locomotive works in Darlington - his performances limited to singing a cappella around Billy Sefton's lathe, until the foreman caught them at it - his older brother Alfie was an entertainer in Brighton, appearing with the likes of Jimmy Edwards, Alfred Marks and Max Bygraves. When Pete went to visit, Alfie took him to see the shows, and he loved it. His dad made him finish his apprenticeship, but he knew what he wanted to do. "It was the music, and the feeling that people liked you and the applause you got from it. There was a lot of pleasure in entertaining people."

At 21 he married Ann and they moved to London. He got a job as a fitter and promised Ann he would give up thoughts of performing - "it conflicted with married life, and they always want to change you, you know?" - but managed to lure her to a pub where a band was auditioning for new singers, after spotting an advert in a shop window.

He got the gig - Ann put up with it - but after a couple of years the work dried up and he came back home, starting a band called the Cyclones, later changed to The Quality Blues, and performing in clubs across the North-East.

This was the early 60s, when there was an explosion of bands, all struggling to make their mark. Georgie Fame, The Who, The Kinks, Gerry and the Pacemakers, The Animals, The Quality Blues - they were all in it together.

Supporting The Beatles at the Witham Hall in Barnard Castle, sharing a ferry crossing back from France with Derek and the Dominoes, with Eric Clapton in tow, and sharing coffees in motorway service stations with the Rolling Stones - all the talk was of where they played last night and where they were going tonight.

But while some made it big, others weren't quite so lucky. Pete eventually went solo, turning into a singing compere and working in Spain for a few years, before settling into the club circuit back in the North-East, working as a fitter during the week and performing at weekends, as well as fitting in regular charity gigs.

He also got work as a TV extra. For six years he propped up the bar in the Woolpack in Emmerdale - and yes, the beer is real - and he appeared alongside Catherine Zeta Jones in The Darling Buds of May, not so much a talking part as a fighting one, as his character started a riot in the village hall. Appearances in Heartbeat, Supergran and a couple of Catherine Cookson adaptations, although he forgets which, followed.

But his big break came when he teamed up with Kenny Layton in 1988. Kenny, from Hartlepool, had been part of a comedy act called the Layton Brothers, but fell out with his partner, a cousin in fact.

Pete and Kenny had known each other from working as extras together - it's a small world, showbusiness - and Pete suggested they team up.

Their act turned out to be a comedy turn - Pete would try to sing and Kenny would cause chaos behind his back, while trying to be helpful - and it was an instant hit. Just six weeks after they teamed up, they auditioned for Opportunity Knocks, and were chosen to appear.

It was then that he finally became Peter Diamond. He's really Peter Kelly, but there was already somebody by that name on Equity's books, so he called himself Lee Peters. When Peters and Lee came along, he had to change it again, to Lee Diamond. But filming the interview for Opportunity Knocks, host Bob Monkhouse called him Peter, so Peter Diamond it was.

They wiped the floor with their opponents on their first two appearances, but on the third the clapometer inexplicably broke and they finished last. They still made the grand final, but were fourth behind a Scots singer by the name of Brenda Cochrane. Watching the show on TV was also the first time Pete had seen what Kenny was up to while he was trying to sing.

As a result of Opportunity Knocks, when Dana dropped out of a summer season in Paignton to have a baby, Diamond and Layton, as they had become, were asked to step in. They were originally bottom of the bill, but after a few weeks were promoted to second, behind Les Dawson. Les loved them, but the Roly Polys, rotund dancers who enjoyed a brief period in the spotlight, were put out at being displaced, and wouldn't speak to them.

After a couple of seasons with Dawson - summer season followed by pantomime, with a couple of TV appearances in between - they were signed up to do the same with Michael Barrymore, then an emerging comic.

But six weeks before their season in Bournemouth was due to start, they got a phone call from their agent, who was also Barrymore's.

"He said Barrymore didn't want to work with us, because we were funny. He didn't like competition," Pete says. "We were on the way up and that was our ladder, and for somebody like him to stop us..." he tails off. "He put a nail in our coffin - he knocked us back completely." Clearly the memory still hurts.

They ended up doing ten weeks in Skegness, but after that it kind of went flat, until they were asked to go to Germany by someone who had seen them on the Les Dawson Show. That was in 1990 and they have been performing there ever since.

Their visual, slapstick-style humour obviously tickled the Germans and they played to packed out theatres every night. They worked with Joe Cocker on Geld oder Liebe (Love or Money), a TV dating show with music and comedy thrown in, made an unprecedented five appearances in the Cologne Comedy Festival and were twice voted Best Comedy Act in Europe by Kunstler Magazin, the equivalent of The Stage.

"There are wonderful audiences in Germany, they are so nice to work for and they seem to like slapstick comedy," Pete says. "People used to say 'I don't think the Germans have got a sense of humour', but they have. Variety was just coming into Germany, and it went really big and we were in on it all the time. Now, it has started to thin out a bit."

But five years ago, at the height of their success, Pete suffered a stroke. He made a good recovery, but on September 18 suffered another. This time his doctor told him his two-shows a day routine had to stop.

"It was not the job, it was the stress of t he job that was getting to me," Pete says. "I'm 60 now, and I was wanting to get out anyway, although I might go to Spain and do a little bit of entertaining, just as a compere.

"I'm still not right now - when I get tired I slur my words - but it will be difficult after 45 years in the business. But I've had a good career, it has been a lovely business and I've really enjoyed it."

He has travelled all over Europe, and had a fair few free holidays - a seven-day Mediterranean cruise earlier this year in return for a half hour slot on the final night sounds typical - and even Barrymore's tantrum may have turned out for the best.

"At the end of the day, Michael Barrymore did us a favour. We got more money and better work by going to Germany," he says. "Clubland was finishing then and it is finished now. We used to work seven days a week in clubland - now you are lucky if you work two.

"It has been a good life and I've seen the world, or at least Europe. It is sad, but I'm getting out at the right time."

He says he and Ann might sell up and move to Spain, and surely few people in showbusiness can be more deserving of a long and happy retirement, but it's difficult to imagine him turning his back on performing altogether. Pete Diamond may never have been a household name in his own country, but at least the Germans could appreciate a good thing when they saw it.

MIKE AMOS IS AWAY