MARTIN GILKS was the drummer for the Wonder Stuff, a band who enjoyed a string of hits in the late 1980s and early 1990s, including the 1991 chart-topper Dizzy. In later years, Gilks went into rock management and helped to steer the careers of the bands A, Hundred Reasons, Lowgold and Reef.

Growing up in the West Midlands, influenced by the success of such local bands as Black Sabbath and Slade, his first professional engagement came drumming with the Mighty Lemon Drops, but in 1986 he auditioned for a new band being formed by the singer and songwriter Miles Hunt. He landed the job and joined Hunt, Malcolm Treece and Rob Jones to form the Wonder Stuff, taking the band’s name from a John Lennon quote.

After a couple of self- released singles, the band signed to Polydor for their breakthrough album, The Eight Legged Groove Machine (1988). The band’s style was dubbed by the music press “grebo rock” for its obvious and raucous debt to the likes of Slade, whose Coz I Love You was covered by the band.

Over the next six years, the Wonder Stuff released three further albums and scored a dozen Top 40 singles, including the wonderfully titled The Size of a Cow and Welcome to the Cheap Seats, with Kirsty MacColl on backing vocals. The peak of their popularity came in 1991 when a revival of Tommy Roe’s Dizzy featuring the comedian Vic Reeves gave them a No 1 single. That same year, the band’s third album Never Loved Elvis spent almost six months in the charts.

The group disbanded in 1994, swept away by the in-rushing tide of Britpop, although a later compilation of their hits, cryptically titled If The Beatles Had Read Hunter — The Singles charted strongly.

The following year Gilks and others former band members briefly regrouped as Weknowwhereyoulive before the Wonder Stuff got back together to tour in 2000. Although Gilks participated in that reunion, he was not part of a second attempt to revive the group in 2004, for by then he was busy managing a number of other bands.

He is the second original member of the Wonder Stuff to die, after Rob Jones succumbed to heart failure in 1993.

Martin Gilks, drummer, was born on March 2, 1965. He died on April 3, 2006, after a motorcycle accident, aged 41.