Scouse shelf-stacker becomes Chinese crooner

The distinctive Liverpool sound has spread across the world in the past five decades.

But even so, the world of music may have been unprepared for Barry Cox, 30, once a supermarket shelf-stacker but now a celebrated Chinese crooner.



Inspired by a wish to do something a bit different as a teenager, Cox decided to learn Chinese.

Not content with that, he decided to take up Canto-pop, a style of love song generally regarded as too saccharine for western tastes but which has teenage Asian girls swooning.



Now, after years in which his reputation has grown - at least as Gok Pak-wing, as he is known to the Chinese - he has finally found star billing, singing at the Venetian hotel, the new mega-casino in the Chinese gambling haven of Macau.

There has even been talk of a film being made about his unusual path to fame.