A few weeks later, we were called to the offices of Issy Bonn, or the Langham agency as it was also known. Issy Bonn told us he’d planned to take a variety show on tour and asked if we’d like to open both halves of it. Of course, we didn’t take too much persuading. The first routine lasted seven minutes, while we opened the second half with a three-minute dance. As a result, Nick and I ended up working all the number-one theatres, which were the very best the country had to offer.
On the same bill as us were acts such as Des O’Connor, Ray Allan with his puppet Lord Charles and two female singers called the Coppa Cousins. The Cousins were two girls called Joyce and Greta. The latter was Ray Allan’s girlfriend, who later became his wife. Also in the show was a South African trumpeter called Eddie Calvert, who had just reached the top of the hit parade with his recording ‘Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White’. Eddie was booked to close the first half of the show, which he wasn’t very happy about because he felt he should be higher up the bill.
‘But I’m number one! I should be top of the show,’ he complained.
But the problem was, number one or not, there was always a much bigger and better act waiting in the wings because that was showbiz.
The variety tour lasted several weeks, visiting towns across the country, including the Alhambra Theatre in Bradford. Unlike before, when the TITS show had arrived in Leeds, this time I invited the whole family. I was respectable once again, with no more nudes to worry about! After a stint up north, Nick and I were booked to appear at the Finsbury Park Empire in London. The theatre was gorgeous and was regarded as the biggest variety theatre, next to London’s Royal Palladium. Topping the bill was the world-famous Hollywood double act Laurel and Hardy. It was 1953 and the comedy duo had pretty much finished in film. Times and, indeed, audiences had moved on with the introduction of television. More and more people were hiring television sets for their homes, which had a knock-on effect on theatre audiences. Like many stars of the silent movies, Laurel and Hardy had been left behind. Instead, they made their living touring the country with their classic slapstick routines, which always made the theatre audiences roar with laughter.
Oliver, the larger of the two, was the nicest gentleman you could ever wish to meet. Despite their stage persona, neither of them ever talked very much about themselves. I often found that the bigger the star, the less of an ego he or she would have. Oliver Hardy, in particular, was a thoroughly nice chap, who always seemed to have time for the younger performers, including me.
‘You did swell there, Pat!’ he said one night as I came running off stage.
‘Oh, do you think so?’ I said, trying not to sound too star-struck.
‘Yeah. You knocked ’em dead!’ he said, swiping the air with his fist. ‘You really did. That’s it, we’ll all have to up our game if we want to follow you!’
I laughed and blushed. By now, I’d learned how to accept a compliment, especially when it had been genuinely given.
‘What’s it like,’ I asked, ‘to be such a household name; to be recognised everywhere you go?’
Oliver shrugged his big, meaty shoulders and held out the palms of his hands as though he didn’t have a clue.
‘I don’t think of myself as anything special, Pat,’ he whispered. ‘You see, the moment you start believing your own fame is the day you’re a goner.’
The following night, Oliver was back there again, standing in the wings.
‘What’s the audience like tonight, Pat?’ he asked as I ran off.
‘Yes, they seem very friendly,’ I gasped, trying to catch my breath.
‘Good, good.’ He nodded. ‘Makes it easier for us all if they’re in for a great show.’
I admired Oliver. He was friendly, decent and refreshingly honest. Also, unlike some of the other men in the show, he never once tried to look at my legs.
On the same bill was a ventriloquist called Arthur Worsley, who had a doll with the catchphrase ‘gottle of geer’. The doll, called Charlie, would repeat that same sentence over and over again and, because we were in a swanky number-one theatre, the tannoy fed directly into the dressing rooms. We couldn’t shut it off, so we were forced to listen to the routine every night. That bloody doll squawked the line, night after night, as Charlie the doll teased, ‘Go on, say it. You can’t say it, can you, son?’
The act was that Arthur would look back at his doll blankly and pretend to be the dummy.
