William 'Bill' Corbett
| William John Corbett | |
|---|---|
| Born |
10 September 1965 Surbiton, Surrey, England |
| Residence | London |
| Other names | Bill Dup |
| Education | William Ellis School; Middle Temple |
| Occupation | Photographer, author |
| Known for | The Master of the Ceremonies |
William 'Bill Dup' Corbett (born 10 September 1965, Surbiton, Surrey) is an English disk jockey, photographer, historian and former musician who lives in London, England. He has also written a book on the Shakespeare authorship question.[1]
The Apostle
Corbett was one of the founding members and original vocalist of The Apostles, an anarcho-punk band that formed in Hackney in 1979.[2] He published many anarchist diatribes and fanzines in the early 1980s, such as Precautions essentiales pour la bonne and Luz y Fuerza, and promoted gigs for Crass, Zounds, The Mob, Rudimentary Peni, Flux of Pink Indians, Primal Chaos and Hagar the Womb. For several years he was the 'key-holder' for the Wapping Autonomy Centre.
Corbett studied art and photography at Chelsea College of Art from 1982 until 1984, when he dropped out and formed the band Savage Eden with ex Apostle Julian Portinari and Seamus Brady (Crux and ex-IRA H-Block resident). The band were hounded by authorities until their demise in 1987, when Corbett and Portinari formed Pallor with Ben Bethell and Dan Macintyre (another ex-Apostle). The band released one album, Four more cunts on the road to nowhere, which achieved cult status on the anarcho-punk scene in the late 80s.
Bill Dup
He was married in July 1987 to Bodil Magdalena Hortlund, the same year he appeared in two of film director Alex Chandon's horror films, Bad Karma and Drillbit, both of which won several awards. Chandon went on to become one of the UK's premier horror film directors, with the films Pervarella and Inbred to his name. In 1990 Corbett became a DJ at the London nightclub Spoon, and from 1992–2004 travelled the world under the name DJ Bill Dup, playing at the Full Moon Party in Ko Pha Ngan, Thailand. The punk connection continued in to the new techno scene, seeing Corbett work with D.A.V.E The drummer aka Henry Cullen on the ground-breaking single "The Big G". In 1996 he moved to Hong Kong and spent two years working for The Triads as resident DJ in the seedy Wan Chai district at The Big Apple. Bill Dup played an eclectic mix of Trance and Techno dance music six nights a week, working from midnight until 10am or beyond. He released remixes for local band EXP.[3]
In 1999 he released the album Dusted Down and played at the Ministry of Sound, Cream, Renaissance and Filthy Society. In 2002 he played at Tate Britain for the young British artists exhibition and followed this with a tour in 2003 of the United States and Mexico. From 2004–7 he was resident DJ at Propaganda nightclub in Soho, London. In 2007 he attended the Gnaoua festival in Essaouira Morocco and played at Pacha in Marrakesh.
He is currently resident DJ at Thirst Soho, London and Salvador and Amanda, Bloomsbury, London.
Photography
Corbett's photographic work has been widely published. In August 2006, his portrait of Bella Freud appeared in Harper's Bazaar. In 2008 he was interviewed by the New York Times while shooting on location in Essaouira, Morocco.[4] He photographed the band Alabama 3 of The Sopranos fame in 2008 for their album MOR and in 2010, he photographed Zodiac Mindwarp and the Love Reaction for their CD We Are Volsung. Although he is not a member of the Colony Room or Gerry's club, he has photographed extensively in both, releasing abook of smokers' portraits before the smoking ban came into force in 2007, Gerry-Go-Round. This was followed in 2011 by a book of photographs documenting the demise of the Soho drinking establishment, the Colony Room Club, entitled Behind the Green Door, exhibited as part of the "One More for The Road" show at Soho's Reading Room Gallery.
Shakespeare authorship
In 2013 Corbett published The Master of the Ceremonies: The Hand of Shakespeare[5] his biography of Sir Lewes Lewkenor, Master of the Ceremonies to James I and translator of Gasparo Contarini's The Commonwealth and Government of Venice, considered by scholars to be the basis of the Venetian settings for The Merchant of Venice and Othello. Corbett claims to have demonstrated that Lewkenor was the true author of the plays attributed to William Shakespeare. His initial insight came about when he noticed the similarity between Lewkenor's use of the phrase "the stings and terrors of a guilty conscience" in 1594 and Hamlet's famous "the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune".
His book, Master of the Ceremonies, details the relationship between Lewkenor and Shakespeare, arguing that there is a coded Catholic message that underlies the plays and that Lewkenor's stylistic fingerprints can be found in them.[6]
References
- ↑ http://www.kentishtowner.co.uk/2014/06/03/ich-bin-kentishtowner-william-corbett-dj-historian/
- ↑ Glasper, Ian, The Day the Country Died: A History of Anarcho Punk 1980 to 1984, Cherry Red Books, 2007, p.90.
- ↑ "China's Business Newspaper". The Standard. Retrieved 18 July 2014.
- ↑ Dougherty, Steve (11 May 2008). "Corbett NYT Interview". The New York Times.
- ↑ ISBN 9781463547028
- ↑ Lewkenor, Lewes. "Master of the Ceremonies". Retrieved 1 August 2012.