HE has performed as a drummer for The Wonder Stuff, The Beat and Pop Will Eat Itself and has toured the world with Nine Inch Nails.

But former mechanic Fuzz Townshend always seems to find himself back in his blue overalls with a spanner in his hand.

Despite his successful music career, the dad-of-two is now perhaps better known as the presenter of Car SOS.

The reality show sees Fuzz steal people's cars, repair them and do them up before returning them to their amazed owners.

He said: "I thought the concept of the show was great because out of all the other UK shows we’re actually working on real people’s cars.

"We’re putting people back where they’d actually dreamt of being at one point but life just gets in the way in lots of cases.

"The bit I enjoy the most is when they drive away, they stop, they turn corners and all the lights work.

"That’s where I get my deep joy from and I only feel the emotional bit when I watch it back on TV.

"I’m so involved with making sure the cars are actually working that I’m more concerned with that on the day as it won’t make much of an impression if it breaks down half way down the road."

Fuzz will be in Lymm on Sunday as this year's patron of the village's Historic Transport Day.

"Hopefully they won’t make me judge the cars because I hate doing that," he added.

"It’s one of those subjective things. I like a nice, rusty, old project car and if somebody has got a really shiny one that they’ve spent many thousands of hours on and I pick a rust-ridden heap they won’t be too happy.

"I have some friends in Lymm and they told me about the transport day. I wanted to go along to it anyway.

"So this kills two birds with one stone as I get to be involved with the festival and have a couple of glasses of wine with my pals."

But long before he was tinkering with motors, Fuzz dreamt of being a drummer and his hero was Mitch Mitchell from the Jimi Hendrix Experience.

"I was convinced I was going to be on Top of the Pops," he added.

"I was all ready for that by the time I was about six."

His chance came when he was 10 and his mum won a Vauxhall Chevette in a newspaper competition.

Fuzz, who has two sons Oscar, aged 15, and Honour, aged 18, said: "She’d never driven and didn’t want to drive and so she decided to take the cash alternative.

"With that money she said I could have a treat and my treat was a £45 drum kit from Woolworths.

"My pals and I all had to help carry this drum kit out from the shops in Birmingham and get it in a cab to my home six miles away.

"It was a big day. It was fantastic although the neighbours didn’t think it was that great."

Fuzz then played in a variety of bands, sometimes arriving back from shows and heading straight into school from the band's van.

Fame and fortune did not come knocking at his door right away though so he took a job as a mechanic at Dudley Bus Garage.

He recorded two sessions for DJ John Peel while getting double deckers back on the road.

And after touring America with Ranking Roger, Fuzz caught the attention of Pop Will Eat Itself.

The indie band's management even began paying Fuzz visits at his garage.

Fuzz added: "I was working on the buses and they asked me if I’d do Top of the Pops with Pop Will Eat Itself. I said: 'Yes, of course'. But I needed to sign a couple of forms.

"So it was a bit weird standing in Dudley Bus Garage with my overalls on, about to drive an old Daimler double decker out on a test, while signing release forms allowing me to appear on Top of the Pops the following week."

Soon after that he was a full time member of the band but that did not mean he escaped the greasy world of engines – he would often be called upon to fix the tour bus.

"I got no thanks for it either," said Fuzz, who runs classic car restoration business, Westgate Classics.

"If you’re on your tour bus and you need to get to your next venue and you know exactly what’s wrong with the thing then you may as well get on with it.

"Otherwise you’re just stood there in the cold waiting for the recovery truck.

"Me getting dirty and getting a little cheer when I got back on the bus was preferable to sitting around doing nothing."

After stints with a variety of bands including The Wonder Stuff and The Beat, Fuzz became a solo artist

The 50-year-old added: "I’ve always written tunes ever since I was a little kid. I wrote some of the Pop Will Eat Itself songs when I was in that band.

"So I was just doing more of the same and suddenly it seemed to catch here and there.

"My music was used in Sex in the City, Malcolm in the Middle, Jackass and over here Spaced, which starred Simon Pegg, used loads of mine."

Fuzz was even in a Warrington band called The Neat for about five months and clearly remembers a Pop Will Eat Itself gig at the Parr Hall in 1993 – but for all the wrong reasons.

He said: "Top of the Pops kept us late for the filming and we arrived at Parr Hall two hours late to an obviously irritated crowd.

"We came on stage and struck up the first song and all I could see was this plastic pint glass coming from the back of the hall in an arch straight towards me.

"Just when I went to hit a cymbal it bounced straight off my forehead. I was so cross. It was a brilliant shot."

- For all the details about Lymm Historic Transport Day turn to page 47

DAVID MORGAN