Finding My Voice E-Book

Elkie Brooks

• Herausgeber: The Robson Press
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Beschreibung

Blessed with one of the richest and most distinctive voices in the music business, Elkie Brooks has been entertaining people around the world since the age of fifteen - and even longer, if you count the weddings and bar mitzvahs at which she was asked to perform in her native Manchester as a young girl! It was Don Arden, father of Sharon Osbourne and the notorious 'Mr Big' of the music world, who discovered her, making her change her name from Bookbinder and sending her on a tour of Germany. It was make or break for the still raw Elkie, but as always her voice won through. She went on to become part of cult rock groups such as Dada and Vinegar Joe, before establishing herself as one of the UK's most successful female vocalists. Yet the road to stardom was never an easy one. But for the support of Elkie's great friend Humphrey Lyttelton, she says she might have been dead from drink. She has experienced hardships that would have daunted most, and dealt with them with the same spirit, grit and humour that make her singing so powerful. Along the way she has worked with many of the biggest names in the business and recorded some of the most iconic songs in rock history, including 'Lilac Wine', 'Sunshine After the Rain' and her signature tune, 'Pearl's A Singer'. In Finding My Voice, Elkie tells her remarkable story in her own unique voice, laying bare the reality of stardom and sharing her commitment to the great passion of her life - music.

Leseprobe

FINDING MY VOICE

The Elkie Brooks Story

ELKIE BROOKS

CONTENTS

Title Page

Epigraph

Foreword

Chapter 1 Mum and Dad

Chapter 2 119 Cavendish Road

Chapter 3 The Bookbinder Kid

Chapter 4 Schoolgirl Elaine

Chapter 5 First Audition

Chapter 6 On the Road

Chapter 7 The Eric Delaney Band

Chapter 8 Bright Lights

Chapter 9 Cabaret

Chapter 10 Dada

Chapter 11 Vinegar Joe

Chapter 12 Life after Vinegar Joe

Chapter 13 A New Man

Chapter 14 Walham Grove, Fulham

Chapter 15 Baby Jay

Chapter 16 Woody Bay

Chapter 17 Joey

Chapter 18 Woody Bay Studios

Chapter 19 Things Go Wrong

Chapter 20 ‘Trees’

Chapter 21 Financial Problems

Chapter 22 Recording with Humph

Chapter 23 Reborn in the USA

Chapter 24 Electric Lady

Chapter 25 Meeting Wilf

Chapter 26 Today

Chapter 27 Looking Forward

Musicians I Have Worked With

Plates

Copyright

‘That Bookbinder kid has got such a tip about herself, she thinks she’s better than everybody else.’ Overheard at The Manchester Ice Palace one Saturday afternoon, aged eleven.

FOREWORD

I was never keen on doing this book. If it hadn’t been for my loving husband Trevor Jordan and my great friend Wilf Pine, it would never have happened. They said, ‘Elk, if you don’t do it, someone else will do an unauthorised version and get it all wrong.’

But before you go any further, let me be very clear: if you are after sensational celebrity stories from my fifty-two years in the music business, stop reading now; this book is not for you. This is the story of my very emotional journey through the highs and lows of my life in music.

My apologies now to all the musicians and associates I’ve met along the way if I haven’t mentioned you; you either pissed me off or I’ve genuinely forgotten you.

My sincere thanks for all his patience in helping me with this book goes to my fellow aikido student Simon Williams 3rd Dan who I met through our late master Soke Eddie Stratton 9th Dan when he was a journalist in North Devon. For all their hard work editing, I thank Nicky Williams and Ljiljana Baird and my publisher Jeremy Robson and finally my daughter-in-law Joanna Jordan for initially starting this book with me many years ago.

I dedicate this book to the family – my husband Trevor, my son Jay, my daughter-in-law Joanna and my son Joey. I love you all, thank you for keeping strong.

CHAPTER 1

MUM AND DAD

Knowing the hardship and suffering that some of the world’s best singers have endured in order to succeed in the music business – singers like Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday who very much influenced me – I would love to be able to start by saying that my upbringing was tough and made me the artist I am today; fortunately for me, that couldn’t be further from the truth. My childhood, to all intents and purposes, was very comfortable and, as it turned out, my struggle and suffering were to come much later in life.

I was born on 25 February 1945 at 1 Castleton Road, Broughton Park, in Manchester; the third and last child of Vi and Charlie Bookbinder – two fine members of the Jewish community in Prestwich … well, at least on the surface.

Having two sons, Ray and Tony, my mum always wanted a girl, but I nearly didn’t come along at all. After my brother Tony was born on 28 May 1943, my mother was advised not to have any more children because of her poor health, but a year later she became pregnant again. On previous advice she agreed to sign abortion papers, but she became increasingly confused and upset about the decision, especially as she felt pretty well in herself. She decided to seek advice from her GP, Dr Cupman, who was a German refugee and a good friend. He convinced her that she could have the baby safely. More importantly perhaps, he told her she was going to have a baby girl. Without Dr Cupman’s counsel, I’m pretty sure that I – Elaine Bookbinder – would not have been born.

