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Alan James Whitehead (born 24 July 1945) is a British musician, businessman and author. He was a drummer for The Attack and Marmalade.

Career

The Attack

He started his career in the music industry in 1966 as the drummer for Crispian St. Peters. Not long after, he formed the group The Attack, also in 1966, featuring guitarist and trumpeter David O'List (later of The Nice with Keith Emerson), Richard Sherman on vocals, Bob Hodges on piano and organ, Gerry Henderson on bass and Whitehead on drums.

They released four singles in all, three in 1966 "Try It" / "We Don't Know", "Hi Ho Silver Lining" / "Any More Than We Do", "Created by Clive" / "Colour of My Mind" and one in 1967, "Neville Thumbcatch" / "Lady Orange Peel".

Several compilation albums have been produced which featured the band, Magic in the Air in 1990, The Complete Recordings From 1967-68 in 1999, About Time! (The Definitive MOD-POP Collection 1967-1968) and Final Daze in 2019.[1]

Marmalade

Whitehead (top middle) in 1968 with Marmalade

Although he has had a diverse music and business career, Whitehead is best known as a member of Marmalade, whose most successful single in the UK was a cover version of the Paul McCartney song "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da".[2] Released in November 1968, the single reached number one on the UK Singles Chart and topped the charts in several other countries.

Whitehead joined Marmalade while still performing with The Attack and working with Crispian St. Peters. Shortly before his arrival, the band had changed their name from Dean Ford and the Gaylords to Marmalade.

In a notable appearance on Top of the Pops in early 1969, the four Scottish members of the band wore traditional kilts, while Whitehead—originally from England—wore a red coat, visually marking him as the only non-Scottish member of the group.

Later in 1969, Marmalade signed with Decca Records, and released the song "Reflections of My Life", which became an international success. The single reached the Top 10 in the United States and remains one of the band's most recognisable songs. Marmalade continued their chart success with "Rainbow" in 1970, which peaked at number three on the UK Singles Chart.

Whitehead left the band in 1971, later rejoining in 1975 before departing permanently in 1978.

Management

After leaving Marmalade, Whitehead worked as a photographer for a while and set up his own management company, negotiating his first production contract with EMI Records. Groups that he successfully managed were Lipps Inc., Mel and Kim, Modern Romance and Rikki Peebles. He later went on to manage all-girl groups Amazulu and Belle Stars.

Whitehead continued in artist management and could be seen reviewing sports cars on the Together TV programme "Rock 'N' Roll Cars" (he also provides the voice-over for the show).[3]

He ran Chubby Lama Management with Sasi Langford, representing the indie rock band Shoot the Preacher, who won The Global Song Writing Competition. He has also managed strip clubs.[2]

Personal life

In 1966, Whitehead was in a relationship with Maureen Wilson, an Anglo-Indian from Birmingham. After him she dated and married Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin.[4]

In early 1970, he started a relationship with Swedish model called Leena Skoog and they married in July 1971 with press coverage.[5][6] They were divorced two years later, although they remained good friends until her death in 1998 from ovarian cancer. In 1978 he married the actress Louise Burton..they were married for 17 years and have 2 sons Kurtis and Leo. While running a strip club in Newquay called Divas he met and married one of the dancers Gemma Ford. It was short-lived and they divorced a year later

In 2013, Whitehead appeared on an episode of Take Me Out, where he landed a date with a woman called Lia-Jay Holmes, who is forty years younger than Whitehead.[7]

He currently lives in Thailand and was single until in 2021 when he met a Thai woman called Kwhanchai, known to everyone by her nickname of Kitty,[8] who is thirty years his junior. They married in May 2022

Fill The Christmas Box Of Hope" — The Official Song Of The Christmas Hope Box Campaign

Written by Steve Beer for the Crossroads Podcast community, this isn't just a Christmas song — it's an invitation.

Across the world there are families and individuals who may face this festive season with very little. Some are struggling with housing, some with loneliness, some simply feeling unseen. The Christmas Hope Box is our way of saying: We see you. You matter. You are not alone.

This song celebrates the power of simple kindness — how a small gift, a warm note, or a few thoughtful items can carry a message that goes deeper than anything money can buy. It's about hope as the greatest gift of all: hope that things can get better, that help is here, and that together, we make a difference.

