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- Herausgeber: Clink Street Publishing
- Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
- Sprache: Englisch
From pig farm to the Ballroom. The dog-eat-dog 70's Ballroom scene was lubricated with huge amounts of alcohol and sex; and budding ballroom professional George Lloyd was there for every filthy second of it. Plucked from a life of mucking out hogs, George is snapped up by a London dance school where he becomes a rising star of Ballroom. The late 70's signals the death knell for Ballroom dancing across the country. However, the guy who saves the day is none other than George Lloyd, who helps many dance schools by introducing Disco Dancing to his classes. Through a haze of drink and a coterie of adoring women, George becomes an instant doyen of the British dance scene and is nominated for one of the biggest awards in the industry. But, for every new star on the block, there is always a queue of nasty adversaries, with daggers sharpened, waiting in the shadows. "George Lloyd's moving memoir captures a period of a time steeped in aspic, love, death, tragedy, success, decadence, violence and gentleness. Beneath the glow of the light fantastic, all human life is here in this book." Kevin Allen. "It's definitely a TEN from Len." Len Goodman. "George will spin you across the dance floor of his extraordinary life leaving you drunk, dizzy and ravenous for more." Rhys Ifans. "A great read and right up my street." Catherine Tyldesley.
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Seitenzahl: 270
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020
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Ballroom Fever
A strictly love affair
The George Lloyd Story
by George Lloyd
iii
For my love – my wife Alyson who has helped me remember many things I had long forgotten.
Foreword
by Len Goodman
I owe so much to George Lloyd, much more than you would imagine, but more about that later.
Saturdays have always played a big part in my life. On a Saturday night back in 2004, Strictly Come Dancing began. Who would have thought it would become such a massive hit throughout the world, and I would become Head Judge? I still pinch myself now after all these years. One of my earliest memories is Saturday morning pictures, paying my sixpence and being one of the first ones in so I could sit in the front row. As a child, Saturday night was ‘fish and chip’ night. Going with my dad to the local chippy and rushing back in case they got cold. As a teenager, going to the Embassy Ballroom in Welling, Kent, on a Saturday night and jiving the night away – well to nine o’clock as I had to be home by 9.30 pm – was the highlight of the week.
Now back to how George Lloyd changed my life – in 1978 Saturday Night Fever was the big film of the year, and I went to see it and thought the music and the dancing was just fantastic. I thought maybe I should teach all the dances from the film at my studio in Kent, and so I went to learn the moves from George at the Sydney Francis Studio in Hendon, North London. I knew George from meeting him for many years at judging events and before that at viPhyllis Haylor Dance School in Hammersmith, London, where, like George, I trained for my ballroom teaching theory. I followed George’s instructions to the letter, even down to the advert ‘Seen the film, heard the music, now learn the dances’. Thanks to George, my dance studio was packed out. From one planned class a week, we ended up teaching Saturday Night Fever five nights a week! The dance classes went on long after the film had finished. In fact, we still teach Disco but it’s now called ‘Freestyle’ to this day. Without knowing and visiting George I may not have become the teacher I was and then may not have had the opportunity of Strictly Come Dancing and all the other great opportunities that the programme has brought me since being involved as Head Judge. I’m truly blessed.
I lost touch with George and Alyson once they moved to Holland but what a joy this book had been to read, as it’s taken me back to a life full of ups and downs, just like all of us.
George Lloyd has been, and still is, one of my dancing heroes.
I owe a lot to George Lloyd and hopefully this book will give you an in sight into his wonderful and colourful life.
Thanks to my Biographers
BOYD CLACK and KIRSTEN JONES – my Biographers have been amazing with regards to writing this book using their talent as professional writers to turn all my hand written notes into a readable form. Boyd’s own autobiography ‘Kisses Sweeter Than Wine’ was published by Parthian followed by his later memoir ‘Head in the Clouds: Memories and Reflections’ in 2018. Also an actor, screen writer, raconteur, patron of a number of Welsh charities, this man has endless talents.
