Wire Sculptures by Gary Tiplady

Getting his teeth into a new role

Getting his teeth into a new role
by Hannah Davies, The Journal

Hannah Davies speaks to giant Gary Tiplady on billionaires’ parties, being a Bond baddie and his new art exhibition.

GARY Tiplady is an unmistakable figure and big of character as well as stature.

Gary, 47, is literally a giant of a man, because of a brain tumour which caused the medical condition acromegalia in his late teens.

Although his height, about 7ft 2 (he says he has lost a little over the years) has brought him a lot of pain, it has also brought him a new career and a certain amount of notoriety.

“I was in Monte Carlo doing an appearance,” he says, “and I asked the doorman if there were any celebrities around. He laughed and said, ‘Only you, Gary’.”

This isn’t as far fetched as it sounds. Gary has a certain amount of celebrity in France as he had a leading role in French film Le Boulet a few years ago.

Meeting Gary is an experience. He has the large face and hands of his condition and has to stoop to pass through doorways, but mainly it’s his huge personality which creates the impact.

He talks and talks, with anecdotes about famous poeple he’s met, from Robbie Williams to Honor Blackman, tripping off his tongue.

Gary is best known in his home region – he grew up in Walker, Newcastle, for his work as a Jaws impersonator. But he’s meeting me today to talk about his greatest achievement yet – his own art exhibition.

Those who have passed through Tynemouth Station since September 1 may have noticed Gary’s sculptures, created from galvanised steel and adorning the bridge in the station.

This is a huge source of pride for Gary, who is after all best known for looking like someone else.

“This exhibition has given me the first opportunity that I’ve always wanted,” he grins.

Gary’s life has been dominated by his height since his late teens. At 16 he was 5ft 4in, but a few years later he was pushing 7ft. Gary’s acromegalia caused his phenomenal growth rate.

The condition is caused when a brain tumour presses on the pituitary gland, over-stimulating the growth hormone. In an adult this would cause bone growth and an increase in the size of facial features, but in a growing boy it can dramatically increase height.

“I hated it in the early years,” he confesses. “It’s horrible to be so different from everyone else at that age and the thing about my condition is you have no choice but to stand out.”

In addition, he had to have three operations to try to control the tumour and is on a course of drugs to restrict the growth hormone for the rest of his life. After finishing comprehensive school Gary decided to go to catering college and signed up for a four-year course at the Sandyford Road college in Newcastle, where he studied from 17 to 21.

After this he worked in hotels across the North East and at 23 went to Gleneagles Hotel in Scotland.

“People who think Gordon Ramsay is outrageous have no idea,” he says. “I’ve seen people threatened with knives – it was a very high-pressure environment.”

Despite this, Gary enjoyed his months of working at Gleneagles, but concerns over his health prompted him to move back to Newcastle to be close to his consultant at the Royal Victoria Infirmary. Nevertheless he enjoyed a successful career in prominent restaurants on Tyneside, including most of its hotels, Newcastle Civic Centre and Newcastle Racecourse.

Inadvertently his culinary career reignited his creative passions.

Gary recalls: “When I was little we lived in a house with a big garden which had clay in it. I’d take the clay out of the ground and model it into little pots and different shapes. I also always liked drawing, but I never thought of it as something to do as a job.

“After finishing school I didn’t know what to do, so I decided to go into catering college.”

While cooking Gary learned that he not only had artistic flair in presenting food, but also that he enjoyed doing it.

He was working for a cooking team preparing for the Newcastle premiere of A Passage to India by creating a magnificent banquet and someone suggested a snake would be a good centrepiece. “I said I could make that out of lard and it went down really well.”

So he began sculpting in lard, making displays for butchers’ shops, and as things progressed sculptures for the likes of Newcastle United.

In the meantime he began to grow a bit tired of people commenting on his similarity to a certain James Bond baddie.

“I was always getting people coming up to me and asking me if I was Jaws. I’d say what would Jaws be doing working in a kitchen in Newcastle?”

Jaws, played by Richard Kiel, is a henchman in the Roger Moore Bond films The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker. But the comments led Gary, then in his 30s, to inquire about lookalike work. Before long he was inundated.

“It came at the right time really,” he says.

“The benches in the kitchens had been far too small for me and it was really starting to cause problems with my back.

“After I got a couple of jobs coming in, I realised I could make a living at it and so I gave up the cooking.”

For more than a decade now Gary has worked as a Jaws lookalike in all the situations you can imagine. “I’ve done loads of corporate events. I’ve worked in a lot of motorshows, for mobile phone companies, big company gatherings.”

But the thing Gary enjoys most, you sense, are the celebrity parties, which have seen him rubbing shoulders with many stars, not least actors who have starred in James Bond films.

“I was doing a bookstore event once when Roger Moore popped in. He’d seen the poster and thought I was Richard Kiel himself and wanted to say hello.

“And at one party Honor Blackman came over, thinking I was the original Jaws.”

You can be sure if there’s a big James Bond-themed party going on, Gary will be one of the people recruited for it, and that includes a Bond party in an episode of The Apprentice.

One of the most impressive parties he’s ever attended, Gary says, was billionaire Lakshmi Mittal’s 50th birthday bash in London’s Billingsgate.

“All the guests arrived by different forms of transport, from London busses to helicopters.

“But the most impressive was this group of the billionaire’s friends who crashed through the side of his wall in a tank. They’d got permission from Mittal’s wife first, though!”

Gary’s role at these parties is generally to mix with guests and play the part of henchman to the party host.

Luckily, his day job has diversified. A few years ago he was cast in gangster film Baby Juice Express and before that spent weeks filming in the Sahara Desert for Le Boulet, which had great success in France, Spain, Germany and Japan.

Acting is irregular work, though. “You just don’t know what people are looking for and if you don’t fit that, then you’ve got no chance.”

He is delighted to be creating his sculptures and now when he isn’t making personal appearances, most often in London, he’s to be found at his home in the East End of Newcastle with his wife of four years, Helen. His daughter from a previous marriage, Kirsty, 19, lives in Cleethorpes, Lincolnshire.

His wire sculptures keep him busy. “I first did one for an old people’s home in North Tyneside to put in the garden. But they liked it so much they decided to keep it inside, even though I offered to make them another.

“It was there I spoke to Ylana First, who organises the exhibitions at Tynemouth Station. She came to the house and I told her what I was doing and showed her my work.

”She said she’d like to do an exhibition of my animals at Tynemouth Metro Station.

“Making the wire sculptures is something I love doing. I work a few days a week as the Jaws impersonator and the rest of the time I get to devote to my sculptures, which I love.”

In addition to the Tynemouth exhibition, The Cooper Gallery in Barnsley, South Yorkshire, has commissioned sculptures which he is working on at the moment. Gary mainly creates animals – swans and dogs being particular favourites. He also models famous local icons such as the Percy Lion and the Bedlington Terrier.

“I get the idea and then create sketches of what I am going to make. Then it’s a question of building up the sculptures with wire mesh.

“I’m hoping the sculptures are something which will grow in the next few years.”

For more information on Gary visit www.garytiplady.co.uk

GARY’S exhibition of his wire art is on the bridge at Tynemouth Metro station until the end of November.

The Tynemouth Metro Station Bridge is one of the most unusual visual arts spaces in the region, The Bridge (which spans the two platforms at Tynemouth Station) launched its installation programme in July 1995 with Gilly Rogers’s My Blue Heaven.

Since then, a wide-ranging programme of work has been shown, including specially- created installations by professional artists Julie Livsey, William Pym, Neil Canaan, Heather McDonough and many others as well as school and community projects.