Diamond life for club singer

It's fine if he sticks to Neil Diamond, but some voices don't fit as well, like Elton John, and that can punish the voicebox.

I'm sure the cigarette he draws on doesn't help, but maybe it does. Maybe the Lamberts and Bensons are what make Mark (pictured) into Neil.

He nods: "It's possible but I've always had a gravelly voice. Smoking works for Bryan Adams and many other singers, but I'm planning to give up - again."

I promise to hold Mark to that, but he changes his mind a lot. Last time we met he was Marc Angel, but weeks later he billed as Mark Fields. Now he wants to be Marc Esprit.

The stage names shift but the real Mark Davies will always be the man who reinvented his life and found a new career at an age when most people feel stuck.

Five years ago, on a whim, he got up in front of a boozy crowd of 400 at a caravan park in Cornwall and sang Elton John's Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me.

Mark, 40, who lives in Cwmbran, said: "I realised I didn't sound bad at all. The crowd loved it. I had a nice little voice as a kid but then lost it for twenty years."

Finding his voice didn't take long. Mark started joining the queues with karaoke fans at a pool club in Newport. When that closed he felt "lost" and started shadowing cabaret acts in an apprenticeship of sorts.

He loved it, and in late 2003 he packed in his business selling sporting trophies and launched himself as a Neil Diamond tribute, playing at pubs and clubs across his native South Wales.

The Neil wig and glitzy shirt are an even further cry from the years he spent working out complicated designs as an industrial engineer with Marconi in Newport.

"That was quite well paid but I didn't get a fraction of the pleasure as I do from getting up and singing songs that I enjoy.

"I'm not after stardom but I cannot remember the last time I was stressed about work. I'm very lucky. This job gives me massive pleasure.

"I pay my bills and it's OK. After agents' fees and fuel there's not much left over from a £100 booking. But I don't have to get up at 6am on a Monday and dread that meeting at 8am."

He sings all sorts, from Pink Floyd to Joe Cocker, but does he wish he sang his own songs? "I feel a bit gutted about that because I have a good voice, but I don't have a clue to start writing my own things."

He has lost his weekends to Neil Diamond, but has gained acres of daytime during the week in which to practise, record demo CDs for agents and market himself as a top lookalike.

"When you sing along in the car it's easy, but with a backing track and no words it's very difficult. To do a show you need 20 to 25 songs and I had to commit myself to learning them."

For the bizarre world of lookalike singers has a career path much like any other. Mark wants to move on to the UK circuit to play bigger venues and holiday parks, and hopefully land a cruise ship residency when partner Tina retires in five years.

We may be in a pub in Duffryn but, like a bank manager, he's brought his briefcase along. Inside: a bar towel and a mike wrapped in electrical tape ("I sweat like a donkey when on stage."), a tambourine ("Sometimes I like to join in a bit more.") and two neat cases of minidiscs - one with samples of Mark's work, the other with backing tracks.

He's looking to buy a black guitar as a prop. He can't play but, having studied the videos of live gigs, he says Neil doesn't much either.

There are around half a dozen Neil Diamond acts in the UK. Mark has seen two but slowly shakes his head: "They didn't cut the mustard."

The twice-divorced dad of five is confident of his voice and, having heard a demo CD through the window of his van (amplifiers in the back, cigarettes and hair gel in the front), I can confirm it's very close to Diamond's rich resonance.

But he'd never have expected to be signed up by the Rotary Club of Lusaka to fly out to Zambia to gig at the Intercontinental Hotel. The event last November raised cash for AIDS babies, an orphanage and the local hospital.

Mark had last been abroad in his mid-twenties, on the ferry to visit Amsterdam. The only time he had got on a plane was for a charity parachute jump - where he ended up on crutches.

"Going to Africa was amazing. Who'd have thought it. I'd never been on a big plane and then we got upgraded to business class.

"But Zambia was a sad place. All the monied people were at the concert but the area itself has a massive population of poor people.

"Tina and I visited the orphanage. The first room we saw was called Hope and it contained 30 or 40 babies, all of them orphaned and all were HIV positive.

"Tina broke down. I saw that on Friday and on Saturday at the concert I did my damnedest. We raised £15,000. It should make a difference."

He plans to return this year to repeat the gig, perhaps as Tom Jones. And he's left his wig out there - it was a casualty in the charity auction, raising £60. But he doesn't want it back. He's growing his hair so that he can look like Neil Diamond in the night, and Mark Davies in the day.