KIRSTEN JONES had the very complex task of co writing and editing the book and interrogating me on every detail which she did with a very positive and professional attitude. Kirsten is also an actor but perhaps they are both best known as the creators and script writers of the 6 Series of the highly successful BBC Wales sit com ‘High Hopes’ now on BBC iplayer. Kirsten is also patron of various charities including Royal Commonwealth Society of Wales, Cardiff Mini Film Festival, Greyhound Rescue Wales. They live in Cardiff with their cats.
BOYD CLACK & KIRSTEN JONES Photo courtesy of Twm Gardiner
viii
Contents
Chapter 1
‘Son of my father’
I was born in Essex in 1955. My father Alfred Lloyd was fifty four years old and my mother Mollie was nineteen. My Dad was from the East End of London, a rough, working class part of the city where angels feared to tread. When my granddad Arthur, my mum’s father, found out that his relatively unsullied little girl had been impregnated by a much older man he was understandably furious. Not so much at my mum who was little more than a child but at my dad who was ‘a dirty bastard’. My granddad found out that she had met him in a nearby park and had word sent that he would like to meet him in the same park that evening ‘to discuss the matter.’ The ‘discussion’ would involve a beating the likes of the daughter defiling bastard had never had before. Disputes were often settled by violence in the East End in those days. Arthur turned up a few hours later as the sun was setting to find Alfred waiting for him. Though my dad was a tough looking man who no-one in their right mind would choose to pick a fight with, Arthur’s righteous anger made him a fearsome prospect. In fact Arthur wasn’t frightened of Dad at all having been a decorated war veteran. Neither man was a pussy. It could have been very nasty, very nasty indeed but what happened was that the two men did actually ’discuss the matter’ and Arthur saw 2that Alfred was not the bastard he assumed him to be but that he genuinely loved his daughter and was committed to her and the as yet unborn child. The confrontation ended up with the two men shaking hands and going to a nearby pub for a pint together. My mum told me this story. My mum was lovely. She was so kind. She was the light of my life.
My grandfather on my dad’s side was named George like me and he’d been a barber less than a mile from ‘The Blind Beggar’ pub in London’s East End. My Nan, Rosie, had been a Music Hall singer in her younger days under the name of Rosie Lloyd. There were posters in the house advertising her appearances on Variety Bills. One had an old fashioned photograph of her on it, one of those where the colours looked faded. She was in a long white dress with a frilly front, wearing a delicate little hat and holding a parasol. She was billed as ‘Rosie Lloyd the Camden Nightingale’. She used to sing around the house and her voice was very beautiful. My favourite song of hers was one called ‘The boy I love is up in the gallery’. I used to think it was about me.
Dad’s sister, my Auntie Gladys, owned a well known pub called The Dick Whittington. It was a roughhouse frequented by local layabouts and petty criminals. A strange and macabre incident paralleling the meeting between my granddad and dad in the park took place there in 1965, a short time before my family moved home. Auntie Gladys said that dad, who was a licensed bookmaker by profession, had got into some kind of trouble with a local criminal. This was when the Krays ruled the roost in the East End and this man was a well known thug, an animal as Gladys put it. Anyway he visited the pub and let it be known that he would be waiting down by the docks after stop tap and expected my dad to be there too or else. Dad was in no doubt that this would end up badly. As he left The Whittington, 3Gladys saw him pick up an half empty soda siphon from the bar and put it under his crombie coat. Dad turned up at the bar as usual the following day but neither the gangster nor the soda-siphon was ever seen again. The water was deep in that part of the river and the tides strong. The conclusion was drawn, generally accepted but never voiced. Like I say my dad was a tough man. That said he never hit me or my mum, never. If there was a barney brewing he’d put on his hat and coat and go for a walk.
My dad moved in to live with my mum and her parents at 40 Castle Lane, Essex before I was born and the couple were given the ground floor front room as their own. It was a large room with recesses either side of the fireplace to the left a huge double wardrobe and to the right a kitchen dresser, table and three chairs. There was a dressing table in the bay window and my parent’s double bed nearby with my single bed attached. It was crowded but it never seemed oppressive. There was an old black telephone and every time it rang my dad would say ‘Don’t answer it. It might be the police!’ It never failed to make me laugh.