But I wanted to get a gottle of geer and wrap it around both their bloody necks! Strangely, many years later, Arthur, my husband and I all became good friends. However, I always insisted that he never brought Charlie with him!
As the show continued to tour, Oliver Hardy also became a good friend. Stan was very polite but a little shy, so he tended to keep himself to himself. Although I was still on the bottom rung of the ladder, Oliver had treated me as an equal, which he did with all the performers. One evening, as the show drew to a close, Oliver tapped on my dressing-room door.
‘Is this where the lovely Pat lives?’ he enquired, popping his head around the edge of the door with a smile.
‘Hello, Oliver, come in,’ I said, gesturing for him to sit down.
Oliver sat opposite me, clutching something flat against his chest.
‘What have you got there?’ I asked.
‘It’s a present. For you.’
‘Me?’ I gasped, putting my hairbrush down on the dressing-room table. ‘Whatever is it?’
Oliver smiled and turned it around in his hands. It was a signed photograph of him and Stan.
‘From me, to you,’ he said sweetly. He gently prodded me on my shoulder with his finger.
The black-and-white photograph showed Laurel and Hardy standing next to each other. At the top, Oliver had written,
To Pat,
With love,
Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy.
I was so thrilled that I couldn’t wait to see Mam’s face when I showed her. Many years later, I was sat at home watching the Flog It programme on TV. It had featured an old variety professional who had the exact same signed photograph, which had been valued at over £200. I went to look for my photograph but, sadly, it had disappeared, probably lost in a house move.
A year after the show ended, I was deeply upset when I heard that Oliver had suffered a mild heart attack. Both he and Stan were heavy smokers but, following his near brush with death, Oliver decided to look after his health. He lost an awful lot of weight, which completely changed his appearance. Sadly, it had all been in vain because only four years later he died. He was a true professional and it had been an honour to have worked alongside him. Along with the rest of the world and my show-business colleagues, I mourned the passing of a great man.
With our next job booked, Nick and I travelled to Clacton for a summer season at Butlin’s. We did a couple more shows at Butlin’s – one at Filey and another at Pwllheli in north Wales. Mam and Dad came to Wales as part of their summer holiday, so I went to stay with them. One day, my mother insisted on buying me a new summer dress. I knew there was only one good dress shop in the area, so we decided to visit it the following morning. After trying on a few dresses, I settled on one and Mam paid for it. We’d both been speaking English but the assistants continued talking to each other in Welsh. As Mam and I left the shop, the assistants turned to each other and said something we didn’t understand. They began to giggle like a pair of schoolgirls. It was quite obvious we were the butt of their joke.
‘I’d love to know what they were saying just now,’ Mam huffed as we walked away.
My mother may not have been wealthy, but she was polite and extremely proud. The poor service had left her furious because the assistants had been very rude.
‘I think they were laughing at us because we were speaking English. They thought they could talk about us,’ I said.
After Wales, Nick and I travelled to Brighton, where we danced in a series of summer concerts on the south coast. We’d been asked to perform by the impresario Harold Fielding, who was the sole agent of Tommy Steel. Bizarrely, we ended up appearing and working alongside the Billy Cotton band show – the very act I had turned down along with the Palladium and the Tillers, a year or so before.
Although I was only nineteen years old, it was during this time that I met British blonde bombshell and pin-up Diana Dors. We were appearing in a variety show together at a theatre in Hull. One morning I was sat having a much-needed cup of coffee in the theatre bar when a very glamorous blonde lady sashayed in. All the men stopped in their tracks and had turned around to look at her with their mouths hanging open. It was Diana – Britain’s answer to Marilyn Monroe. With her voluptuous figure and curves to die for, there was absolutely no mistaking her. I was only a teenager and a natural blonde to boot, but I felt extremely dowdy sitting next to the film legend.
‘I wish my hair looked like yours,’ I remarked.
I looked on enviously at her snow-white curls.
Diana glanced over at me. She cast her eyes over my hair before turning her attentions back to my face.
