Born: 25 March 1942
Real name: Richard Timothy Smith
O’Brien was born in Cheltenham in Gloucestershire in England. However his family moved to New Zealand when he was 10 and he grew up there. He returned to England in 1964 and landed some work as a stunt man in films such as ‘Carry On Cowboy’ and the James Bond spoof, ‘Casino Royale’. He would also start working in stage musicals and landed roles in productions of ‘Hair’ and ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’. He would work with director Jim Sharmon on a musical called ‘They Came From Denton High’. This musical had a name change and became ‘The Rocky Horror Show’. It would become a hit in London’s West End and Jonathan King would produce an original cast recording of the soundtrack. Two years after the stage show opened, the film version was released with O’Brien playing the role of Riff Raff. He would go on to star in a number of films, TV and stage shows. His only UK chart success (at the time of writing) came in 2021 when ‘The Time Warp’ spent 1 week at 78.
| Date of entry | Song | Peak (weeks at 1) | Weeks |
| 30-Jul-1976 | The Time Warp | 12 | 5 |
| Total hits | 1 | ||
| Total weeks | 5 |
| Biggest climber awards | 0 |
| Star rater climbs | 1 |
| Biggest fallers | 0 |
| Weeks with oldest in the charts | 0 |
| Longest run in the charts (weeks) | 5 |
| Weeks with more than 1 in the charts | 0 |
| Biggest gap between hits (weeks) | 0 |
| Top 30 points ranking | =1057 |
| Top 20 points ranking | =1035 |
| Top 30 points | 76 |
| Top 20 points | 26 |
‘The Time Warp’ was outperformed on our charts by the 1988 cover (‘Time Warp II’) by Damian which went to number 9 and spent 18 weeks on the charts (14 of which were in the top 20).
SA Singles Charts 