Dame Beryl a much-loved act

Published: 8 July, 2010

• DAME Beryl Bainbridge and Lord Horder must have been one of the oddest song and dance acts around in Camden Town.

As recounted by Beryl in a piece published in The Times, they used to meet monthly for drinks, song and dance sessions in a reconditioned pub near where she lived in Parkway.

Mervyn, aged 80 plus at the time, had once been managing director of Duckworths, her publishers, and had put some of John Betjeman’s poems to music.

He used to sing Frances Cornford’s perfect triolet in order to attract an audience:
Oh fat white woman whom nobody loves
Why do you walk through the fields in grass
Missing so much and so much?

Beryl’s role was first to egg him on.

He enjoyed wearing see-through trousers, and having his legs shaved for each performance.

As her friend AN Wilson strongly intimated in Sunday’s Observer, Beryl was an irresistible comedienne above all else, as well as an accomplished storyteller of the old school.

The music hall of her childhood in Liverpool was always at the very heart of her much loved act.
JOHN HORDER
West End Lane, NW