Born in Lambeth, South London on 6 September 1952, Steve Blacknell started out as a toilet cleaner in a mental hospital in Bexley, Kent. During this time he had a relationship with Kate Bush – before she became famous. During this time she wrote The Man With The Child In His Eyes, which Blacknell claims is about him.

His big break happened when he landed a job at the marketing department of Decca Records. In 1981, Clive Calder and Ralph Simon started Jive Records. Blacknell was at the first meeting where Clive mapped out the path of Jive, and was hired for PR and A&R. One of his first feats was signing up A Flock Of Seagulls.

In 1982, Blacknell started working on television, hosting the BBC shows Riverside and Breakfast Time. In the second half of the Eighties he became a VJ for MTV in Europe and the USA. Heading out to Hollywood, he spent two years there as BSKYB’s ‘Entertainment Anchor’. After the channel folded, he went on to make five movies as an actor, fronted over twenty national commercials and host a variety of chat shows including MTM’s award winning ‘Men In Suits Talking’.

Upon returning to the UK in 1993, he founded two of London’s most successful media networking ventures ‘The Network Experience’, and the now legendary ‘Waffle Club’ that still meets every month in London’s Soho.

In 2010 he put up Kate Bush’s handwritten lyrics of ‘The Man With The Child In His Eyes’ for auction via the website 991.com.