As I said my dad was a licensed bookmaker under the name of George Pickering and when I was young in the 60’s he’d often take me around the racecourses with him and my uncles Harry and Ted. They’d put a ‘pony’ float in a leather bag before leaving the house and the bag would fill up with more cash during the day. At the start of each race I’d be sent to the bar to collect their beers. After the last race the bag would be slammed shut and we would make a quick exit to the car. On the drive home we’d always stop at The Wheatsheaf Pub where a lot more beer would be quaffed as the money was totted up and the share out took place. I’d sit there with my glass of lemonade and bag of Smiths crisps with a little blue bag of salt watching and my dad would say to me ‘Son, this is why you should never gamble. Only 4the bookies win. It’s a mug’s game.’ If only he’d listened to his own advice, God bless him. Dad had his scrap metal business too but though he earned a decent amount he was it seemed, like many men of the time, addicted to gambling and drink so we were always poor. On Sundays me and my dad would be driven to a country club by my uncle Eric in his Daimler Jaguar Mk11. Eric, a somewhat shady businessman, was known to one and all as ‘One Way Eric’ and was well off by our standards. He and my dad would get hammered on beer with whiskey chasers on these outings and Eric would regale the rest of the clientele with his opinions on various matters of philosophical and topical interest like a circus master in the centre of the ring. He was a friendly, jovial man and no-one objected, in fact they seemed to look forward to it. He had a number of ‘businesses’, car sales, a wood yard, scrap yard and several shops selling various goods. He had his fingers in many pies. One day when I was twelve, I discovered a black leather toilet bag at the bottom of my wardrobe. I unzipped it to find something wrapped in newspaper. It was a hand gun. I asked my Dad about it and he said he was looking after it for a friend. A few weeks later driving back from the country club Eric stopped off to buy some flowers for his wife and my mum. My Dad bought some strawberries. When Eric opened the car boot to put the flowers in I saw the black leather toilet bag lying next to a crowbar. I said nothing. I just thought of the song ‘Silence is Golden’.
The rest of our house was occupied by the extended family. My Nan lived downstairs out the back. Jim, Trevor, Burt and Bill my four uncles lived upstairs in a room next to Auntie Rina, my mum’s sister and, as I said, we were downstairs front. It was a strange thing when you think of it that my dad was seventeen years older than my Granddad but it didn’t seem to bother anyone. The boys sometimes called 5dad ‘old timer’ to pull his leg but he just laughed. I discovered that though he was of a generation that could have seen action in both World Wars my dad didn’t fight in either. He was just not called up in WW1 and his job collecting scrap metal was considered vital for the war effort WW2. He wouldn’t have minded joining up but it didn’t work out that way. My Granddad was in The Essex Infantry in WW2 and was sent to France four days after D Day. He saw action in France, Belgium and Germany but never suffered a scratch. He told me that his best friend Fred Richardson committed suicide when they were in Germany. They’d relieved a concentration camp, not one of the famous ones, just a run of the mill place and Fred had killed some guards, shot them and the incident played on his mind till he took his gun one evening walked into a wood and blew his brains out. Granddad said that there were a surprising number of front line soldiers who killed themselves but it wasn’t talked about because of the effect it would have on morale both in the army and at home. They were reported as killed in action. He didn’t talk about the war much. I saw him crying once though, when we went to the flicks to see ‘Tobruk’, not sobbing his heart out just a few tears running down his cheeks.
As a girl my Mum had had to look after her three younger brothers as well as cooking and cleaning. My uncles told me that she had been wonderful but was virtually a slave. It made me sad to think of it. My Nan was loving and kind to me and I have only fond memories of her, however she did enjoy a very active social life and was rarely home. She loved Bingo and one armed bandits. Jim Haddow her new husband was a quiet man who read a lot. They seemed very happy together. As a matter of fact the whole house was a happy place. We lived in harmony and though we were poor I never felt poor. Lots of cuddles at bedtime, much 6love and laughter were riches enough for me. I was a happy little chap.
