DANIEL Heeney can be seen making several appearances in the film Telstar.

Daniel is not quite clear where, although he has watched the film as a guest at the premiere.

“I’d had a few drinks before I went, and to be honest it’s a bit of a blur,” he says. He shouldn’t be too hard to miss, though. At one stage in the film, Dan, from Tyelands, Billericay, appears in the audience at a Tornados gig, dressed in full Teddy Boy gear. Elsewhere, he figures as a passer-by outside Joe Meek’s flat in Holloway road, London.

Dan dressed for the street extra’s role in 1960s gear. “It made me look like my dad,” says the 39-year-old magician and DJ.

Dan appears in the film by virtue of his position as a stalwart of the Joe Meek Society, a group formed to pay tribute to a man seen as a key player in the history of British pop.

“Our music scene would have been nothing without him,” Dan says.

“He was a technical genius, way ahead of his time in the way he used electronics. In fact, the word genius doesn’t do him justice. A lot of top musicians copied his music style. People don’t realise how much of what we take for granted in Sixties music came from him.”

The Joe Meek society played an indirect role in the making of Telstar. Its members were responsible for erecting a plaque in the Holloway Road where Joe Meek’s life was played out. Writer-director Nick Moran was passing the site in a taxi and noticed the plaque. “That’s where this guy who wrote Telstar murdered his landlady and then shot himself,” the taxi-driver told him. Recognising the seeds of a big story, Moran set to work finding out all he could about Joe Meek.

The play Telstar opened in London in 2005, followed by the film.

“It’s taken a while, but it’s good that the story is finally out there,” Dan says.