8 stars with surprising real world jobs

A discussion on The Chris Evans Breakfast Show lead us to the revelation that Mark Lester, the actor who starred in the iconic 1968 musical Oliver!, is now an Osteopath. Who'd have thought it?

It set us to wondering about what other real world jobs our favourite celebrities might be doing now. Read on to find out about some surprising career changes...

Mark Lester starred as the eponymous orphan hero in Oliver!, the movie musical adaptation of Charles Dickens' classic novel. Fact fans will be interested to note that Mark didn't actually sing in the film - they dubbed him with the voice of Kathe Green, the daughter of the film's music arranger Johnny Green. "Consider Yourself" informed!

While Mark went on to have a successful career as a child and teen star, he gave up acting completely at the age of 19. He's now a long-practicing osteopath. You've got to click a back or two, right?

First up: Jonathan Benjamin 'JB' Gill, A.K.A. one-quarter of JLS. Alongside his band mates Aston Merrygold, Marvin Humes and Oritse Williams, JB stormed the charts regularly before parting ways in December 2013.

What did life post-boy band have in store for JB? Well, plenty of livestock, actually. Setting up a farm in the Kent countryside, JB is now a producer of award-winning turkeys and free-range pork. You can also find him fronting the CBeebies show, Down On The Farm, as well as making guest appearances on Countryfile and Springwatch.

As if being lead guitarist of the legendary rock band Queen wasn't enough, Brian May is also a *drum roll, please* astrophysicist. Pretty impressive, right?

After graduating with a degree in mathematics and physics at Imperial College London, Brian went on to study for a PhD (from 1970-1974) in 'reflected light from interplanetary dust and the velocity of dust in the plane of the Solar System'. Easy peasy.

Queen started to build momentum around the same time, so May put his PhD on hold, submitting it a whopping 37 years later and finally graduating in 2008. He's since co-authored several papers, books and he’s even had an asteroid named after him!

To quote the rock band he was famously a part of: "He lives in a house, a very big house in the country..." and, in that very big house, Alex James makes cheese.

From a nineties indie band to a cheese-churning farm in Oxfordshire, Blur's Alex James has come full circle. From Blue Monday to Little Wallop and Good Queen Maude, Alex has swapped song names for cheese names and he's won a few awards doing so.

Fancy giving Alex's cheese a whirl? You can find them at another one of his post-band ventures, The Big Feastival. Held on his impressive farm in the Cotswolds, you can chow down on cheese while watching, ahem, brie-lliant sets from Madness, Olly Murs and Louisa Johnson.

Neighbours has produced many a memorable star, but few of them have gone on to be journalists. Well, Rebecca Ritters is the exception...

Starring as Hannah Martin in the Australian soap from 1992-1999, the former child star (pictured here in her younger years) carried on her acting career before turning to journalism in 2011. Studying for a BA in Politics and International Relations at the University of Melbourne, the familiar Ramsay Street face is now a reporter for Deutsche Welle in Berlin.

Westlife's Mark Feehily revealed a few years ago that he's the proud owner of a food truck, selling gourmet crepes and coffee. (We're hungry all of a sudden. Anyone else?)

Speaking to RTE2 FM, Mark said: "We've bought an old Citroen H van, like an old 1950s French working van and it was like in tatters and we've completely refurbished it and kitted it out with all sort of stuff you need for catering events... the main thing is going to be cocktails and Prosecco and maybe a bit of tapas at music festivals in the summer."

And if you're wondering how people react when Mark from Westlife serves them a delicious cuppa, wonder no more. "People were flabbergasted at the fact that I was in the van making crepes," he told Today FM. "People kind of have this thing 'Oh, he was in Westlife a few years ago and now he's making tea'."

Prior to bagging the love interest role in every nineties teen movie, Freddie Prinze Jr. had enrolled in the acclaimed Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts in Pasadena, California.

Ditching his culinary dreams to pursue a career as a full-time heartthrob, Freddie has revisited his passion later in life, releasing a cookbook titled 'Back to the Kitchen: 75 Delicious, Real Recipes (& True Stories) from a Food-Obsessed Actor'. It's a mouthful, that's for sure.

Dishing on his new-found foodie status to Bon Appetit, Freddie said: "I've always cooked for actors I've been lonely on location with. And I'd always become friends with the chefs in the cities we shot in. After enough people asked for recipes, it felt like the right time to put 20 years of stories in this business into a cookbook."

When it comes to child stars, few are more iconic than Peter Ostrum.

Making a name for himself as baby-faced Charlie in the 1971 movie Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, Peter continued acting for a short while afterwards before studying for a degree in veterinary medicine.

Inspired by veterinarian that visited one of his family's horses, Peter received his Doctorate of Veterinary Medicine in 1984 and now works in the Countryside Veterinary Clinic in New York.

Find out what Aston Merrygold has been up to since he left JLS in this clip