Where we lived was quite rural. At the bottom of Castle Lane is Hadleigh Castle which was built by Edward the Third in the thirteenth century. Next to it on the Salvation Army grounds was a farm. I spent a lot of time playing in the old castle. It was a magical place and few other kids ever went there. I liked being on my own. I was out in all weathers. I remember my mum lining the insides soles of my shoes with cardboard. It was fine till it rained and they got sodden. Our clothes were bought in jumble sales and our diet was poor working class, bread and dripping on Monday, tripe and cow heel once a week, cockles and winkles from Leigh on Sea as a Sunday treat and a big spoonful of Cod Liver Oil and Malt every morning. Dad brought home a turkey one day, a handsome chap who I soon befriended. His name was Wilfred, well that was the name I gave him and I loved him. I looked after him diligently feeding him every morning before school and then again when I got home. Christmas Day came and after dinner I went into the garden as usual to feed him and he was gone. My Dad said we’d ate him. It didn’t sit easy with me. I loved animals, I still do. It didn’t sit easy. You should never eat something you are on first name terms with. As I said I never felt poor and it was only when I went to school and other kids taunted me I realised that that is what we were … ‘Your dad’s an old man.’, ‘You live with your Gran.’, ‘Your clothes don’t fit proper.’ … They say that children can be cruel well I’m living testament to that. The truth is they didn’t like me and, with one or two exceptions, I didn’t like them.
My dad also ran a demolition firm and he got a contract to demolish ninety-six houses, six shops and a cinema in Southend. The houses and the cinema went first. Dad decided to leave the betting shop and café until last, you 7can guess why! There were lots of items left abandoned in the cinema, hundreds of balloons, Christmas decorations and a life size ventriloquist’s dummy, a cross between Ray Alan’s Lord Charles and Chucky. That Christmas Eve dad thought it would be a laugh to bring ‘him’ home and sit him up on the outside toilet next to the Izal paper flapping in the breeze with the flickering lamp on the blink like a scene from a Hammer Horror film. My Nan was the unlucky victim of the prank and she nearly died of fright. I can see her now running into the house screaming in terror ‘Help! Help, there’s a dead man sitting on the toilet!!’ Cruel maybe but very funny. Apart from eating Wilfred it was the best Christmas ever.
I started going to the pig farm down the lane. I soon got to know Harry who owned the place and he’d let me help with the mucking out and any other jobs that needed doing. I loved it. Pigs are beautiful animals with their lovely faces and gentle nature. People think they are dirty but nothing could be further from the truth. It’s just that they live differently to us. They like being in mud and getting dirty. They don’t think of dirt in the way we do that’s all. If I wasn’t a person I’d like to be a pig. Harry was a friendly chap and always gave good advice if I asked him about anything. Dad knew him from the pub and said he was a good bloke. He was happy enough to leave me in his care. At that time, when I was seven or eight, one of my regular jobs was taking the shopping lists to the greengrocer, butcher and baker which were near the church in Hadleigh where I went to Sunday school. There was no candlestick maker as far as I remember. One day I got a list from my Nan to take to Mr and Mrs Buttery the chemists. For some reason Auntie Rina thought it would be a laugh to dress me up as a girl using some of her and my mum’s clothing. She put a ribbon in my hair and makeup on my face, lipstick, powder, 8red stuff on my cheeks and stuff on my eyes and eyelashes. It took ages for her to do it and when she’d finished the effect was quite dramatic. I even wore my Nan’s shoes. The Buttery’s laughed when they saw me and made a couple of humorous comments but I got the feeling that they were a bit perplexed at such strange behaviour. I didn’t feel girlie at all. I felt OK about it though I’ve not indulged since.
