Who is Ray Hurley-Castle?
A short autobiography

There's a good chance that your first encounter with my name occured following my leap into the limelight in 1993 when I produced an album entitled "F**king Airship" by crazy Maidenhead popmongers Pwürg. However, my story goes further back than that. Much further...

I don't particularly wish to divulge my true age, but let's just say that I was born during the Blitz. Or was it the sixties? Oh, I was far too young to remember at any rate, and whatever it was, none of it affected my parents who were living in Botswana at the time. However, strange things involving voodoo and clowns were afoot inside our African abode, so after lunchtime on the 23rd, we decided to relocate to our ancestral home - Longstanton Spice Museum in Suffolk. En route, my mother accidentally and quite tragically fell overboard and has never been seen since. Luckily my father, Lord Bernard "Helen" Longstanton-Castle III, had his favourite wench, Gertie, with us on the boat, so they decided to marry the following afternoon. Which was nice for him.

I had a fantastic (though unsurprisingly coulrophobic) childhood, most of which was spent pursuing my hobby of deodorant bottle collecting. I also practised ornithology, and I still have the court injunction to prove it. Anyhow, with my aristocratic upbringing, I attended a succession of well-to-do local public schools: Conington, Bottisham, Warboys, Kings Ripton, Needingworth, Tips End, Feltwell Anchor, Whaplode, Boxworth, Little Wilbraham, Babraham, Papworth Everard, Wimblington, Barton Bendish, Clenchwarton, and a number of others - 23 in all. I didn't have what you might call a "terribly successful" education. I was always being expelled for taking photographs in the girls changing rooms for my father's private collection. Nevertheless, I thus gained my early interest in photography.

I was to pursue this further by winning a scholarship to the University of Bishop's Stortford purely on the strength of my father's wallet. Here, I utterly mastered the art of photography, winning the coveted Chipping Norton Prize for black & white motorcycle photography. But I wasn't being truly fulfilled behind the camera. I desperately needed a new venture - and it was then that I heard "Walk of Life" by Dire Straits on the radio. It was too late. I couldn't reach the dial in time.

"Ruuuuur-nur, ra-na-nurner-na-Duuuur-nur..." My mind had been poisoned for eternity. That horrid, horrid organ sound. I was hooked. It was like cocaine but cheaper. And from that point on, all I wanted to do was to listen to cheesy organ solos. These were scarce in the photography world, so I decided to become an audio engineer - teaching myself in the world's most expensive studio, which I had installed in my new pad at Worplesdon on the ourtskirts of Guildford. After a while, I decided that Worplesdon was a crap name for a town, so I moved to an island in the Thames at Hurley. During this period, I did a stint as the "construction worker" in a dismal theatrical musical production about the career of the Village People. I think I was truly bitten by the acting bug, and dispensed with the "Longstanton" part of my surname, choosing instead to use "Hurley" in honour of my new home.

Meanwhile, I became bloody good at sound production, and during the late eighties produced a truckload of bestselling records, including:

"Pingu Wizard" by the Rev. Arthur Stilton
"Swipe the Marmite" by The Furry Purple Fluffentups
"Pompous Git, 9 o'clock" by MC Göering & the Fökkers
"Drink my Piswicle (Tasty Piswicle)" by Fergus Stiltpiswicle
"Fisting the Dead, right up...no, right up" by Kinky Fister
"When Will I Be Famous" by Bros

Utterly ashamed by the latter, I briefly quit the music business. Until one day in mid-1993 when I was cruising around downtown Maidenhead. I hid my car in some bushes near Newlands Girls School, for no reason, and wandered off with my camera and tissues. The next thing I know, a middle-aged man comes running out of the bushes wearing a bra. He was being chased by a couple of strange- looking gentlemen in what appeared to be 17th century period costumes, one firing shots from a blunderbuss, and the other screaming "I'll swish my sword at you!" Their prey escaped and these guys set up a chess table and picnic in the middle of the Thicket. I approached them and they introduced themselves as Mr Lucas Bones and Professor Isaac Mangang of Pwürg - an aspiring pop group desperately in search for a producer.

And thus, a legend was born. I guided them through their breakthrough debut release, F**king Airship subsequent hit singles Ricketts and Quality. Then we began sessions for the Bad Cheese - The Smell of Royalty album. I even helped set up their Gratis Surprise Incorporated company for them. It was at this point that the band encouraged me to sign up for a bit-part in a local film production - the now classic Mist Raiders. A role which, so many long believed, would seal my fate.

I played the evil nemesis of the film - an unsightly chap by the name of Sven Pastis. Along with my screen wife Cornis, we proceeded to take over the world, until a number of eccentric time travelers - the Mist Raiders - caught up with us. We had to do a scene in which I was to be captured after a struggle on the roof of a very tall watertower in Holyport, masquerading as my "nuclear workshop." It was an snowy sub-zero windswept day on the shoot, and I took my place on the watertower, ready to wrestle with Mist Raider Alaric. At that point, I stumbled and slipped on the icy roof, plummeting a very long way to earth. I was officially pronounced dead there and then, and indeed, for many years after this incident, people have long assumed that I was deceased.

However, following a lengthy coma, the best part of a decade in hospital, and massive reconstructive plastic surgery - I'm back with a vengeance. One of the first things I wanted to do was to check up on my old Pwürg buddies, so I did some sunbathing and ate toast with Lucas in Wales, then flew over to Australia to catch a pint and hunt squirrels with Isaac. It was then that I learned of the new Canadian Red Cross Memorial Hospital Shrine website being constructed by Pwürg to honour their old stomping ground. I immediately thought of my phenomenal skills as a photographer, so - without telling them so it would be a surprise - I headed back into the CRCMH with state of the art equipment and took a whole heap of new images of our doomed haven - Conquest 2002 I called it. And that, my friends, is the purpose of this website - to display these most fabmungous photographs for the world to see. Good aren't I, if I do say so myself.

Take Care - and enjoy!

Love & Herpes,

April 2002

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Ray still lives on an island in the Thames at Hurley, Berkshire with his wife Shirley.They have a very clever dog called Norris, but no children - nor are any likely following the accident. He is still an avid campaigner for the Maidenhead Sainsbury's roundabout traffic lights, and his favourite pastime is collecting his wife's navel fluff, which is always blue. He is still a record producer, currently working on Gary Glitter's new album "My Lovely Lovely Hard-Drive." His autobiography "Ray Hurley-Castle: A Model Citizen" is to be released next year on Penguin Books

CHECK OUT
The
RAY HURLEY-CASTLE
Family Photo Album
FEATURING IMAGES OF RAY