Brian Manly was born in Hertfordshire in 1962. During his school years he developed a passion for the music of   Nicky Chinn and Mike Chapman, especially their premier   artists Sweet, Mud and Suzi Quattro. He left school in 1978 and after some years odd jobbing became a very busy entertainer working under the name of Stevie Sweet.   During the 1990s he changed his act and began a very successful period   in his career while impersonating movie legend Judy Garland. It was during this rather high profile period that he wrote some news paper and magazine columns as a celebrity columnist. Without doubt his proudest moments have been appearing in the music press with Sweet in 1984 and interviewing  the legendary Petula Clark in 1998. After twenty years as a full time performer Brian retired from the stage appearing  only occasionaly for charity or personal pleasure. Shortly after his live career ended he wrote his first novel For the love of Eugen (Minerva press)  which appeared in 2002 and again in 2005.  His reason for writing the Brian Connolly book stems from his childhood love of Sweet and his subsiquent meetings with Connolly down the years.  He met Brian on and off for around a decade witnessing his desolate fall into Alcoholism, tentative recovery and triumphant return to the stage with his various incarnations of Sweet.  Their last meeting was in a car park in the English town of Milton Keynes. Brian had just finnished a show there, his health was poor and he was having problems walking.  Brian Manly has great empathy for his former idol, he is a long recovered alcoholic himself. It was with this understanding, and his great affection for his namesake that he Wrote The Man Who Sang Blockbuster .

Brian divides his time betwean London and  California , in future he hopes to write a tome about the great Chinn and Chapman whos songs he rates among the best of the 70s pop landscape. He is curently finnishing an MA in Psychotherapy at a London University.