Liam Collins and Richard Edmonds - Faces of Disco
Liam Collins
http://www.liamcollins.com 
Entertaining is something I have loved since I was young. I loved doing robotics dance routines with my brother Rob for family and friends. Rob later took our act on tour to Australia and is now one of the world’s greatest street performers. He can build crowds of over 600 people in minutes and have them in the palm of his hand. He has been mine and Richard's inspiration with the street show. I think it is important to have role models. When I was younger my role models were all in athletics though; I would watch Colin Jackson and Linford Christie videos every day after school to the point where I could recite the Barcelona commentary from David Coleman’s croaky voice! Sad I know! But I loved it, I was obsessed with athletics and it was a passion which led me to all other things I have done in life since. Read more
My best achievement before hanging my spikes up last summer was British Champion for 110 hurdles and top 5 for 400m hurdles as a senior athlete. If it wasn’t for athletics I would never have met Richard and would never have had the drive with Richard to overcome the financial obstacles by inventing what is now Faces of Disco. I do miss it and recently I have started to do a few sessions with Richard over in Hamstead and it feels great to run again. I’m going to enter a few meetings this year and if I am enjoying it still and my body can take the strain I may make a final attempt at the Commonwealth Games next summer in India.
I studied at University in Loughborough, leaving my home town of Newcastle in pursuit of the Olympics and hopefully a degree! I got the degree and narrowly missed out on the games but had an amazing time at Loughborough meeting some great people and setting up the property company CBS Group. It’s been incredibly tough navigating our way through the recession and dancing if only for fun at weekends has always been my way of keeping positive. With the company now doing well, I am able to have more time. It has been great meeting up with Richard and many of the people including my own family whom I’ve neglected with work over the last 2 years with my head stuck into work.
I love it when they come down to visit me in London where I now live as there are so many places and things to do and when you live there you never seem to do the tourist things. The best is when my brother Rob on South Bank, and Richard is performing too and our friends and family will come down and watch and enjoy the sun before going for a meal and a few drinks reminiscing about the busking days when it all started...
Richard Edmonds
http://www.365fitness.co.uk
Hi everyone, my name is Richard and I am one half of Faces of Disco! Liam and I met at Loughborough in 2004 and he persuaded me to start street entertaining with him. My first day street-entertaining with Liam was in Coventry. I don’t remember being too scared but Liam said I looked like a ghost! 8 weeks and 500 shows later I had completed the most memorable yet hardest summer of my life. Read more
We were hit by milkshakes in Gloucester, had to put up with stink bombs in Liverpool, even being targeted by overhead seagulls in Bournemouth who left something horrible on the masks-eww! Still the show must go on as they say and throughout any problems we encountered we found a way of getting over them. Liam and I were on a roll and dreamed of taking the show as far as we could go. We were spotted busking on the streets in Portsmouth and asked to compete in the Search for a Star competition on Southsea Pier, where we went on to win the grand prize of £1000. It wasn’t easy though, after doing 10 shows in the street the same day in Portsmouth we were still making masks using a petrol generator and jigsaw 30minutes until we were on! This was the first show we had done together on a stage and we started to realize we had a unique show that had legs.
We began to really work on the night show, aiming to create the best 15minute act possible. Then in 2009 we decided to audition for Britains Got Talent. We got through to the live finals and had such a great response it was unbelievable! We knew that we had to carry on and worked tirelessly to create the best act we could. Now we are travelling all over the world performing our unique act for various people. My favourite gigs are when we use masks of the people at the party, it always goes down a storm! We continue to strive to make the show the best we can and look forward to many more shows to come.