The story, of course, goes back much further, but sadly my mum was always vague about her past, so I really have very little knowledge of her life before meeting my dad. Luckily, I’m much more familiar with Dad’s past. His parents, Franklyn Bookbinder and Minnie Wientroube, were both brought to Britain by their parents from Gdańsk in Poland around the turn of the twentieth century. Together with hundreds of other Jewish families they fled the pogroms – organised massacres – and sought refuge elsewhere. Despite an improvement in attitudes towards the Jews in Poland in the late 1890s, my grandparents believed it was only a matter of time before things would change for the worse and therefore it was better to leave while they were still able to.

I recall my grandmother telling me that when her parents first arrived here, they thought they’d arrived in New York; it must have been quite a surprise when they realised their boat had actually docked in Hull and not ‘The Big Apple’. The unfamiliar accents and architectural surroundings were far removed from what they had left behind. From the moment they boarded the boat they sacrificed their future to an unknown destination – all in the hope that they would find a better life than the one they’d left behind.

In 1911, my grandfather Franklyn met and married Minnie; shortly after, he opened his first kosher bakery ‘Bookbinder & Goldstone’ in Cheetham Hill, Manchester. He was a bit of a rebel and was refused kosher certification by the ‘beth din’ – the Jewish religious authorities. He had no doubt been spotted in a pub enjoying a few beers, which of course, wasn’t the done thing for an Orthodox Jew as you had no way of knowing whether the beer was kosher or not. By today’s standards this may seem a bit harsh, but while Franklyn practised Orthodox Judaism when he was at work, it is clear that he occasionally slipped when he wasn’t.

This, however, didn’t hinder him or his professional reputation and he made a great success out of his business. Franklyn and Minnie’s second child, my dad – Kalmon Charles ‘Charlie’ Bookbinder – was born on 14 May 1915, shortly after grandfather moved the business to new premises in Bury Old Road, Prestwich, and dropped the ‘Goldstone’ from the shop front and replaced it with ‘Son’.

My mother Marjorie Violet ‘Vi’ Newton was born on 29 August 1914. Despite being called Newton she told everybody her maiden name was Newman, which I think was because it sounded more Jewish. She was trying to hide the fact that she came from a very Catholic background, which, of course, I only found out after she died. While Mum had never been that forthcoming about her early life I remember her telling me that her mother, Maud Newton, was born blind in one eye. It was her parents’ belief that this would limit her chances of ever finding a husband. And, although I never met my grandmother, I often wonder whether I got my musical talent from her because she was so passionate about music. Believing she wouldn’t be able to rely on getting married her parents encouraged her to nurture her talents so she would be able to support herself independently. That must have been very unusual for the time. But they clearly knew a thing or two because Grandma won a scholarship to study music in Vienna. There she was classically trained and went on to become a concert pianist and violinist. Apparently, she used to give concerts at all the halls in Salford. In fact a few years ago I was asked to be patron of one hall where my grandmother used to play concerts.

Mum lost her father in the First World War and her mother remarried. Mum never took to the new man; in fact, she took an immediate dislike to him. Mum lived with her grandmother in Fleetwood, near Blackpool. When she left school in the 1930s she moved to Bury New Road, Strangeways, Cheetham Hill, and found work with a local Jewish family. This is where she met my dad, Charlie.

Despite Dad’s strong Jewish faith, they got married at the local registry office in 1937. Unsurprisingly, considering the circumstances, it was a modest affair and they managed to keep things fairly quiet for a year until they got married again ‘properly’ in a religious ceremony at the United Synagogue, Leamington Road, Blackpool, on 4 January 1938. My brother Ray was born seven months later – illegitimately by Jewish standards – on 18 August 1938.

Mum and Dad’s wedding invitation.

Raised a Catholic and then marrying a Jew had major implications for Mum as she had to deal with converting to Judaism. I think this might partly be the reason why she was reluctant to speak of her life pre-Dad. There’s a Jewish concept called Magae which, at that time anyway, required anyone converting to Judaism in Orthodox circles to distance themselves from things of their past that were not of the Jewish faith. Maybe Mum was obeying the custom, but then again, I’m sure she wanted to fit in with Dad’s family, the business and the community. This must have been difficult for all concerned, but especially for Mum. The funny thing was that everybody else knew she wasn’t Jewish apart from us: it must have been a bit of a scandal at the time.

I think another consequence of the Magae might have been her relationship with her brother and sister. It may also explain why I never met either of them. My brothers Ray and Tony, however, met Uncle Eddie once when they were mourning my mother years later in 1989, practising what is known in Judaism as ‘sitting shiva’, the tradition of seven days of mourning. I think Eddie was a Dominican monk who led a solitary life in a monastery – whether that was true I don’t know; it could of course just have been an excuse to avoid his name coming up in conversation at home.

