Babylon Zoo

ON Top Of The Pops he is the sex god in a silver sari whose exotic image has sent Britain's teenagers into orbit.

Jas Mann, lead singer with pop sensations Babylon Zoo, is set to become a millionaire thanks to Spaceman, the fastest-selling debut single, which has shot straight to No 1.

As part of the huge hype surrounding Jas, his publicists are sending out press releases beginning 'Sex Is My Drug. I Can't Get Off The Carousel...' But the handsome 24-year-old from Wolverhampton is still waiting to lose his virginity.

He is a Sikh, saving himself for an arranged marriage, revealed his former manager Tommy Langford.

Tommy, 32, told the Sunday Mirror last night: 'There were always lots of girls hanging around and trying to get close to Jas. I've shared rooms with him and girls wanted to sleep with him all the time.

'But he never took advantage of them. The big shock is - he's a virgin.'

He added: 'Jas is very serious about his religion. He couldn't take a white woman home to his mum and dad, Sukbinder, who is a dressmaker, and Balbir, a foundry worker.

'My understanding is that his two elder sisters have had arranged marriages and I believe the family have the same thing in mind for Jas and that he is saving himself. Certainly he has kept himself clean and pure.'

In the six years they were together, Tommy remembers Jas, who doesn't smoke, hates drugs and prefers hot water and honey to alcohol, having just one girlfriend. 'But he never stayed the night with her,' he said.

Spaceman sold half a million copies in six days after being released and, now that it is being used in Levi's TV ads, it is expected to sell a lot more, It comes as no surprise to Tommy, who still clearly remembers the night in 1987 that he first saw Jas, singing in a band called The Glove Puppets. 'I knew he was brilliant the moment I saw him,' said Tommy. 'The audience was hypnotised.'

Tommy signed him for his own band, The Sand Kings. Jas soon developed a big female following in the West Midlands. It was a shock to the Indian immigrant who was bullied at school because his mother refused to let him cut his long, black hair.

Says Jas, who spent his first two years in the Punjab: 'I went from this paradise to the West Midlands and suddenly I'm playing marbles in the streets of what some would call an urban hell.'

Jas and Tommy, once a trumpeter with Dexy's Midnight Runners, formed Babylon Zoo in 1992. Jas moved out of the family home and bought a pounds 60,000 Victorian semi nearby.

Tommy says: 'I helped him decorate. We put in wall-to-ceiling mirrors so he could practise his dance routines.

'The house is next to a girls' high school and many of the pupils would look out for him on their way to and from school.'

Tommy has parted company with Jas but still looks fondly at his pop prodigy who, he feels, could become as big as his idols, Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley.

Tommy said: 'I don't think anybody can control Jas. He's a one-off. He really believes in the Spaceman thing. He believes his music can reach people on other planets.'

28 Jan 1996: Sunday Mirror - Page 14 - (541 words)
By: DAVID ROWE

This article was submitted to Babylon Zoo Online by accadia. Thanks!
 

Jas, fully named 'Jasbinder', was born in Dudley in the West Midlands on the 24th day of April 1971

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