It was 21 years ago that I first got to know Donovan Whycliffe Bramwell. I was working an office job in the Lace Market and would often see him in the street, looking dishevelled and asking people for money. Like most people I’d usually try to avoid such lunch-break encounters, but one day someone told me this man had once been a famous singer. It was a year after we’d launched LeftLion and I was interested in stories like this…
I did a bit of fact-checking and discovered it was true. A decade before, under the name Whycliffe, he’d released two albums; Rough Side (1991) and Journeys of the Mind (1994) on MCA Records, an American label which had since been merged as part of the Universal Group. I saw the photos of him on those album covers, looking sultry with his smokey eyes, and it was just unmistakably the same man. Other people who recorded on that label include Elton John, BB King, Big Daddy Kane and Cher. I wondered why no-one else seemed to be writing about this amazing, but tragic, story on our doorstep.
So the next time I saw him in the street, it was me making a beeline for him. I gave him a bit of money and asked him if he’d sit with me and tell me his story. The actual interview took place over several encounters, which were not easy to arrange. However, each time we met I came bearing gifts; a few quid, a couple of cans of Red Stripe, bits of food and once several pairs of brand new socks. I remember him looking really bemused by the socks, but he wasn’t wearing any and it was getting near winter.
The stories he told me back then will stay with me forever. He talked about how he’d grown up singing along to Top of the Pops in Broxtowe, how he’d been ‘discovered’ singing gospel and was flown to LA to record music videos. He claimed he’d supported the Godfather of Soul James Brown at the Hammersmith Odeon, but was unsure of dates, (I later checked this and I believe it was on 4 July 1991). He talked to me about his friendship with Danni Minogue, who was signed to MCA at the same time, and how he met her sister Kylie on the kids TV show Live & Kicking. I’d heard rumours that Danni and Donovan were more than just friends, but when I asked he was just really sweet about her and I didn’t push for a salacious scoop. I also found videos of him from The Chart Show and The Word on Youtube and old press clippings and press photos of him on ebay.
Towards the end of our first interview Donovan talked about how he’d started to get ill and go on a downward spiral. We never talked fully about how it went so drastically wrong. I’m not sure he was capable of vocalising something so painful, or that I'd have been capable of dealing with the aftermath of opening up Pandora’s box. The truth is that, for whatever reason and despite major label backing, the hits never came. In total from seven singles he only had three minor UK chart entries, the highest peaking at #56. The music industry is known for being cruel and eventually the people around him back then lost interest and let him go. What happened next is unclear, but he definitely had his demons and perhaps a touch of Icarus, having flown too close to the sun. We didn’t talk openly about drugs, but it was obvious he was on some bad ones.
After we first published the interview, a lot of people got in contact with me about it. I had email exchanges with several old acquaintances, including his former manager Tim Andrews. Most seemed happy we’d published the story, but at times I wondered if he’d have been better off with people not knowing his backstory; especially when videos popped up on Youtube of people being mean to him; filming him singing while he was out on the streets begging for money.
For the next two decades, I continued to see him in town and offer the occasional few quid. I was loosely involved in a couple of attempts by friends to help rehabilitate him - one who gave him a guitar and studio time and another who ran a record shop and gave him back some of his old records. However, none of us were qualified; or perhaps just had the time, will and dedication, to rehabilitate someone like this. Eventually I heard through the grapevine he’d sold the records and the guitar. It’s horrible to say now, but I assumed this would be the rest of his story.
Then in May 2024 an account in the name Whycliffe Bramwell popped up on Facebook. At first I was dubious as he was the last person who I thought would be on social media. His first post was him smiling, dressed in a suit accompanied by a woman I assume from the comments to be his mother. Then there was a photo of him in a recording studio and with a record contract in hand and the simple message “I’m getting there finally.” In September there was a series of photos of him looking sharp in a suit and hat at his niece’s wedding. Then a post from someone called Howard ‘Nuggz’ Nugent with a photo of them both that said “Sometimes you get to see the Soul not just the person.”
Other photos of him followed doing everyday things like going to the barbers (T-Cuts on Alfreton Road), eating cheesecake in Wollaton Park and doing his supermarket shop. For anyone else this would be the kind of rammel you’d scroll past quickly, but it was beautiful to see him enjoying the mundane aspects of normal life.