I bumped into a girl I knew one afternoon as I was coming home from the shops with a tin of paint. Her name was Sally Ruffel and she was regarded as the prettiest girl in class. She asked me what the paint was for, it was for mum to paint the kitchen, and then invited me back to her house to play. I had to get home though. She asked me if I would go to the Dance Studio with her that evening. It was not the first time she’d asked, she’d been asking me for weeks, but I’d always passed on it. I said maybe and walked on. Though only eight or nine years old my male hormones must have started kicking in already and the thought of spending some time in Sally’s company was not an unpleasant one. I’d even imagined kissing her but dance lessons! This was not an age of gender fluidity. Boys were boys and girls were girls. Boys played rough games and ran around and had fights, they did not go to dance classes. I was on the horns of a dilemma. I called into the piggery later that afternoon to see the new litter of twelve piglets that Victoria had had the previous weekend. They were absolutely gorgeous all pushing and crawling over each other to get a teat. Victoria was a very proud mum indeed. I took the opportunity to ask Harry if he thought that dancing was just for girls and he said definitely not. He said any bloke who thought that was doing himself a foolish disfavour because there was no better place to pick up girls than in dance halls and girls were always impressed if a boy could dance well. He said he’d met his wife in The Kursaal, a dancehall in 9Southend on Sea, before the war. This was very interesting but what if the boys at school called me a queer. Bugger them he said, let them call you what they like. It’ll be you who gets the girls who wouldn’t look at them twice. Teddy boys were great dancers. They took pride in it and nobody thought they were queer. Nobody said it anyway. I believed Harry and decided to go to the Dance Studio to meet Sally that evening as she asked.
I went home and told my mum I’d decided to go to the class. She was surprised as I’d dismissed the idea on several previous occasions but I told her what Harry had said made me decide to give it a go. She insisted I had a bath to get rid of the smell of pigs, which I rather liked, but I obeyed accepting that it was not something that would impress a girl. Surprisingly dad backed Harry up. He too had been a dance hall lothario in his younger days and said it was good fun. He said I’d have to pay for the lessons myself though as times were tight. Mum whispered to me not to worry. She’d get the money somehow. I put on some non pig smelling clothes and hit the highway, well the lane, in my best Sunday shoes.
The Dance Studio was located upstairs above the Kingsway Cinema in Hadleigh. I got there as the other kids were getting into groups. The place was run by the instructors Marian Barber and her husband Bob. The first thing I noticed was that of the dozen or so students I was the only boy. Marian came over and I told her I would like to learn to dance. Sally had spotted me by then and was beaming her pretty smile across the room. I smiled back. My first ever dance was with Marian herself who wanted to see if I had any natural feel. We tried a waltz and despite her being a grown woman some inches taller than me it seemed all right. She seemed to think so anyway. We did a Cha Cha Cha next though I don’t remember doing anything different to when I was 10doing the waltz. I noticed that the girls had taken a rest from their exercises and were stood watching me. I got nervous and stood on Marian’s foot. She winced but assured me that it was fine. It wasn’t the first time her foot had been stood on. The girls went back to practising under Bob’s sergeant major like commands until a break was called. There was a wooden hatch with a table in front on which there were jugs of orange squash and plastic cups. The girls swarmed around as I got myself a drink. Sally had obviously told them about me and I was the object of great curiosity. I liked it. Bob then took me to one side and asked me a few questions, where I was from, if I’d done any dancing before, why I wanted to dance now. I answered truthfully except for why I wanted to dance. To be honest I didn’t want to dance. I’d gone there on a whim but I couldn’t say that to Bob. I said my mother thought it would keep me fit. Bob was a big man with an incredibly straight back and a loud booming voice. I was pleased and somewhat relieved to see that he didn’t seem the slightest bit queer. Marian told me not to be intimidated by him. She said that his bark was worse than his bite. The girls were whispering and giggling as we returned to the dance floor but I pretended to ignore them.
When I got home I was well and truly knackered. This dance malarkey was hard work. I sat by the fire with mum drinking a mug of hot chocolate and moaning. It made her laugh. She wanted to know all about it but I was too tired to go into much detail. I said that it was OK but that was it. I wouldn’t be going again. I’d given it a whirl but dancing wasn’t for me.
