John Otway is an English singer-songwriter who has built a sizeable cult audience through extensive touring, a surreal sense of humour and a self-deprecating underdog persona.

From the age of 9, Otway knew he wanted to be a pop star. When his sister got the latest Bob Dylan album, he knew there was a place for him and he set about learning how to play guitar.

His break came in 1977 with the rise of punk and a performance on “Old Grey Whistle Test”. Attempting a dramatic leap onto his bandmate’s amp, he misjudged and crashed down, painfully straddling a box beneath it. The reckless stunt made him the talk of the night – and cemented his reputation.

Otway's audience grew, and his sixth single, Really Free, soared to No. 27 on the UK Singles Chart. A “Top of the Pops” appearance, introduced by Elton John, made him a star – though it remained his biggest success for some time.

Otway spent 25 years chasing another hit, meanwhile acting, writing an autobiography (Cor Baby That’s Really Me: Rock n Roll’s Greatest Failure), selling out London’s Astoria and Royal Albert Hall, playing Glastonbury and Edinburgh, and penning the UK’s seventh favorite lyric – beating Bob Dylan and Paul Simon.

In 2002, Otway finally got his second hit at last. A publicity campaign pushed Bunsen Burner to No. 9, earning him another Top of the Pops appearance. Though a planned world tour collapsed, he continued performing across the UK – solo, with his band, or alongside Wild Willy Barrett.

In 2010, he released a follow-up autobiography, I Did It Otway: Regrets I’ve Had a Few. For his 60th birthday in 2012, he produced Otway the Movie: The Story of Rock n Roll’s Greatest Failure. The film toured cinemas in the UK and North America, went to Cannes, and was voted the year’s 2nd best film by The Guardian readers.

In 2016, after a successful “Kickstarter campaign”, Otway took his band to Montserrat, becoming the first international artist to record there since the Rolling Stones in 1989. The result was Montserrat, his first album of new original material in over a decade.

In 2022, he played his 5,000th gig at Shepherd’s Bush Empire and received an Honorary Doctorate from Oxford Brookes University, earning the title Dr. Otway.