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He was born and raised in Athlone, Cape Town, alongside his sister and went to Primary and High school in Pinelands. Jimmy says “at Primary school I was shy and overweight and when I went to High school, it was the same and I was very quiet. But then one day I decided to audition for the cabaret group. At Pinelands High School it’s a very prestigious group to belong to with all the school’s best singers. They used to have a five-night concert once a year and every night was always sold out.

Nobody knew I could sing, even though I’d missed school for a week to take part in the South African champs, anyway I was asked to sing my audition song at assembly and after that my life changed. I also had this girl I liked, so I took a decision to lose weight and within three months I was slim and trim and my life changed again.

My first career choice was architecture. I could draw very well and it seemed like that was what I was going to do. However later I decided I wanted to study music but I didn’t get into the course that I wanted to at UCT so then I went into journalism and did a bachelor degree in Social Sciences there. In my second Varsity year I realised that if I didn’t do something with music I was never really going to be fulfilled. That’s when I drove around with my demo of Elephant Shoes and punted it to all the radio stations and things just took off from there”.