My mum’s sister is quite another story and, to this day, a source of great intrigue to me. As a young girl, I remember a picture on Mum’s bedroom mantelpiece of a wonderfully glamorous woman with a large cross around her neck. She was beautiful in her black sequinned leotard and long Crystal Gayle hair. I imagined she was the envy of all women and the object of every man’s desire. I was transfixed by this image, but somewhat perplexed; why did my mother have a picture of a woman wearing a crucifix? And then there was the skimpy attire and the big hair. When I first asked who she was, Mum said she was her sister and that she was a trapeze artist in a circus. You can imagine my awe: how adventurous and romantic it seemed.

Mum never elaborated beyond those words; she wouldn’t be drawn, no matter how I tried. I later learned from my brother Ray that our mysterious aunt had visited on a couple of occasions, arriving in true star style in a huge American convertible. My mum apparently was very hush-hush about it, not wishing to attract unwanted attention from the neighbours. It seems our auntie was whisked into our house as quick as she was whisked out.

I have little doubt that my mother loved her sister but their lives were obviously worlds apart. Perhaps there’s another explanation: maybe my auntie was a stripper or something like that – that certainly wouldn’t have been good for the family’s reputation! Whatever the truth, I was – and still am – fascinated by the mysterious woman in the picture on the mantelpiece.

That’s really all I know of my mother’s past. She played such an important part in my life and I would dearly love to know more about her.

CHAPTER 2

119 CAVENDISH ROAD

I sometimes wonder where my love of music and singing actually came from. All I know for certain is that it wasn’t from my mum and dad. In fact, let’s not beat about the bush, Mum had a dreadful singing voice. Grandma Maud was obviously very musically talented, so I could have got it from her, or perhaps it had something to do with our neighbour at Castleton Road, Mr Gonski, who was apparently playing a wonderful classical piece on his piano at the moment I came into the world.

Joking aside, music just became part of my life. I think I had a good singing voice from a very young age. One of my first memories was my mum being poorly when I was three years old. She suffered bad health all through her life but at this time she had to spend a number of weeks in hospital. Knowing she would be away for a while, Mum arranged for a German au pair to look after me who taught me the German love song ‘Lili Marleen’ which became popular on both sides in the Second World War. Marlene Dietrich made it famous by singing it in German and English. By the time the au pair left, I could sing it fluently in German, but I’m sure I didn’t understand what it was about, and I would certainly struggle to remember it now.

That was one of my few memories from our time at Castleton Road because we only lived there when I was very young. The other vivid memory I have is of moving house. I was in the back of my Auntie Betty’s old black Austin A40 with all my mum’s little knick-knacks from her dressing table all around me. Betty Roland was my dad’s eldest sister. She and her husband were very well-to-do and worked in the car business; perhaps that’s why she drove a car, because not very many women did in those days. Anyway, these glass and china bits were all around me and I can remember trying very hard to keep them all steady and stop them falling on to the floor. You would never do that now: put a three-year-old kid in the back of a car without a seat belt with all those loose things around them. Mum never got on with Auntie Betty and I never really liked her either. Dad’s younger sister, Sylvia, I got on extremely well with. I was terribly upset when she died in 2008.

My memories of our time at 119 Cavendish Road, however, are vivid as that’s where I grew up as a child – I say grew but perhaps brought up would be a better phrase as I did my growing a lot later on. It was a very big house for the area: a four-bedroom, one-bathroom, semi-detached house with leaded windows. It was pretty large, but we weren’t that posh, although we did have a toilet, though in the cellar, full of coal and stinking of cat’s pee; it wasn’t very glamorous.

Looking back, Mum’s taste was shocking. One of her most hideous choices was a very expensive, bright purple carpet with a gold pattern and you were hard pressed to find furniture to go with it. It was obviously all the rage at the time because Mum was very proud of it. She was a bit of a snob really.

But it was our big upstairs bathroom that set us apart from the rest of the houses on Cavendish Road. It was quite something: the suite was a deep avocado shade and was complemented by some black and green stripy lino. What a picture; enough to make you feel sick. I don’t think you’d even accept a green bathroom suite today as a gift, but then it was considered the thing to have. I remember it being my mum’s pride and joy. We were also probably the only family to have a bidet. How posh? Not sure what Mum said when Dad came back from the bakery and used it as a footbath.

Mum, of course, made lots of changes to the house. She was always saying, ‘Oh, I’m going to have a vestibule built.’ It makes me laugh now because she sounded just like Cissie and Ada – the two Northern housewives played by Les Dawson and Roy Barraclough on TV in the 1970s and 1980s. Mum got her ‘vestibule’ – in those days it was similar to a mini-conservatory – but to me it was just a tiny porch.

