In

Jack of Clubs

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I think it was sometime in 1958.

I've reached that conclusion because I feel pretty sure that it was a bit later than the time that my friend Jean Young got me invited to the Royal Command Variety Performance at the London Palladium, which was in November 1957. 

 

(With Jean at Rickmansworth Aquadrome}

 

Jean was a great and very generous friend.  We had some tremendous times together.  It was, in a way, somewhat incestuous.  Jean had been introduced to me by a "love of my life" (there were many of them!) Joan Horswill who, in turn had arrived via one of the Sewell brothers - Bob, this time - who were the major party-providers and attendees, to whom an entire section of this book is devoted (q.v.).  They heralded a significant period of my life that presaged the scandalous 'sixties and fell, somewhat conveniently between my first and second marriages.

Anyway, I guess this was a way for Joan to dispose gently of a relationship that had run its full course, and it apparently succeeded.  Jean, in turn, passed me on to friend Pat Smith.  But that is another story that will be reserved for another time and another place.

To get back to Jean . . . she worked for a major show business agency that had some real "names" on their books.  I believe it was the William Morris Agency.  But if not them, then certainly one of similar status.

The Royal Command Variety Performance was unforgettable.   This was the front cover of the programme.

A plain, simple, and unassuming sheet, that conveyed no hint of the wondrous names and pictures appearing within.  How's this for a cast and programme fit for a monarch?  Judy Garland (with Jimmy Brooks) in We're a Couple of Swells.  Mario Lanza (Be My Love and the Donkey Serenade).  Gracie Fields (Sally and The Biggest Aspidistra in the World).  The entire Count Basie Orchestra (April in Paris and One O'Clock Jump).

Those were just the "headliners".  Look at the follow up cast: Tommy Steele, Tommy Cooper, Winifred Atwell, Arthur Askey, Vera Lynn, Markova, Alma Cogan, Frankie Vaughan, Dickie Valentine,  Norrie Paramour and his Orchestra, Dennis Lotis, The Crazy Gang, Ben Lyon, Max Bygraves, Dickie Henderson, Harry Secombe, Bob Monkhouse . . . and there were others.

But that is just an appetiser to my own cast of performers with whom I shared a dinner table - thanks to an invitation from the remarkably well-connected Jean Young.  The venue was the Jack of Clubs night club in Soho, next door to the Raymond Revuebar.  The occasion was a visit to London by one of the agency's leading clients, Sophie Tucker.  The opportunity: a dinner party at which Sophie would share a table with English clients whom, perhaps, she had not previously met.

In addition, however, we were treated to the appearance of dancers Joyce and Lionel Blair, and singer Alma Cogan, who, frequent patrons of the Jack of Clubs, came to our table to greet Sophie Tucker.  Anne Shelton and other showbiz personalities were among the guests at table.  Of all of these, I believe Lionel is the only one still sharing this mortal coil with myself.  He is probably more or less the same age as I.  And I hope I astonish people as much as he does with the energy we display at these advanced years.  At this time of writing (2014) he is currently appearing as one of the participants in the Celebrity Big Brother house on TV.*

 

It was an incredible evening.  Anne Shelton performed two Sophie Tucker numbers:  Some of These Days and My Yiddishe Momma to tremendous applause, and she returned to the table to find Sophie Tucker in tears.  Tears of joy, of nostalgia?  Who can say?  Certainly they were not tears of sadness and it was a rare privilege to be present.

A couple of quotations from Sophie herself:

"From birth to 18 a girl needs good parents; from 18 to 35 she needs good looks; from 35 to 55, good personality; from 55 on she needs good cash.  I'm saving my money."

"I've been rich and I've been poor.  Believe me, honey, rich is better."

Sophie Tucker's life spanned 82 years from 1884 to 1996 and she continued working right up to the day she died.

As for my friend Jean - to paraphrase Noel Coward: "I wonder what happened to her?" 

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*  How appropriate that one of Sophie Tucker's greatest hits was Life Begins at Forty.  Of course, nowadays we are considered relative youngsters at forty.  Everything, age-wise, has turned topsy-turvy;

Time was when . . . 

. . . we used to shock our parents.  Now we are more likely to shock our children.

. . . banishing a child to its room was a punishment.  Now they've got a hi-fi system, a TV set, video games and a computer; it's no longer a punishment, it's a reward.

. . . education was the prerogative of "youngsters".  Now the Open University and the University of the Third Age boasts a greater alumni of mature students than the entire ivy-covered and red-brick university population.