Ms Cellania

Jo is our host this week and she came up with a really good assignment. This is what she says.........

'I want to know about your first ‘celebrity’ crush. You know, the one you fancied from that band, or that film, or who read the news, or who won Gold at the Olympics.

Did you have their pictures on your wall or in your locker?

Did you dress like them, style or colour your hair like them, follow them, meet them, marry them? (It could happen.)

Photos of THEM would be good, photos of YOU at the time you liked them would be even better.

Also, if you have time, I’d like to know whether they had any influence over your life, the person you became, or if they were just an embarrassing blip you would kind of rather forget about'.

I don't know about you, but I had a good laugh remembering my one and only pop star crush on Tommy Steele (those in the UK are probably too young to remember him and if you live outside the UK you have probably never heard of him)! I suppose I was around 13 or 14 when he had his first hit record and I was immediately smitten. I used to listen to Radio Luxemburgh, which I think came on air in the evening and a lot of the older DJ's now TV presenters started on RL 208 medium wave. This radio station was funded from advertising and I wonder if anyone will remember the Horace Batchelor adverts (I'm digressing so I won't explain~ but it did make Keynsham near Bristol famous~some might say infamous!). I joined the Tommy Steele fan club and got photos and even got one signed personally for me~ I've often wondered if he actually signed it himself!

Money was scarce back then but I did manage to get a couple of his records, which I still have today.

In one of the fan club letters there was an advert for a pen-pal from another fan so I wrote to this boy in Denmark. You can see from the photo he tried to emulate his pop hero and he has the photos on his wall~ just the same as I did!

Jens wrote very good English and after corresponding for a while we decided to visit each other. I'm totally amazed that my parents agreed to this, especially my father who was so strict. Well, Jens did come over during the school holidays. However at 16 females can be fickle and I had just met a rather gorgeous boy who was older (20) and looking back I'm afraid I wasn't that nice to Jens. I took him to visit London and he got on well with my cousin, David, and all the family liked him, but I was not interested in him, nice as he was! The worst part is I never would do the return visit to Denmark, how stupid is that! It is always a regret of mine, but I dug my heels in as didn't want to leave the 'boyfriend' (who I might add dumped a couple of years later, but that's another story). What happened to Jens~ writing dwindled out after a few years I believe the last time I heard from him he was getting married and I do sometimes wonder what he is doing now it would be nice to know. While writing this post I did google his name but found so many people so there is no way of knowing if he is one of those names.

Now who in their right mind would want to look like a bloke! Yes you got it.. I wanted the 'look', and tried to cut my hair like Tommy's but it didn't quite work as you can see from the photo.

Of course I wanted to marry Tommy, but he married, Ann, who ran his fan club, and they have one daughter. He has had a long and successful career in show business, doing a lot of musical theatre (he is a great dancer and worked with Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly), he made a few films, he's written a book (done masses of other things but I won't bore you). However I will mention that he got an OBE in the New Year Honours list back in 1980 and he was still working in 2005 and looking good at 70!
I'm sure you won't have time to listen but I'll leave you with his first No 1 Singing the Blues 1957.