Our kitchen was very old-fashioned. It had a scullery and a separate dining area, which eventually was knocked into one. We also had central heating put in and this wrecked our grand piano so we ended up having to replace it with an upright. I still have it to this day – it’s been moved a total of five times and it’s in storage at the moment, but hopefully its resting place will be somewhere really nice.

The one thing I’ll always remember from 119 Cavendish Road is the mirror, which hung above the fireplace my mother had built. It was very kitsch, with lots of different coloured mirrored strips spiking out. In fact, we were in Manchester not so long ago and went to look at the house, and I swear I could see that mirror still hanging there above the mantelpiece sixty years on. When I was moving into my first flat in London I said to my then manager Jean Lincoln, who was helping me because she lived in the same building, ‘We’ll have to put a mirror above that mantelpiece.’

With a look of pure disdain on her face she said, ‘Oh Elkie, you can’t do that, that would be horrible.’

I had acquired my mother’s taste. Jean’s words put a stop to that right then and I began to work on my own sense of style.

When the family moved to Cavendish Road we had a black Vauxhall Cresta with white wall wheels but no garage so Dad decided to have a double garage built underneath the house. This was a first for the road and really very unusual for those days. With the garage under the house we had a massive slope which my brothers and I used to use as part of a game. I had a pram, which being such a tomboy I never liked, so I would throw all the dolls out and my brothers would put me in and whizz me down the drive towards the garage. Luckily, they put cushions and an old mattress at the end of the garage so I had a soft landing.

At the back of the house we had a beautiful, big garden. There was a rockery outside the kitchen window, some lilac trees on either side of the lawn and banks of flowers, which Mum would lovingly look after. My brothers would play cricket or football on the lawn, but being a girl I wasn’t allowed to join in. Having a big house, however, had its down side because when Granddad Frank became unwell, he and Grandma Minnie came to live with us. This meant my parents had one room, Grandma and Granddad had another, my brothers shared a room and I had the little bedroom at the back.

When I was about four years old, I remember going into my grandparents’ room one day and Granddad saying, ‘Go and get your mother, I’m not well.’

Not long after that he died, but Grandma stayed and that was to cause no end of problems for everyone, not least my mum. It couldn’t have been easy for my mum sharing her home with her mother-in-law. As much as I love my mother-in-law, she’s brilliant, I don’t think I’d like to live with her. So I can fully understand how my mum felt, especially as Grandma was a traditional Jewish lady, which meant things always had to be done in a particular way. It was no great surprise, I suppose, that she ended up running the house and pretty much ruling the roost.

I’m sure my father understood what was going on and tried to give his mum something to do by buying another bakery shop in Didsbury, Cheshire, an area where a lot of the wealthier Jews were moving. Grandma, however, took umbrage and thought my mum had cajoled him into buying the shop to get her out of the way. In the end, Mum took the shop over and would drive there and back every day, but the trouble was she was a nervous driver, and, I have to admit, a terrible one! Even backing out of the garage was a major challenge. Like me she would probably have felt more at ease driving a tank. A few years ago, I ordered a brand new Range Rover, which I had completely customised, but I was always far too scared to drive it.

My brothers didn’t like Grandma at all. I could tolerate her, probably because she used to let me stay up very late on Saturday night so I could watch the television with her.

She’d say, ‘Elaine, come on, we’ll watch the singing and dancing on the television.’

I used to love all that. I can remember watching Dickie Valentine and learning to sing ‘Mr Sandman’. But even then you could see Grandma was a pernickety sort because she would stop watching the telly and start studying the carpet to see if there were any crumbs. If there were, she’d say, ‘Pick up the crumbs, Elaine.’ This clearly impressed me because I still do it today.

But the worst thing about Grandma by a long way was her cooking. I didn’t like it, but Tony and Ray absolutely hated it. Everything was cooked in schmaltz (chicken fat), which meant meals were heavy and greasy. It wasn’t cooked badly, it was traditional Jewish food: the old-fashioned Yiddisher kind. Our only respite from Grandma’s cooking was when Mrs Matthews came to help out with the housekeeping and she would cook. It was great because we knew that that evening we would be eating a decent meal of meat and potato pie for supper. The boys loved Mrs Matthews and used her to mediate between themselves and Grandma.

The only dish that we liked of Grandma’s was her chopped liver or herring with vegetables, which she would do for Shabbat (the seventh day of the Jewish week and a day of rest in Judaism). We loved it and she couldn’t have made it often enough as far as we were concerned. Unfortunately for us though, we only had it once a week. Apart from that one highlight, her cooking was pretty grim.

I remember once her trying to get Tony to eat by waving a fork at him and saying, ‘You’ve got to bloody eat.’

All Tony did was laugh, which made it even worse. After that Tony and Ray told Dad that they wouldn’t eat her food again. My brothers were terrible, but good fun.

As you will have gathered, none of us got on with Grandmother Minnie, in fact she drove us round the bend. She caused a lot of arguments between our parents, although they very rarely argued in front of us. You didn’t in those days; everything was always kept under wraps; people rarely showed any emotion. In fact, I hardly ever saw my parents be affectionate towards one another.

