Barry Cox's journey from working-class Liverpool to a nightly performance at a giant Macau casino all began in a chip shop.
It was there that the youngster, headed for a series of unremarkable jobs in supermarkets and at call centers, made the unlikely decision to start learning Cantonese.
It was a move that has taken him all over the world, seen him triumph in Chinese-language singing competitions and flirt with the closed world of Canto-pop stardom. It may even result in a film being made of his life.
Now, the 30-year-old befuddles tourists and gamblers every night at the gargantuan Venetian resort singing his favorite songs in immaculate Cantonese, occasionally slipping into Mandarin, or his hometown Liverpool twang.
"I was doing a lot of dead-end jobs - supermarkets, insurance companies that sort of thing - and I thought 'What could I do to improve myself?'" said Cox, under the fake blue sky near the casino's replica of St Mark's Square.
Cox started learning Spanish, but after two weeks realized that everyone else in the room was a university graduate and would beat him to any job going. "All of a sudden the thought came to me - Chinese, that is the language I should be doing.
"Two or three doors away from my home was a chip shop run by a Chinese family. I thought, 'I need to find a way to get in there.' So I went and bought a pie."
Cox began hanging around at the shop and asked about whether he could get some help learning Chinese - he did not know there was a difference between Mandarin, China's national language, and Cantonese, the southern dialect predominant among the UK's Chinese community.
The shop's owner said he had a nephew who was staying with him and if Cox could help his relative with some English, he was sure the nephew would help him with Chinese - which, as it happened, was Cantonese.
Soon Cox, who admits he was "not a brain-box" at school, was spending four hours a night in the chip shop learning new words, then he and the visiting nephew would head out drinking with a group of Chinese, Cox struggling to pick up the tones.
He started taking formal lessons at the city's Chinese community center and even took a job in a Chinese supermarket.
"I was learning 24 hours a day," he says.
After about two years of struggling with the complex tones of Cantonese, a friend introduced him to Canto-pop music.
Cox, who had never been interested in music before, was soon saving up the US$100 dollars to see Canto-pop star Leon Lai perform in nearby Manchester.
It was a life-changing experience. Cox found himself riffling through Chinese magazines to find new recordings, and ordering them from overseas.
On a whim, he decided to enter a singing competition in Liverpool to celebrate Chinese New Year, performing one of Lai's songs.
"I sang it terribly but everyone applauded, I guess because it was so out there," he said.
With a typically bullish attitude, he was soon taking singing lessons, learning how to breath properly and perform in Cantonese. He also began entering - and winning - karaoke competitions, beating native Chinese speakers.
The success garnered national attention, with newspaper articles and documentaries - one called Romeo of Chinatown.
However, Cox realized that if he wanted to make a career out of Canto-pop, he had to move to where the market was - Hong Kong.
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