British singer Allman Brown on Spotify gold and his ‘privileged’ Hong Kong childhood
- The musical artist found fame after his songs appeared on television shows and streaming services
- He finds familiarity and novelty in the city he grew up in
End of empire My mum is from Singapore and my dad, a barrister, is from Cheshire, in England. They met at a party in Hong Kong. I was born at the Matilda hospital (on The Peak) in 1984. My elder brother, Charles, was born 18 months earlier in Singapore. We went to Bradbury for primary school and when we were eight my father insisted that we become proper English gentlemen and sent us to boarding school.
We went to Brambletye School, in West Sussex, and would come back to Hong Kong for holidays. I remember the Kai Tak arrivals hall distinctly with its one long ramp down to the people waiting. It was weird growing up in Hong Kong and suddenly being shunted to the middle of the Sussex countryside. I’d never seen snow or had chapped lips before. At school, I auditioned for the choral music group and from there got into five or six other choirs. That’s how I started to sing.
In Hong Kong, we lived in Shouson Hill. Our life was Country Club, Deep Water Bay, Ocean Park. I remember playing tennis, jumping off the tops of junks and waterskiing. It was the idyllic expat lifestyle, the last gasp of empire, which only afterwards I realised was privileged.
Drinking games We moved to the UK in 1997 and my parents were together for another two or three years and then separated. My father came back to Hong Kong and I came back periodically to visit him until I was 18. The first time I got drunk was in Hong Kong. I was 16 and lucky enough to be in a box at the Rugby Sevens. There was all this beer – though I probably just had three – and I remember waking up and most of the stadium had emptied. There was just me and my friends Bill and Tom in the box.
Book of love After Brambletye, my brother and I went to Harrow (in London) and from there I went to Exeter University. I was a child of divorce, melodramatic, self-involved and had never seen girls before because I’d been at all boys’ schools, so university was exciting. I did a degree in world cinema and European film, which was a dream – I did a whole module on Wong Kar-wai and Hong Kong cinema. I taught myself guitar at university and did a few open-mic nights.