In the end though my mum gave Dad an ultimatum about his mother, saying, ‘Either she goes or I do.’

There were lots of tears and I didn’t understand what was going on. Apparently, right after that Grandma put her hat and coat on, stormed out and went round the corner to her daughter Sylvia. Grandma told Sylvia how Mum had forced her out and she let her move in. Afterwards Mum and Mrs Matthews were overjoyed and celebrated by getting thoroughly drunk on a bottle of brandy on the doorstep! There was such a fantastic sense of relief in the house. My brothers and I were just thankful that we would never have to face another one of Grandma’s schmaltzy meals again!

Despite all the fuss with our grandmother, my childhood blossomed at Cavendish Road. Mum soon got help running the house as she was working all hours in the shop. A lot of the time, like Dad, she was up and out before any of us were awake and we wouldn’t see her again until we were ready for bed or tucked up. We had a live-in au pair who slept in Grandma’s old room. There were several over the years and they were nearly always Spanish. The one I remember most clearly was Petuka, a very pleasant woman in her early twenties. She was always teaching me Spanish songs and the one I recall is ‘Bésame Mucho’. Years later, because of her influence, I wrote my own version.

I started my education at Broughton Jewish Preparatory School at three years old. I thought it was great, mostly because we used to have a nap in the afternoon. I can remember tasting orange juice from a tin there for the first time and loving it. It was marvellous and I wondered why we didn’t have it at home. From there I went to Sedgley Park County Primary, which was a mixed school right in the heart of Prestwich where 99 per cent of the children were Jewish. This was because we lived right on the borders of Prestwich, Salford and Manchester. Throughout my career this has always been something that’s annoyed me as everyone describes me as being from Salford, but as far as I’m concerned I am from Prestwich. Back then Salford was quite a rough and tough working-class area compared to where I lived and I didn’t go there very often.

At home, my best friend was my cousin Hilary Gochin. I say was, but Hilary still is my best friend today. We may not see or speak to each other as regularly as we would like to, but when we do we always carry on as if we’d seen each other yesterday. She’s like a sister to me and the years just disappear when we get together.

Hilary was very, very fat when she was a kid, which was fine until the summer when we would have to wear those awful elasticated stretch swimsuits: a look neither of us could pull off as I was the painfully thin opposite of Hilary. We looked a right pair! I was so thin that I was nicknamed ‘Olive Oyl’ after Popeye’s skinny girlfriend. In the winter my brothers would make fun of me by asking if I’d put bagels in my tights because they were always so wrinkly! Hilary and I were terrible together. One of our favourite games was ‘laughing bangs’ as we called it. This involved taking turns sitting on the toilet and doing poos and every time one of us farted, we would laugh uncontrollably.

I was bossy in those days: so much so that I used to tell my brother Tony, who is a year and nine months older than me, what to do. Even Mum would ask me to take charge when she was out, which meant taking care of Tony and making sure he crossed the road to school safely. At school I was the leader of our little gang: Hilary, Sammy Portnoy, Lawrence Weiner, Noreen Rackien, Brenda Cohen, Rhona Stolberg, Sandra Oilberg, Barry Brownleader and me. We thought Sammy was a bit slow but we made him our treasurer nevertheless: quite funny really because he went on to become a well-respected Manchester solicitor. He was very sweet on me and as a token of his great affection he asked me to marry him. I was six years old. Of course, I accepted. My mother would have been so proud of her little girl marrying a treasurer. To mark our engagement Sammy gave me a brass curtain ring. I only took it off because it went green.

The gang would get up to all sorts of things, but as leader I didn’t always accept responsibility for my actions. On one brilliant sunny day we went over to Heaton Park where the ground was bone dry and we did one of the most stupid things kids do, played with matches. One thing, of course, led to another and we started a fire, which quickly got out of control. Being kids we decided there was nothing else for it, and legged it. I ran home as fast as I could and hid in the cellar. It was awful because I could hear the sound of fire engines in the distance. Thankfully, the fire brigade put it out. They said a burning cigarette butt had probably caused it. None of us were caught and apart from that incident we were, for the most part, nice Jewish girls and boys.

CHAPTER 3

THE BOOKBINDER KID

At that time Cavendish Road and the wider Broughton Park area were almost entirely Jewish. Strangely, the only two non-Jewish households on our road were either side of us. On one side, we had Mrs Dewhurst, a sweet old lady who lived in a dark Victorian house with old-fashioned ornaments cluttering every available space possible. Her house had that old person look, feel and smell to it. She used to play the piano and one day she gave Mum a songbook, which was signed by Gilbert and Sullivan. Mum eventually passed it on to me and I still have it today.

