Darin Murphy

Darin Murphy was born in Basildon. This alone could have put paid to his musical career, but, with a clear eye to the future, at 18 years old, Darin took up the bass guitar...

He began his professional career working the nightclubs in Essex and backing cabaret stars around the South-East, eventually bumping into Phil at his local, The Castle Mayne pub.

Phil asked Darin to join his "Southend Soul Mafia" - a pool of musicians selected to back touring American soul artists. Soon Darin had progressed to the "Northern Soul" circuit and over the next few years found himself n several "name" tours including Edwin Starr (War), Alexander O'Neill (who later set up a chain of Irish music pubs...), Mary Wells (My Guy), George McCrae (Rock Your Baby), Martha Reeves (Dancing in the Street) and Limmee and the Family Cooking (Walking Miracle).

The last of these, Walking Miracle, turned out to be a fateful (and almost fatal!) prediction as two events were about to happen to Darin which could have wrought even more havoc than Basildon to his burgeoning career.

The first of these events saw Darin touring with Phil's "Tribute to the Carpenters" show at the Derby Assembly Halls when he experienced (and I quote:) "a really bad headache". Thinking it was probably because he didn't like the music, Phil would have none of his whingeing and saw to it that he finished the show.

Two weeks later Darin was still in hospital having been operated on for a life threatening cerebral brain-aneurysm!

Phil learnt to listen better...

A few weeks pass and Darin is back on the circuit. All is well for a while with him performing in front of the cast of EastEnders and Gladiators and he has now returned to the Illegal Eagles.

He has met his fiance, Michelle, and they head off to Sri Lanka to be married.........also heading for Sri Lanka was the Tsunami. Here is where Darin really gets something to write home about.

Having just finished breakfast, prior to their wedding, Darin and Michelle went out on a boat to watch turtles. A native in another boat came alongside waving frantically and warned them to stay where they were as "the water is coming".

20 heart-stopping minutes later and the gigantic Tsunami wave arrived and the two lovers clung on helplessly as their boat was tossed from the front to the back of the colossal mass of water.

Miraculously, they survived! They actually rode out the Tsunami!