Zowie Bowie

I hope for his sake that his teeth don't

Anyway, I thought he went under the name of "joe jones" but he's called something else now.

Further googling leads to this! Music: David Bowie.

Anyone seen this movie (and/or heard the music?)

A low-key lifestyle hides the identity of David Bowie's son

Down to earth: Duncan Jones keeps his identity low-key
With his wispy beard, sheepskin jacket and American accent, Duncan Jones could easily be mistaken for a typical foreign student in London.

And thanks to his low-key lifestyle it is hardly surprising his neighbors do not realise they are living next door to the son of one of the world's most flamboyant and successful rock stars.

Yet, if he told them the name his parents gave him in the 1970's, they would guess in an instant. The 28-year-old student is Zowie Bowie, the son of David Bowie - who will soon become a father again at 53.

Living in a modest flat in north-east London, Duncan, as he now likes to be known, is a second-year student at the International Film School in Covent Garden.

His neighbors say he is "quiet and polite" and they were unaware that his father is the multi-millionaire singer whose glam-rock style helped define the 70s.

At his local pub, the Sutton Arms, one drinker said: "We've seen him in here a few times, but he doesn't come in much because he doesn't drink. He seems a quiet and unassuming chap and I can't believe he's Bowie's son."

His down-to-earth nature is, perhaps, surprising considering his unconventional childhood.

The product of Bowie's ill-fated marriage to first wife Angie, he spent most of his early years living with his father.

By his own admission, Bowie abused drugs and slept with other women and men during the eight-year marriage.

He called his son Duncan, but it was American-born Angie who insited the boy be known by his middle name of Zowie.

She chose the name, because Zoe means life, then changed the spelling so it would not be confused with the girl's name.

The singer was granted custody when Zowie was five and Bowie's marriage fell apart.

Despite his own hedonistic life at the time, Bowie was determined to give his son a stable upbringing.

Friends say he worked hard at being a single parent and was fiercely protective of his son.

He never allowed Duncan any contact with the rock business fearing he may get sucked into the excesses which are synonymous with it.

A family friend said: "He was determined to try to give Duncan as much love as possible."

"Being an only parent, a close bond developed between the two. This not only gave Duncan stability, it kept David on the straight and narrow.

"There are a lot of stories about David's crazy lifestyle. Some are true, but there has been a lot of exaggeration. Being a normal dad isn't very rock 'n' roll, but that is very much what David did.

"The two of them are still very close today and se each other regularly. David's interest in the visual arts and the internet comes from Duncan.

"Duncan is also the one who keeps David up to speed with new bands and other things going on in music. Despite everything, they are very much like an ordinary father and son. They often go to the cinema together or eat out."

Bowie, now maried to Somali-born model Iman, has said of his son in the psat: "He's seen me through some of the most awful, depressing times when I was really in absolute, abject agony over my emotional state; the heights of my drinking of drug-taking. He's seen the lot."

Bowie sent his son to Prince Charles's former school, Gordonstoun, in the Scottish Highlands.

By now Zowie, who had lost touch with his mother, had decided he wanted to be known as Joe - he would become Duncan later - and reverted to the true family surname of Jones.

Duncan pased high school and then went to college in London before going to university in Ohio, where he gained a philosophy degree.

Hank Kreuzman, head of philosophy at Wooster College, remembers Duncan as a model student.

"He was one of the top two or three students in the class and worked very well independently," he said.

During his time as an undergraduate, Duncan fell in love with a local girl two years his junior - Jennifer Ichida - and when he embarked on a PhD in philosophy at Vanderbilt University, Tennessee, she accompanied him.

Duncan, who also has a home in Manhattan, orginally harbored ambitions to be an academic, but by the age of 26 he was at last secure enough in his own identity to follow a more creative path.

Now in his second year at the International Film School, he is still with Jennifer and shuns the limelight.

Duncan Jones, one of the emerging young talents of the British advertising industry, expressly asked that this interview should be accompanied by a photograph of him as a child and not by a contemporary portrait.

Why the reluctance to be seen as he is today? The answer is that Jones is one of the most famous offspring in rock. His father is David Bowie (born David Jones) and the young Duncan was known to the world as Zowie Bowie, and his birth inspired the song "Kooks". "I was very aware of the drawbacks of celebrity and fame and recognition," he says. "It's just not for me. I don't want people coming up to me in the shops. "

But Duncan Zowie Heywood Jones has made such an impact in his five-month-long advertising career that he will find it hard to go unnoticed for much longer. The film director's first ad, a racy, post-watershed creation for French Connection, showing two gorgeous girls fighting and then kissing, has attracted widespread attention. "Kung-fu lesbian advert sparks viewer protests," wrote The Daily Telegraph.

Jones's boss Trevor Beattie, who persuaded him to join Beattie McGuinness Bungay (BMB), could not be happier with his new charge, who has moved the French Connection brand on from Beattie's notorious FCUK tagline. That early success has not gone to Jones's head is quickly apparent; he repeatedly expresses his nervousness ahead of this first media interview.