On the other side, there was Mr Proctor and his housekeeper Dot who lived at the corner of the road in a huge detached house with the most fantastic garden. I would deliberately kick my ball over his wall just so I could retrieve it and walk around the garden. I got on very well with Dot and when the blackberries were in season she would make blackberry pie with custard and offer me some. This, of course, wasn’t the sort of thing I would ever get at home, especially when Grandma was in charge of the cooking. The first time I tasted it, I loved it, but I knew it didn’t seem kosher. When Dot invited me in for some she would sit me down at this huge walnut table, which was all very ‘olde worlde’ and so English, and proper, it was just the complete opposite of my everyday Jewish surroundings. I absolutely loved it.

Grandma was very religious, and this naturally had an effect on us when she was living under our roof, but the next generation of the Bookbinder family wasn’t. On Saturday, for example, when most Orthodox Jewish families would be at the synagogue we would go to the shops. Our synagogue visits were saved mostly for festivals like Passover or Yom Kippur. Mum liked to dress me up for these special days, and she used our Saturday afternoon trips to Kendal’s (now House of Fraser) to buy clothes. She would choose all these pretty dresses and fancy shoes, but I never wanted to wear any of them because I was much happier in more boyish outfits like my dungarees. I had a pair of blue ones and a pair of red ones, with matching ribbons. I’m not unlike that today as I’m always happier in jeans. I wear frocks on stage – raunchy frocks that is – because I feel the people who come to see me pay quite a bit of money and deserve to see me wearing something nice.

I don’t know why Mum bought me so many clothes because she could make almost anything herself. I think she just got pleasure from buying things like that for me. She was an accomplished dressmaker and even created her own patterns. To do that, you really have to be very talented. Her grandma must have taught her because she was a trained seamstress. Of course, I was never interested in learning, but somehow over the years I’ve become pretty good at mending clothes. I did try to emulate Mum and I bought a sewing machine but quickly found out, however, that I didn’t have the temperament for it. In fact, I got so exasperated with it I ended up throwing it away. I suppose I should have known better, especially when I think back on what I did to a dress with a pair of mum’s pinking shears. I don’t know why I did it but I started chopping away at it with the scissors and completely ruined it by cutting a great big zigzag pattern into it. I got a big whack on the bottom for that.

People always say that when you’re the youngest child you get spoilt and get all the attention but I never felt that was the case with me. I can’t deny that my mother didn’t spoil me in a material way but I craved attention. Reflecting on my childhood, as I’ve done a lot over the years, I think what I really wanted was to feel that I was the centre of attention. I always felt it was my brothers who were the focus, and that bothered me a lot growing up.

A good example of this was ice-skating. Mum, and occasionally Dad, used to take us skating on a Saturday. I think I must have been about three years old when I started and I only got to tag along because my brothers were going. My first time on the ice was spent with Tony and Ray on either side of me, helping me along. I got the hang of it pretty quickly and, without wishing to brag, was something of a natural. Despite this, my parents never seemed to take me seriously and didn’t push me to improve. Ray got all the tuition and became an incredible skater, winning lots of medals in competitions along the way.

My thing at that age was dancing. I excelled at ballet and tap but again I ended being frustrated because, despite having a talent for it, Mrs Cooper the teacher never gave me the lead roles. They always went to the kids whose parents were on the committee and were actively involved with the production. My parents just didn’t have the time because of the bakery, so I would generally be given a chorus girl role.

One year though, I had my chance to star: a girl called Valerie was given the lead, probably because her mother had made all the tutus. Valerie, however, was taken ill and, at short notice, I was asked to take her place. While Valerie’s mother was pinning me into the tutu, I was dying to go to the toilet. There was no getting out of that tutu and there was no controlling my bladder. I was so embarrassed, but thankfully nobody noticed and after the show I remember taking my hanky to it feverishly before handing it back.

The following year, the lead was given to a young boy whose father was on the committee and controlled the stage curtain for the shows. He also fell ill and so, out of desperation, the role was given to me again. This meant abandoning the tutu and wearing britches to play the little boy’s part: not much of a problem for a born tomboy. As well as dancing, I had to sing ‘Dear Old Donegal’ and another Irish song called ‘Shake Hands With Your Uncle Mac, My Boy’ which had about fifty Irish names in it, but I just practised it really hard and got it down. For once – in those days – my parents actually came along to see me perform. I stole the show. And that was without really trying. That was a buzz I’ll never forget. Again, looking back, all I wanted was to be noticed.

I was good at improvising my own routines when we were told to make a dance of our own. In fact, I used to hate it when I was being choreographed. I remember years later a manager suggested getting me a choreographer.

I snapped at him, ‘No, you’re bloody well not. I do it all myself. I want to feel natural.’

I believe it had always been my dream to go on stage because I can remember thinking, ‘Oh, I’m going to be a big star. I’m going to have a big American car and come back home and flash around.’ That deep-seated feeling of not getting my parents’ attention as a kid must have driven me on, although I’m sure I wasn’t aware of it at the time. Now, looking back, I can only think that’s what it must have been: the burning desire to be noticed by my family and other people.