‘Mine’s all bleach. But if you want to be a brighter blonde, I’d say go ahead and do it. What have you got to lose?’
Diana had been booked to sing in the show but she wasn’t very good because she didn’t have a strong voice. Still, I suppose the men in the audience hadn’t come to hear her sing.
As soon as I returned to London, I took Diana’s advice and bleached my hair platinum blonde. I only wished she’d warned me about all the upkeep it would take. Afterwards, I found myself chained to a bottle of hair bleach as my natural blonde roots darkened with each month that passed.
Issy Bonn continued to supply us with work to keep us off the dole. A short time later, he won a contract to send acts to dance in the American Zone in West Germany and asked if Nick and I would like work out there. At that time, Germany had been zoned between the Americans, the Russians and the British, following the end of the war. It was 1953 and I would be going abroad for the very first time. Back then, Germany seemed a very intimidating place to visit. Of course, Mam flipped when I told of her.
‘Where? Germany! No yer not, our Pat! Yer know what them Germans are like!’ she raged.
‘Mam, the war’s over,’ I argued.
But it fell on deaf ears.
‘I don’t care! A daughter of mine, dancing right into t’arms of Hitler and his mob? Whatever next?’
She was so angry that she couldn’t have been more upset if I’d told her I was travelling to the moon!
‘But, Mam, I’ll be safe.’
‘Yer not going and that’s that. Over my dead body!’ she huffed, snapping her pinny off and looking to Dad to back her up.
However, my mother had done one thing right – raise a daughter as determined as she was.
‘I am, Mam. I am and I will. I’m not dancing for the Germans; I’m dancing for the Americans. I’m an entertainer now and someone has to go out there and entertain the troops. It keeps morale up and I want to do my bit.’
Mam stopped folding clothes into the washing basket and looked up at me.
‘But t’war’s ended,’ she repeated, trying a different tack.
‘I know but those soldiers are still stuck there, miles away from home. And I reckon they could do with a bit of cheering up.’
Although I didn’t like to admit it, I’d felt a little apprehensive about my visit to Germany. I’d seen photographs of what the Nazis had done and I recalled the air raids and bombings from my childhood. However, I didn’t share any of these concerns or worries with Mam, Nick or Dad because work was work.
With my mind firmly made up, we asked the agency to book our travel tickets. Nick and I caught the boat train from Liverpool Street to Harwich, where we travelled on a ferry bound for the Hook of Holland. The boat sailed through the night so, by the time we arrived in the early hours of the morning, I was parched and in desperate need of a cup of tea.
‘Oh, let’s find a café, Nick. I could murder a cuppa!’ I gasped as we stepped off the ferry and back onto dry land.
We found ourselves a British Rail café, where we’d decided to stop off for breakfast. But as soon as we walked inside, my mouth fell open. The café was nothing like the British Rail cafés in London. Back in Blighty, they were dull, cold and sparse in comparison. The Dutch version looked more like a four-star hotel than a regular cafe. The dining room was ultra plush, with proper dining-room chairs, silver service and white linen tablecloths covering the tables. As a showgirl, I was used to cafés in London, which had a terrible habit of tying teaspoons to the counter with a piece of string to stop them from being pinched! Tablecloths were unheard of back home and as for napkins, well, there was no such thing. Here in Holland, I felt as though I’d walked into the restaurant of the Savoy, not a railway café in a country that had been occupied for years.
‘Eh, it’s a lot posher here, isn’t it?’ I whispered to Nick, holding up the untied teaspoon in my hand.
‘I know. I can’t believe they give these out here!’ he said, taking it from me.
We stirred our tea and tucked into a continental breakfast. It was the first time I’d ever tried one, so I was a little bemused when the waitress had brought it over.
‘Pastry, for breakfast,’ I scoffed. ‘I wonder what my mam would have to say about this.’