On Christmas eve last year he dropped a new video and song called Merry Christmas Happy Christmas. A two-minute festive banger, it brought genuine joy to me and many others. Over the next few months it became clear that the key figures in his rehabilitation were Howard ‘Nuggz’ Nugent and two ladies called Sis and Jane. Between them they are also helping him out by putting the messages up on social media.
I arranged to meet up with Donovan, Nuggz and Jane on a sunny early evening in June. One of the first things I asked Nuggz is how on earth they’d got him back on the straight and narrow.
“There’s a lot to tell. It’s hard work and it will continue to be,” he said. “But one of the things that helps is that we give him a bit of Jamaican brown weed and a half of bitter every evening. You can’t expect him to go from taking the stuff he’s taken to being sober straight away. He might never be completely sober, but he’s definitely better off on this than that.”
Early on in the interview I ask Donovan to confirm to me what the drugs he was addicted to for so long were. I knew the answer already, but I want to hear him say it. He was reluctant to do this on the record at first, but Nuggz pushes him, pointing out that admitting to addiction is part of the recovery process. Donovan confirms that his core addition for many years was crack cocaine.
“After a while it didn’t even feel like I was getting much from it, I just knew I needed more,” he says. “So I ended up hanging out in alleyways and getting into cycles where I'd beg for three hours just so I could get enough money to buy another £10 worth of that. Then once I’d done that I’d start the process again. It went on like that for a long time.”
Apart from crack, he also had brief dalliances with the psychoactive street drugs Spice (“I only tried that once.”) and Mamba (“I had that three times. When you take it you realise why they called it Mamba. When the snake bites you it knocks you down to the floor.”)
I’m grateful for his honesty, but it’s also clear that in the environment Donovan lives in he’s never very far away from other addicts. He currently lives in a sheltered housing complex with around a dozen other people, all of whom are in there for a reason. When Nuggz describes the neighbours he says;
“Those people are lost and that place is their last hope before they end up living on the street. In some ways he might be better off if he was actually in prison. It’s clear he’s got some mental health issues, but he’s surrounded by people who are much worse. The man upstairs often screams all night long. Another guy came into his room saying ‘Donovan, give me some crack.’ He told him he doesn’t smoke that anymore, but the guy just starts shouting angrily at him and telling him that he’ll always be an addict. It’s definitely not a good environment for someone trying to recover.”
“One of the reasons Donovan and I wanted to do this interview was to see if there is anyone out there with access to proper rehab or better accommodation that can help him to progress on to a higher level. If there is someone with resources who can help a Nottingham legend like him, please get in touch with us; either through our social media or through LeftLion.”
From seeing Nuggz and Whycliffe together you’d assume they were old childhood friends; they’re about the same age and both born and bred in Notts. However, although Nuggz was aware of the Bramwell family as a youngster, they actually only got to know each other in 2022.
“Someone at IllKid Records in Leicester told me they wanted me to find him and see if we could get him back in the studio,” Nuggz tells us. “So I put the word out amongst friends and a week or so later someone saw him in the West Indian shop on Alfreton Road and called me. I drove straight down there and told him to get in the car. It was raining heavily. I drove him over to Sis’s house. That was where it all started.”
“When people start off on the path to being addicts, everybody thinks they're bigger than the drug. But it only takes one unhinged screw in your head and the drug will find it and take control. I’d had some previous experience of helping friends get their lives back together in situations like that, but nothing on this scale. In hindsight he was so deep into his mental health issues that I don’t believe he would have lasted until now if we hadn’t intervened when we did.
“The first time we felt we were making a breakthrough was when we took him to the IllKid studio in Leicester. It started badly. He was having an episode outside and Sis and I were looking at each other, thinking this wasn’t going to work. But eventually we got him inside and into the vocal booth. The engineer puts this Marvin Gaye track on and the rage begins to subside. He starts singing, hits one of the notes perfectly and then just bursts into tears, Sis and I looked at each other and realised we’d found a way in.
“I was on a finders fee to get him in that studio. But three years later I'm still here and no-one is paying me to be. Sometimes I don’t even like him. Often, I just want to pull his arm off and beat him with it. But the fact is that when he gets into that studio, he just blows my mind with what he can do. We’re also making a film documentary about his life and recovery. He was born to be a singer.”
