Ian Dury; Punk Rock Singer, Actor

Ian Dury, 57, a punk rock singer and bandleader who became an actor and wrote a London West End musical. Afflicted with polio at age 7, Dury spent two years in the hospital and several more in a school for the physically disabled. He studied at the Royal College of Art and taught painting at the Canterbury Art College until he became successful with his first group, Kilburn and the High Roads. In 1977, Dury and Chaz Jankel set up a more successful group called the Blockheads. Among Dury’s best-known hits were “Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick,” “Reasons to Be Cheerful (Part 3)” and the album “Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll: The Best of Ian Dury and the Blockheads.” In the 1980s, Dury turned to acting and appeared in such films as Roman Polanski’s “Pirates” and Peter Greenaway’s “The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover.” Dury wrote the musical “Apples,” which was staged at London’s Royal Court Theater in 1989. On Monday in London of liver cancer.