The ‘Golden girls of Eastbourne’ first crossed paths more than 50 years ago. They recall flammable feather head-dresses, wardrobe malfunctions and topping the bill over the Beatles
I hear the Golden Girls of Eastbourne before I see them – hooting laughter leaking out of a house in the East Sussex seaside town. Inside, I find five energetic women in their 80s and 90s, sitting in a knick-knack-filled living room and talking over one another like teenagers.
“Oh nooo. We didn’t have rotating tassels!”
Friends for more than half a century, the women met in rehearsals and aftershow parties while working as dancers, singers and comedy stooges in the 1960s and 70s. Their careers took them from cruise ships and panto to British seaside theatres, where they performed in sequin dresses, high-cut leotards and huge feather headdresses, sharing bills with the biggest stars of the day.
Over the decades, Eastbourne became one of the places where they made their names. In later life, they have gathered here again – this time not for work, but for friendship. It was this sisterhood that caught the eye of photographer David Pickens. A retired circus performer, he was once part of a double act with one of the group’s sons. “I was hearing stories of his mother and her friends and how they were locally known affectionately as the Golden Girls and I thought, that would make a great story,” he says. “They’ve got amazing life stories, amazing camaraderie. What I really admired was the fact they were all women in a very male-dominated world, and then all those men have gone now, and they’re the last people standing.”
He decided to photograph them at the town’s Royal Hippodrome – a Victorian theatre where all the women performed when they were younger.
“It’s a beautiful theatre,” says former dancer and dance teacher Jenny Lawrenson, 83. Petite, with the voice of Mary Poppins and the impeccable posture of a lifelong ballet dancer, she says she remembers it better for another reason – its tilted stage: “You’re dancing uphill!”
“I’ve got something to tell you from the Hippodrome,” says Beryl Plummer, a gentle 90-year-old with lilac hair, red-framed glasses and a passion for cat-inspired crockery. My host today, she ferries out cups of tea and homemade rock cakes as we chat. She and her late husband Tommy were a smash-hit double act: he played the xylophone and the drums while she tap-danced alongside him. They were a mainstay of variety shows – multi-act performances that could span magicians to musicians, animal acts to a man known for balancing a cartwheel on his head.
“I was coming to the end of the act with my tap dancing, and I had on a halterneck, which dropped down.” She leans forward. “I had nothing underneath. The press were in that night.” She chuckles. “The newspaper cutting said: ‘… and she never missed a beat’.”
“You told me you never stripped!” someone shouts.
The Plummers were so popular they once topped a bill ahead of the Beatles. “They were just normal boys, but you could not hear anything they sang because of all the screaming,” says Plummer.
Another time, they were booked to support Cliff Richard, but the show was called off early after performers including comedian and singer Des O’Connor were pelted with eggs and potatoes. “An announcement was made to say: ‘Give the acts a chance!’”
Plummer isn’t the only one with stories like these. Everyone here today worked with some of the biggest names of the time.
Vicki Goodwin, 85, was a dancer and singer who appeared in shows including Dad’s Army, and performed with her second husband, comedian Ken Goodwin. Jacquie Toye, an 83-year-old former comedy stooge for Ken Dodd – and committed heckler this afternoon – had a West End career that included playing Velma Kelly in the UK’s first production of Chicago. But rather than show off about their greatest hits, the former showgirls prefer to laugh about all the things that went wrong.
Goodwin remembers being found by Bruce Forsyth after breaking her arm. “I fell down a flight of stairs outside his dressing room.” Toye recalls tripping over a plug while rushing for a curtain call, turning off the electricity in a theatre. “I had to apologise to everyone!”