Dressed in a sloppy blue floral shirt and combat trousers, he is unshaven and speaks in a clear English accent that carries no trace of a childhood spent in New York, Switzerland, Japan and Australia. Like a good adman, he is careful with the words he uses, though this is also a reflection of lack of confidence in speaking for the public record. Beattie says that his staff feel protective towards someone who has not worked in an office environment before.

Not that Duncan Jones is a shrinking violet. He may shun the paparazzi but he is burning with ambition. Although only 34, he has followed a tortuous route to get to where he is and is brimming with ideas. "I think Trevor wanted me to bring a non- advertising mind to what he does. I've got a couple of projects and ways of working that I have been talking to him about."

Jones first worked with Beattie as a freelance director 18 months ago, on a campaign to mark the 25th anniversary of McCain oven chips. A three-minute commercial, deliberately made in the style of a generation earlier, was the result. "It was very bizarre," says Jones. "So much in the style of something from that period that it was on the edge of being dull at times but it kind of worked. It was great fun." As a result, Beattie offered Jones a job. "Trevor said, 'You might enjoy working as a creative; you might have some talents in that area.' It's worked out pretty well."

Before then, Jones had been trying to establish himself as a director after completing a course at the London Film School. "I had been banging away, building up my showreel as a director. I view myself still as a director. That's what I do."

But finding his vocation was a long process. For years he had been "an eternal student". Jones acknowledges his father as "a huge influence on me". Bowie, who has remained a force in music for nearly 40 years, once hoped his son would follow him into that world. "When I was growing up he kept on trying to get me to learn instruments but I just didn't have the patience for it," says Jones. "But one of the things we were always doing together as a hobby was filming stuff, shooting on 8mm cameras and using tiny little editing systems to cut together Smurf movies. I had these Smurf and Star Wars figures and would do one-stop animation with them. I was six or seven."

Bowie, a pioneer in making music videos, has pursued an acting career alongside his musical one, and as a result his son found himself on the set of several of his father's films, including the 1986 children's fantasy film Labyrinth, directed by Muppets' creator Jim Henson. Jones recalls: "They were building these amazing sets, these Muppet villages, and it's like a dream for a kid to be able to wander about in them."

More significantly, in his mid-20s Jones visited the Montreal set where his father was filming The Hunger. The director was Tony Scott (who also directed Top Gun), and he allowed Jones to rove the set with a "wild camera" taking shots that could be cut in to the main footage. Scott was "incredibly benevolent", taking Jones aside to explain his methods of working.

"It was a condensed but very exciting film school in its own right," says Jones, who realised that his eternal student days were finally over. "That's where I just knew what I wanted to do."

Immediately prior to that he had been attending graduate school in the unlikely location of Nashville, Tennessee, home of Vanderbilt University. "I was doing philosophy, applying artificial intelligence and morality to sentient machines. Very sci-fi. I was trying to get ahead of the game, ready for when our robot masters arrived," he laughs.

It was a rather different world to that lived by the likes of other famous offspring such as Jade Jagger and Stella McCartney. "There were a lot of cowboy hats and chaps around. On Friday nights everyone comes out in their Stetsons and they go line dancing. But at least I feel I understand the Midwest," says a now relaxed Jones, who was born in Bromley and considers London, where he has lived for the past eight years, as his home.

So he returned to Britain and enrolled in the London Film School, invigorated by his encounters with Tony Scott. Jones eventually made a 26-minute short called Whistle, which was screened on FilmFour. By the time of the French Connection campaign, he felt confident enough to argue successfully that, rather than use two models in the ads, with body doubles for the violent scenes, stunt women Carly Harrop and Tailia Santos should act out the whole steamy scrap.

"They are brilliant British stunt women and they look bloody good as well," he says. "It wouldn't have been the same commercial if we'd been forced to do a swap out for fashion models. It wouldn't have worked." The ad also involved Jones writing the libretto for a mini-opera, scored by Mark-Sayer-Wade and sung by Mark Luther.

"People have reacted to the ad in different ways but I don't think anyone can begrudge the fact that it's well made and for me as a director that's the most important thing," he says.

Jones desperately hopes to do work for BMB's newly won client Carling, expressing great admiration for the classic Dambusters ad, directed by Tony Scott's brother Ridley. "That to me is perfect," says Jones, who also has expertise in designing computer games and is working on a British sci-fi feature film. "It's got the humour; it looks fantastic and delivers on the personal and aesthetic level."

He acknowledges an inconsistency in his desire for anonymity and willingness to give a newspaper interview about his career. "It's going to look ridiculous but it's about the work and I need to be realistic about the fact that I want people to recognise my work," he says. "I'm 34 now. I could've probably been where I am now when I was 24 if I had been swinging my dad's name around like a bat. It's taken me this long because I think I've earnt it.

"My dad and I are incredibly close. I'm going to see him (in New York) this weekend, and I think he's very proud of the fact that I've done this on my own."

I see their fact-check department was on break.

Au contraire. Bowie appeared in a cable spinoff of The Hunger in the late 90s.

Directed, or at least produced by Tony Scott as well. Each ep had a "mine host" type intro, in the 1st series by Terence Stamp, in the 2nd by Bowie. Despite the big names, it was all pretty crappy.