Donovan was born on 2 August 1968 in the city hospital and grew up in Broxtowe. He was one of twelve children and he has four children of his own, with whom he now has increasing levels of contact with. He’s lucid enough now that I'm able to get details like this from him, which would have been impossible a few years ago.
I was on the road, I was on the streets and I know how I was living. The truth is I was dying. I’m not a boy and I don’t like to be told, but thank god for one reason or another I'm not on the streets anymore
A week before the interview Jane, who spends a lot of the daytime with Donovan, whilst Nuggz is at work, took him to visit his childhood home; “If I ever got rich all I'd ever want to do is buy that house in Broxtowe,” he tells us. “I’d rather have that than a mansion. There’s a lot of memories for me in that place and if I ever earned a million pounds I'd be happy to spend all of it just on getting that place back.”
Jane didn’t want to speak as part of this interview or be in the photos but it’s clear that alongside Nuggz and Sis, she’s put in a lot of hours to help Donovan to get back on the straight and narrow. She takes him on regular day trips to places like Matlock, where they shared a fish and chip supper. It also seems Donovan has become part of her family. At one point she shows me a video on her phone of him playing in a playpark with her four-year-old granddaughter. Donovan is amused by this too: “She tricked me. I told her I’m not going on the slide because I’m too old. But she holds my hand and before I know it I'm up there and there’s only one way down. I had to slow myself on the way otherwise I'd get all mash-up at the bottom.”
When I ask Donovan to describe Jane’s part in helping him, he’s as sweet as he was talking about Danni Minogue twenty years ago; “I hear voices and they bother me. But Jane told me when it happens and I need her I can phone her, day or night. That’s really helped me. She’ll come round and see me and we’ll have a talk and I'll play my guitar. When I play my guitar that voice gets louder and he thinks I'm his. I still hear the voices when she’s with me, but just the fact she’s there really helps.”
It’s been a long hard road to get Donovan back where he is now and coping with mental health and addiction issues is something I suspect will be part of his life forever. As a group Nuggz, Jane and Sis - who I didn’t get to meet - seem to have done something that most people, including myself, assumed wasn’t possible. It’s also worth pointing out that no-one is paying them to look after Donovan and they’re not tied to him in the way that many are to family members or childhood friends.
I’m sure like everyone they’ve got skeletons in their closets, but between them they’ve acted like angels putting the graft in to pull a Nottingham legend back from the brink and set him back on a path to recovery.
Having told his story twenty-one years ago and again now, I realise I've also become part of his story. However, these days Nuggz, Sis and Jane are his core supporting cast. If you ever saw him in town and said hello, or gave him a quid you are part of his story too. Life isn’t a fairytale and it’s likely there will be further obstacles and hiccups along the way, but for now, he’s back on his feet and I hope I speak for everyone in Nottingham when I say we are all rooting for him to just keep going.
I’ll leave the last words to Donovan himself: “I was on the road, I was on the streets and I know how I was living. The truth is I was dying. I’m not a boy and I don’t like to be told, but thank god for one reason or another I'm not on the streets anymore. Thank you to the people who have helped me the last few years. Your support, kindness, and encouragement have meant so much to me and I truly appreciate the way you’ve been there when it mattered most.
“I’d like to thank my loving family, Nuggz, Sis and IllKid for starting me off on this journey. Robin from Sirkus for letting me have studio time. Daniella Quigley and the team at Harrison Dental for giving me back my smile and Jane, Bobbie, Kennedy Shayla and Amiyah for showing me love and normality.
“I also want to say a big thank you to everyone who gave me money, food or drink back in those darker times. A lot of people were kind and tried to help me and it’s only now I can see that clearly. But I don’t want people to offer me money when they see me anymore. Instead please just listen to my music or come to my gig instead.”
Whycliffe: The Rebirth is on at Fisher Gate Point on Sunday 20 July 2025. Tickets are £12 each. If anyone out there believes they have the resources to help Donovan further, please email whycliffe@leftlion.co.uk with details.
We have a favour to ask
LeftLion is Nottingham’s meeting point for information about what’s going on in our city, from the established organisations to the grassroots. We want to keep what we do free to all to access, but increasingly we are relying on revenue from our readers to continue. Can you spare a few quid each month to support us?