Another thing I was good at was Hebrew. Actually, I think I was better at Hebrew class than I was at school. I did brilliantly and got a certificate from the rabbi for my efforts. I could read from the Siddur – the Jewish prayer book – really fast. I can’t do that now; I can just about say a few broches, or blessings, over wine and bread. I finished school at 3.30 p.m. and then had fifteen minutes to get to Hebrew class which would last for about an hour. In the winter, it would be dark when I came to go home and I used to get quite scared. The proper name for the class was cheder, which was the traditional Jewish elementary school for teaching the basics of Judaism and the Hebrew language. We had a lady teacher. I can’t remember her name, but she had glasses and wore a sheitel, a wig that very Orthodox Jewish women wear when they get married to conform to the religious law that requires that their heads be covered.

My Hebrew certificate

I was obviously a lot better at Hebrew than my mum because she had married into Judaism. When we did go to the synagogue I can remember how all the women would have to sit upstairs and Mum would be mumbling, pretending to be reading along in Hebrew. I knew she couldn’t read Hebrew, but I can remember wondering at the time why all the other women were able to read Hebrew and my mum couldn’t.

Although Mum clearly couldn’t fake knowledge of Hebrew, physically she fitted in better because she had this little Jewish-looking nose. At just five feet, she was a petite woman with a slight figure and thick dark hair, beautiful deep brown eyes and pale skin. She was an extremely attractive lady, a real stunner in her thirties and forties before she got poorly. She used to attract a lot of male attention, but she never strayed, she was incredibly loyal to Dad. In later years, I used to take her on my tours with the bands and they thought she was a corker, especially as she always dressed so beautifully.

I’ve got my mum’s eyes but my dad’s olive skin, which is lucky because Mum’s very fair complexion could never tolerate the sun. Her hair was wonderful though and I certainly have inherited that aspect of her. In her youth, she had incredible thick hair and was always having it thinned.

Fortunately, I have been blessed with reasonably good health. She struggled with ill health. She had terrible ulcers, I suppose from all the stress of working in the business. It was quite ironic because she was always the one who looked after everyone else in the family. Grandma never liked Mum, but whenever she or anyone else was ill, it was always Mum they went to see. She was wonderful like that. She should have been a nurse. She was just one of those great women who always seemed to know what to do whatever you had wrong with you.

Mum could sort things out. I suppose she had to, being married to my dad who was completely useless with anything domestic. I’ve definitely got his cack-handedness. He couldn’t even change a light bulb or plug. Most of the time, if something straightforward went wrong it was my mum who fixed it. She was one of the most capable women I’ve ever met.

Dad was a hard-working man. He was the son his mother wanted him to be: an upstanding pillar of the Jewish community. So that he didn’t turn out like his father, she must have instilled in him a sense of responsibility from a young age. Although a good man and a great businessman, Granddad hadn’t always been as Orthodox as perhaps my grandma wished him to be. He liked a drink and he liked being sociable, neither of which she was keen on.

While Dad had been conditioned into thinking, ‘I have to work hard to bring home the bacon’ – or should that be the ‘bread’ being a baker, a Jewish one at that – he was also a bit like his father in not always being as Orthodox as he should have been. I suppose you could say he was kosher on the surface because, despite his strict Jewish upbringing, in fact he absolutely adored bacon, as did my brothers, even the smell made them go all tingly. I, on the other hand, have never been that keen on it and would definitely never touch it today. Dad would go to great lengths to get bacon for himself and the boys, and that meant driving to an area where he wasn’t known. When he got back we’d race around the house opening all the windows, doors and curtains before we cooked it so the smell didn’t linger. Deep down, I think he actually disagreed with quite a lot of the Jewish beliefs.

Whatever he thought, like all Jewish men he worked very hard and earned a good living for his family. Dad would get up at 4.30 every morning and be out of the door an hour later. By the time he got home at about 8 p.m. he would be shattered and good for nothing except eating his evening meal, reading the paper and falling asleep in front of the telly.

The only day of the working week that Dad would be home in time to eat with us was Friday night. I loved the Friday night meal. Mum and Dad would have the old Palwin sweet red wine and we were allowed to have a bit. We ate chopped liver which I adored, then chicken soup with kreplach or sometimes matzah balls, or kneidlach as they’re also known, which I still make now. The main course was chicken that had been so over-cooked to make stock for the soup that it would be horribly dry and tasteless. I nearly always got the breast and it was like eating cardboard. I hated it but I was always full with chopped liver and chicken soup. That was the tradition every Friday night. Shabbat also highlighted the fact that Dad really wasn’t a religious man because he would always rush through the broches for the bread and the wine and say, ‘Come on, Violet, bring the dinner on.’