Chapter 2
‘Born to Hand Jive’
Having decided not to go dancing again I returned to my hobby at the pig farm. I told Harry that I had given it a try but didn’t like it. He laughed and told me I should persevere. He took to spinning around the shed and doing the Jive with a mucking out rake as his partner. He’d throw himself into it like he was Little Richard. Sometimes he’d even dance with the pigs. It was very funny, made even funnier by the fact he was wearing wellington boots. I loved it. My mum, the girls from the class and the other women in the family egged me on too. The truth is though that all the persuading and nagging in the world wouldn’t have worked if I hadn’t for some reason become a little fascinated with dance. I wouldn’t have called it fascination at the time but that one lesson had left me with a curiosity about movement. I found myself becoming aware of my body as I walked along, how it worked, flowed from place to place. I decided to give The Dance Studio another go. This time I really enjoyed it and before long I was a regular, dancing more and more with the girls and spending less and less time with the pigs.
Listen I have to explain something here, finding dance saved my life. Although I had a loving family and in truth wanted for little, there was, and always had been, an 12irrational, sometimes uncontrollable fear inside me. There are all sorts of psychological and psychiatric theories as to where such things come from but try as I might I have never figured it out in my case. Every time I went out I would have a feeling of uncertainty, regardless of whether I was attending school, going to the farm, shopping, or playing with friends. The anxiety could be mild or intense depending on what I was doing and where I was but it would always settle once I returned home, where I felt safe. Dance became a second refuge from the anxiety. I felt as safe at The Studio as I did at home. Like I said, it saved my life. I don’t know if anyone is born for any specific reason or whether life just takes us where it will but if the former is true then, melodramatic as it may sound, I was born to dance. I have never felt happier or more alive than on the dance floor and for that I am blessed.
I came home from school one day when I was eight to find a cot with a baby brother in it. I had no idea how this had happened. It was like a miracle. My Nan said ‘Your mum has had a baby. He’s your brother. His name is Paul.’ There were four of us living in the front room now but Paul was no bother. I liked him and quickly grew to love him. When he was a little bit older I’d take him for a walk in his pushchair every day. It was nice having a little person who looked a bit like me about. We were chums.
When Paul was two the council gave us a house on a rough estate in Benfleet about three miles from Nan’s house. I had my own bedroom for the first time! It was small but perfect. I had a poster of Gene Kelly, who I had grown to worship after seeing him in ‘An American in Paris’ at the Kingsway with Sally, on my wall. I even considered changing my name to Gene for a time but shelved the idea when my mum said I should be proud of my own name, George. My mum was right.3
I got a part time job in the local garage cleaning car windscreens and checking oil and water. It was cold in the winter but I loved the chance to have a close up look at the different cars. I got a Saturday job in the local Market shop too. I used to take my mum presents like a new plastic washing up bowl or an ironing board or glass tumblers with different flowers painted on them. She loved these simple gifts and I loved the happiness they brought her. I gave her any money I had left over to help with the running of the house. My mum would still visit the jumble for clothes and the market for the cheapest food. She’d get home in the late afternoon and my dad would be asleep in his chair exhausted by his usual routine, a hard day’s work, a visit to the betting shop and a hard drinking session in the pub. They both smoked heavily. I can remember hundreds of Embassy cigarette coupons stacked up on the sideboard. My mum was saving them for a new Hoover.
So at the age of ten I had two jobs and was now committed to Ballroom Dancing. I’d even begun dancing in my dreams. I was addicted. Dance was the drug I was thinking of. I was dance crazy. When I was eleven I announced that I wanted to be a dance teacher. People laughed at first but I was deadly serious. I’d watched Marian and Bob teaching and I saw the immense joy it gave them. It seemed the most perfect job in the world to me. My dad once told me that to earn a good living from something you’d be doing even if you weren’t getting paid for it was the secret of a happy life. He was talking about professional football at the time but the same applied to dance. I was determined even at that young age. Nothing was going to stop me … nothing! At twelve I was helping teach the kids to dance on Saturday mornings. It only seemed like a few weeks ago that I was falling over my own feet, and now this.
From that time on I spent every minute I could at The 14