After an hour, we boarded a train bound for Germany. We’d been warned by Veena, Issy Bonn’s secretary, to keep an eye on our luggage because the Germans had a habit of offloading it at the wrong station. I was terrified we’d lose our stage costumes because they were our entire worldly goods. I heard the sound of a whistle and the train pulled out of the railway station bang on time. As we travelled along through the flat countryside, I was shocked at how many people were riding bicycles. It looked as though the world and his wife were all on their way to work by bike.
‘They love their bicycles out here, don’t they?’ I said to Nick as we both stared out of the train-carriage window.
‘It’s Holland, Pat. Everyone owns a bicycle.’
After a day’s travelling, we arrived in Stuggart with our luggage and stage props still intact. By now, it was dark, so we threw caution to the wind and caught a taxi straight to our hotel, which had been booked by the agency. Once again, I looked out of the window in wonder as we passed building sites. There were men toiling throughout the night, working by floodlight, trying to rebuild a city ravaged by RAF bombs. It seemed odd because, back in London, we’d left behind a city in ruins. Back home, curtains flapped in the breeze from broken windows, trapped in half-demolished houses and offices.
Although our hotel rooms were pretty basic, I noticed that every single one had central heating and a shower too. Again, central heating was considered a luxury back home and wasn’t widely available, not even in London.
‘Blimey, Nick. Look at this,’ I said, holding my hand flat against the radiator in my room.
‘I know. I’ve got one too. They’re everywhere!’
‘I can’t believe it,’ I said, shaking my head. ‘And a shower too. You’d think, judging by this and what’s going on out there, that Germany had won the war, not the other way round!’
Nick nodded his head in agreement. It was astonishing to see.
The following day, I was walking down the road trying to get my bearings when I stopped a lady in the street to ask for directions. As soon as she heard my English accent, she stopped smiling and her whole demeanour changed.
‘English pig hound!’ she spat and she turned sharply on her heel and walked away.
I felt shocked and upset because I’d never been spoken to like that before. All the Germans we’d met had been so welcoming. But it’d only been eight years since the end of the war and it was apparent that feelings still ran high.
The hotel management had pinned up a notice in the reception, which they did at every hotel where the professional entertainers were staying. The notice announced when and where the next auditions would take place. However, it wasn’t an audition as we knew them. Instead, we were herded like cattle at the camp base. The soldiers watched the ‘audition’ and, if they liked you, they gave you the nod and you were booked on the bill.
The financial arrangement was equally as chaotic, with the Americans arguing the fee. Despite this, the Americans always paid more than their British counterparts, which was one of the reasons we’d travelled to Germany to work the American zone. We were dancers, so we did quite well with our bookings. But the comedians weren’t quite as blessed. Unlike singing or dancing, jokes aren’t always universal, as the comedians found out to their cost. Thankfully for us, work continued to flourish and we worked a variety of clubs inside the army camps. The best gigs were the officers’ clubs, which were very smart and sophisticated and similar to a floor show in London’s West End. The next ones down were the Non Commissioned Officers’ Clubs, which were family orientated, with children running all around. Last but not least, there were the Enlisted Mens’ Clubs, which were real spit-and-sawdust dives, and akin to working in a Wild West saloon.
‘You’ve got to be kidding me,’ I whispered to Nick as we turned up at one to perform in that evening’s show.
‘This is it, I’m afraid, Pat. Like it or lump it. We’ve got to go on tonight, otherwise they might turn nasty.’ Nick then warned, ‘More importantly, we won’t get paid.’
I peered out from the side of the stage. Nick was right. I knew we’d be taking our lives in our hands if we dared to cancel at the last moment.
‘I suppose it’s all the same bread and butter,’ I said, disappearing off to get changed.
The evening show had been billed as cabaret and we were working the floor. One of the soldiers went on stage, grabbed the microphone and began to introduce us.
‘So, without further adieu, here they are, folks. Put your hands together for Nick and Pat Lundon.’
As the applause rippled throughout the club, I glided onto the stage elegantly with my arms outstretched. The music kicked in but, before the first four bars had finished, I slipped and fell over, landing hard on my bottom with a thud. I looked up to see the male audience erupt in a series of cheers and catcalls.