Dad’s devotion to work also affected our holidays because we never went away together as a family despite being able to afford to go on fancy trips abroad. Our holidays always involved Mum taking us off to Llandudno in Wales or St Anne’s in Lancashire, which of course was much posher than Blackpool, for short breaks of maybe a week at the most. Dad would occasionally come to see us on a Friday night, Shabbat night, and stay Saturday and go home in the evening so he could be in the bakehouse for Sunday, which was a big day for the bakery. He had to be there to make the bagels; Bookbinder’s bagels were very famous in Manchester at the time.

I think there may be an odd picture of us on the beach at St Anne’s or Llandudno with Dad relaxing in a deckchair with his trousers rolled up and his feet in the sea. Llandudno was my favourite. We would stay at The Grand – a five-star hotel with a sea view – and Mum occasionally let me have a sip of her Pimm’s or lager in the evening. I think having such a great time as a kid in Llandudno is actually one of the reasons why I eventually ended up living by the sea with my own family. I even have a love for seagulls because of Llandudno. I remember years later when we moved to Devon a neighbour was having double-glazing fitted because he couldn’t stand the noise of them. I could never understand it because they are part of the charm of living on the coast.

Aside from being a workaholic and so committed to the bakery, I think the major reason Dad didn’t ever come away with us was because he was terrified of leaving anybody else in charge, especially his brother-in-law, Uncle Bernard, who also worked in the business.

I can remember him saying, ‘I know what’ll happen, I’ll come home and I won’t have any bloody business left.’

The whole bakery business must have been difficult for Dad because he never wanted to go into it in the first place. It was purely because he was the only boy in the family – Dad had two sisters, Betty and Sylvia – that he was expected to take over Granddad’s business. He told me that he had always wanted to be an accountant and that he had passed his 11-plus exam but wasn’t allowed to go to the grammar school. He had to go to another school because Granddad wanted him to go into the business. Very sad really, so it’s no surprise he seemed miserable so much of the time.

Dad was good with numbers and did all his own accounts and bookkeeping and that was in the days before calculators, although I do remember he used to use a ready reckoner. I certainly don’t take after him – I was hopeless at maths, and in fact, I think I’m number blind. I did the odd stint in the bakery shop and struggled with pounds, shillings and pence, and before that, farthings. When I was fifteen I did a gig in Germany and discovered their currency was counted in tens. I was amazed because I could understand it, whereas at home, I was totally confused by our money.

I think Dad was a very disappointed man, which together with his upbringing made him a pessimistic so-and-so. It took me many years to get out of that way of thinking and to keep positive about things. In fact, my cousin Hilary told me a few years ago that my father was the most pessimistic bugger she had ever met in her life. While understanding that Dad probably didn’t want to be running the business, I still believe he used to use it as an excuse not to involve himself in anything we kids did. A lot of it, I’m sure, was because he was just too tired. But I can also recall Mum telling me how she would occasionally go to the bakery and catch him standing around nattering, which made her wonder how he came to be quite so tired.

He was a very private person who didn’t let anyone inside and had learned how to put on a facade for work. And, like a lot of men of that generation, he had great difficulty in showing his emotions. I can, however, remember some lovely moments when I’d greet him and he’d say, ‘Come ’n’ sit on me knee for five minutes, love.’ He could be so sweet, but not often enough. The love and affection was there, but somehow he just wasn’t able to show it then.

I once discussed this in a radio interview on Woman’sHour several years ago, saying that, while my brothers and I weren’t deprived materially, our relationships with each other suffered because of how hard our parents worked and by the fact they weren’t around very much. Of course, the Jewish Telegraph had a field day and printed a sympathetic, but totally misconstrued article on our ‘deprived’ childhood. My brother Ray, who had been listening to the broadcast, was incensed by how my words had been twisted and he challenged the paper.

I have no desire whatsoever to be disrespectful to my parents, but I have always been honest about them. They were of a generation that put work before everything else in order to provide for their family, which is commendable but can also have lots of negative consequences. I’ve worked hard over the years, but my values are just very different from theirs and because of my upbringing, I’ve always felt very strongly that you have to find a balance between work and family, which is probably why I went on to combine the two.

CHAPTER 4

SCHOOLGIRL ELAINE

While there were undoubtedly big question marks over my parents’ commitment to the Jewish faith, I on the other hand, at the age of eight, was very determined to do the right thing and maintain the links to the family’s heritage. So much so that on one occasion I took my Jewish studies just a little bit too far. As part of my weekly Hebrew class, I had to learn how to perform the Shabbat ritual, which involved blessing the bread, saying prayers, lighting candles and a little alcohol. The latter was nearly my undoing, if it hadn’t been for my dear brother Ray.

Every Friday night, the man of the house is responsible for leading the kiddish ceremony, which involved saying a blessing over the bread and the wine. I can’t remember the prayer for lighting the Sabbath candles now, but I can remember the one for the wine. As Mum knew I used to enjoy reciting the blessings she bought me a little pair of brass candles so that I could practise whenever I wanted. This particular day I decided that my practice should be a full dress rehearsal, after all a girl really can’t practise enough, can she?