[2] He took his stage name when he began singing and playing at a local folk club in Yorkshire.
[1] He has played a variety of roles in many long-running British TV series such as All Creatures Great and Small, Coronation Street, Emmerdale as well as both Heartbeat playing the role of a journalist on the Ashfordly Gazette and The Royal in which he appeared as Nobby Jepson, an ex-coal miner turned "back setter," in the episode Consequences.
He directed a successful production of Sleeping Beauty at the Mercury Theatre, Essex in December 2007 and January 2008.
[8] In February 2020, Fontayne portrayed the role of Ned Wainwright in the BBC soap opera Doctors.
In 2023, he appeared as Joseph Broadbent in Shane Meadows' period drama The Gallows Pole.