‘Hey, you see that?’ one soldier called out with his hand cupped against his mouth so that the whole room heard. ‘That’s one slippy dame!’
I felt myself flush scarlet as Nick turned towards me with a horrified look on his face. I was wearing three-inch stiletto heels but I’d never fallen before. Nick seemed as shocked as I was.
With nothing more than a damaged ego, I clambered to my feet to continue with the routine but, moments later, I was flat on my bottom again. I fell into a pose to make it look as though it was all part of the act but the audience wasn’t buying it. Instead, there were more jeers, calls and wolf whistles.
Nick turned to me again, his teeth gritted together in a fake smile.
‘Pat, what on earth is going on?’ he hissed.
I flushed with embarrassment because I was mortified.
‘I haven’t a clue,’ I whispered.
The horrific dance routine lasted for ten minutes, during which time I’d fallen over at least another eight times. By the time we’d taken a bow, I fled the stage and ran to the dressing room in floods of tears. Nick and I had worked on countless ballroom floors but nothing like that had ever happened to me before. I picked up one of my shoes and checked the sole. I’d fitted it with rubber to stop exactly this sort of thing from happening. The rubber was intact, so I pulled off the other and checked that too but it was exactly the same.
Moments later, the door opened and in walked Nick.
‘Pat, what just happened out there?’ he asked, throwing his arm behind him, pointing back towards the stage.
‘I haven’t a clue. Look, my shoes still have the rubber on them,’ I said, turning them to show him. ‘I just don’t know, Nick. I did everything the same as I always do.’ I suddenly began to sob. I couldn’t control my tears a moment longer. ‘I just feel… well, I just feel so stupid!’ I sniffed. ‘Did you hear them? They were all laughing at me.’
Nick nodded his head. It was clear that he was as upset as I was.
‘Yes, I did. They certainly aren’t gentlemen, that’s for sure.’
I was still sat there weeping when the duty sergeant knocked at the door. Nick answered it and invited him inside.
‘Y’all did well out there,’ he said with a grin, gesturing back towards the stage.
‘Well?’ I shrieked, still upset by my series of falls. ‘I’ve never felt so stupid in my life. I don’t know what on earth just happened out there, but I’ve never fallen on stage before – not ever. Yet tonight, out there,’ I said pointing towards the door, ‘I fell over more than eight times.’
‘Y’all did well though,’ he said and smirked.
I turned to face him and so did Nick.
‘Well? How can you say falling over eight times during a dance routine is doing well?’ I said, my voice incredulous.
The sergeant removed his hat, scratched the back of his head with his fingertips and began to chuckle.
Nick smelled a rat.
‘What’s so funny?’ he asked, looking over at the sergeant.
‘It’s just the little lady over there, well, we knew you were both coming so the janker (a punishment dished out to a misbehaving soldier) was to polish the floor as much as the soldier could. It’s the guys, you see,’ he said, looking up at me. ‘Aw, shucks, little lady, don’t you see? He polished the floor so the fellas out there could place a bet on how many times you’d fall over…’
Now it was time for Nick’s mouth to gape open in horror. He turned back to face me.
I was boiling with rage and about to explode.
‘What? Let’s be clear about this. You mean he polished the floor so that I would fall over?’ I repeated, thinking I’d misheard the soldier.
The sergeant threw his head back and laughed.
‘He sure did!’
I was furious. In fact, I was so angry that Nick had to stop me from throwing my shoes at the sergeant, who beat a hasty retreat from the room.
Nick stood there with his mouth open as I continued to use swear words I didn’t even realise I knew.
‘You’re just bloody lucky that I didn’t fall over and break my neck!’ I screamed as the sergeant ran from the dressing room.
‘And as for that lot out there,’ I bellowed through the door after him, ‘you can tell them they’re nothing but a bunch of ANIMALS!’
Needless to say, it was the last time we ever performed at an Enlisted Mens’ Club.