“Like thousands of others, the whole explosion of what is generally known as the ‘kung fu boom’ grabbed my attention as an impressionable 10-year-old around the late summer of 1973,” says Kerridge. “But for all the Jimmy Wang Yus, Lo Liehs and David Chiangs, there was only one that truly hit home, and that was Bruce Lee.”

London-born Kerridge has built his career on his passion for martial arts. He has authored eight books and produced multiple magazines dedicated to Bruce Lee, all of which have been authorised by Lee’s family. He has been practising martial arts since he was a child, attaining 3rd dan in karate, and has taught kick-boxing and martial arts for the past 30 years. He is now the proprietor of Essex Kickboxing Academy in the UK.

“For today’s younger generation with everything at their disposal through the internet, it’s challenging to describe the excitement and somewhat the mystery, this Eastern-style genre instilled in the more simplistic era of those early days. Not only didn’t we have an ‘instant fix’ at the click of a switch, but we barely had three television channels, let alone video, smartphones or tablets,” says 57-year-old Kerridge. “We, the 70s generation, relied solely upon the newspaper stands or magazine racks in our local shop to find our kung fu fix. Sadly, the man that has shaped my life for the past five decades had passed away a few months before I had even heard of him.”

His passion for the star and the art of kung fu led him to collect all things Bruce Lee, which in turn led him to publish several magazines for collectors and fans over the years. Then in 2008, Kerridge published the first book, Bruce Lee: Legends of the Dragon.

“I have always had an interest in creating. I loved to sit and draw and design,” he says. “I have a stubborn one-track fixation on anything I put my mind too. As you can imagine, I had collected countless books and magazines on Bruce since that initial introduction in 1973, and accumulated a vast collection from then on. So I decided it was time I expressed my tribute to the man that had paved the way for my martial art career in the form of a publication. That first book, Bruce Lee: Legends of the Dragon, which covered the timeline of Bruce’s movie The Way of the Dragon, also started my relationship with the Bruce Lee estate in Los Angeles, with Bruce’s daughter Shannon, agreeing to write the foreword. From then on, I regularly conferred and took advice from the estate’s general counsel Kris Storti on many matters and publishing projects.”

“Although I regularly conferred with the estate, my first face-to-face meeting [with Lee’s family] after all those years was in 2008 at the 35th anniversary celebration in Seattle,” says Kerridge of the event commemorating Lee’s death. “There I met Linda [Bruce’s wife] and Shannon and had the honour of being asked by Shannon to take the stand (nervously I might add), and speak about my book.”

“There have been so many of Lee’s friends and family I have either met in person or via telephone or video call over the years,” continues Kerridge. “Regarding Bruce’s friends: some were his students, others were friends from his television and movie career, but all had the same opinion of how he influenced their life. Many of these people kindly allowed me access to their material, which would be photographic or items such as personal letters.”

Several of Kerridge’s books are scrapbooks of Lee’s life featuring lots of photos from films or sourced from the star’s friends.