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The sax player and stunt double from Kilburn

Alan Stuart Spaughton was born at 13 Lowfield Road in Kilburn in 1931. He shortened his name and performed as Alan Stuart. He played tenor sax with Tommy Steele’s Steelmen in the 1950s at the famous 2Is club in Soho and on film and TV shows. On some occasions Alan played sax while lying on his back. In 1957 they had hits with ‘Singing the Blues’, and performed at the Royal Variety Show for the Queen and Prince Philip. Alan stayed with Tommy and the Steelmen until 1959.

Tommy Steele and the The Steelmen in 1957 (Getty Images).

Tommy Steele and The Steelmen (1957), Alan is on the left

In 1956 he married ‘Megs’ Margaret Leggett who had worked as a dancer with the Tiller Girls and an extra in numerous films.

Then through a friend he had last seen while playing the back end of a pantomime horse, Alan met Stanley Kubrick who saw a resemblance to Peter Sellers and asked him to play his double in the film Dr Strangelove (1964). In a newspaper interview Alan said, ‘It was quite an undertaking because Sellers was playing three different roles and there were numerous occasions when he was in effect talking to himself on screen. I think my presence made things a little easier’. 

Several years after Dr Strangelove, Stanley contacted him and said, ‘Your hands, I remember you have beautiful hands’. I wondered what the hell he was going on about but I certainly took notice because, although he was a very strange person, he was clearly an absolute genius. It turned out he was making 2001: A Space Odyssey and wanted to use me for the close-ups of hands on the controls of the spaceship. Kubrick also employed Alan for stunt work on A Clockwork Orange. 

For several years Alan co-ordinated the ‘clunk-click every trip’ safety belt campaign and it was his head that millions of viewers saw smashing through the windscreen on the shock TV ads. He had a less violent role with the Inspector Morse TV series when Alan as the long-time double for John Thaw, drove the famous red Jaguar. Alan had previously worked with John Thaw in The Sweeney. ‘Whenever you saw Inspector Regan getting attacked by thugs, that was me’ said Alan cheerfully. ‘I was always getting beaten up outside dodgy warehouses. Not that I minded. I loved working with John. He was a gentleman, a real gentleman’. 

Alan worked in TV and movies on hundreds of films, including, Superman II with Christopher Reeve, the Amsterdam Kill with Robert Mitchum, Hanover Street with Harrison Ford, Awakening with Charlton Heston, and The Omen with Gregory Peck. Alan was equally proud of having crashed an ambulance through the front of a hospital in Carry On Matron.

Some of his more recent films were Billy Elliot, Love Actually, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and Finding Neverland.

He and Megs lived in Poole Dorset for many years. Alan died in Chichester in November 2016.



 

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