TO FILL

Many people have concerns about the quality and quantity of their sleep. Reportedly, 90% adults don't get enough sleep, whilst 25% experience insomnia on a Sunday night, ultimately affecting their health and wellbeing. Sleep can be disrupted by stress, health issues, relationship concerns, and even our bedrooms.  

Advice frequently suggests ways to improve our sleep, with 2009 seeing the introduction of the first commercial fitness tracker to incorporate sleep analysis, the Fitbit Classic. Since then, many others, including Garmin, Whoop and Apple, have integrated sleep trackers into wrist-worn devices, as have smart rings such as Oura, Ultrahuman and RingConn. 

Could sleepmaxxing be the answer? It offers some practical suggestions. No caffeine from early afternoon, no alcohol near bedtime, follow a consistent sleep schedule, retire to bed at the same time, including weekends, so anchoring your internal clock. Turn off phones, devices and TV 30-60 minutes before bed, go outdoors into morning light within an hour of waking up, keep your bedroom pitch dark, quiet and at a temperature of 16-18C. Various supplements, like melatonin, are suggested, as is mouth taping and nasal expanders to force nasal breathing. 

When much of life is measured, rated and investigated, adhering to a ‘perfect’ sleep template could become overwhelming, ultimately become detrimental and resulting in orthosomnia, or obsessing about ways to optimise sleep. This initiative is not dissimilar to the ad-inspired recommendation of 10,000 steps each day, which was introduced to promote various sports goods and lifestyle choices, even though the criteria used has been discounted by scientists and industry professionals.   

The concept of a sleep score is "completely made up", says Dr Alanna Hare, consultant of sleep medicine at the Royal Brompton Hospital in London. "There's nothing recognised in sleep science that’s a 'sleep score. That's just been created by manufacturers."3 

Dr Neil Stanley, sleep expert and author of the book How to Sleep Well, conducted research into wrist-worn sleep trackers forty years ago and found that gamifying sleep creates more disordered sleeping. "When you track your sleep it gives you a number, which means you have a target. You get into this cycle of worrying about your quality or quantity of sleep based on figures." 

Though commercial trackers are now more sophisticated, they work in much the same way, measuring your movement with the same limitations. "If you want to measure sleep, you have to measure the brain." Stanley adds, "Unless you're measuring the brain's activities, you're not measuring sleep." Devices vary, but in general they all provide users with a report of their night, broken into sleep stages - time awake, light sleep, deep sleep, and REM (rapid eye movement). often giving a "sleep score." 

But sleep-tracking can make your sleep worse. Dr Hare says she's noticed trackers causing anxiety, with more patients coming to her with data from various trackers and questions about sleep that are probably contributing to their sleep difficulties. Even though some have had medical tests with reassuring results, this hasn't allayed their fears. She adds. "It's great that there's more focus on sleep as part of wellness, but sleep does not respond well to attempts to perfect it." 

Relying too heavily on information provided by sleep trackers can result in an obsessive and compulsive focus about doing everything 'right'. Relying on sleep scores, magnesium and white noise machines can turn the simple act of sleeping into a minefield. 

In one University of Oxford study, participants were given sleep trackers which assigned them a sleep score. The scores were randomised, and had no relation to how the participants had actually slept. The next day, participants rated their mood, fatigue levels and alertness, before tests checking their focus and reaction times. Researchers found that the people informed they'd slept badly reported feeling more fatigued and were less mentally alert - even though the sleep scores were all fake. 

There's also the daytime impact to consider. Studies also show sleep trackers can affect how you function during the day, even when they're not accurate. The more we focus on something, the more it features in our thoughts. So, if we're told not to think of the colour yellow, we’d probably immediately think of it. If we’re buying a new car or doing home renovations, we suddenly become aware of the many instances around us. Similarly, learning our sleep scores can influence our perception of how we’ve slept upon awakening. 

What does Dr Hare recommend for sleeping well? 

Keep your bedroom cool, dark and quiet - within reason. "It doesn’t need to be pitch black, exactly 16-18C or totally silent," she says. "Just coolish, darkish and quietish."  

Seeing bright light in the morning is good for regulating your body’s natural clock, your circadian rhythm. Doing light exercise, and eating a "healthy, Mediterranean-style diet with plenty of plant variability". 

Above all, keep it simple - "anything else, you don't need it".