My father, Ben Tillett (actually Benjamin Selwyn Leonard Tillett) was born in Cardiff in July 1909. His father (also Ben, short for Benjamin Selwyn [below], originally from Bristol) had for the past several years been making quite a name for himself in local small theatres and music halls as the senior partner in a fast-talking double-act called Norman & Noyes. His mother likewise was becoming well known as a creative wardrobe mistress under the name Madame Maude.
As father grew up they were almost constantly on tour in south Wales, in small seaside towns in the north of England, and eventually resident for over a dozen summer seasons in Blackpool where his older sister Hettie (named after the music hall star and male impersonator Hetty King, but always known professionally as Etta Selwyn) and their younger sister Eva became prominent dancers in many a show’s chorus line and developed a typical singing and dancing sister act. Ben meanwhile was call-boy in some of the major theatres they visited, before settling as Assistant Stage Manager at Blackpool’s Winter Garden theatre and working with his father in the old double-act or with his sister Etta in a number of accomplished comedy dance routines.
A life of permanent touring left no room for consistent school attendance, and as a result father was in many respects self-taught. He devoured books on many subjects on interminable train journeys between venues, and amongst his discoveries was the long tradition of English verse, both light and stimulating. The song lyrics that surrounded him daily also gave him a personal easy feel for the effectiveness of metre and rhyme. He probably contributed to the lyrics of the family’s highly successful revue Fancy That, which toured all over the country during the 1930s.
When the Second World War broke out Ben’s parents, both now in their early sixties, effectively retired from the stage; he and his sisters carried on for a couple of years in various permutations of their previous acts before he volunteered for service in the RAF in 1942. He served for long periods in Egypt and Cyprus, during which some of his best ‘serious’ verse was written (included in this collection, along with some of his own photographs).
Posted unwillingly from Cyprus to Palestine under the British Mandate in 1944, he found himself at No 3 RAF Hospital, Tel-Litwinsky, Jerusalem, as office clerk and general factotum for Acting Sergeant Nellie Woodward (always known as Norma because of her striking resemblance to the film star Norma Shearer). As he would put it, sentimentally enough, he fell in love at first sight. She took longer to reciprocate but by the time the hospital staff disbanded at the end of the War it was clear, as he returned to his parents’ home in Battersea and she to her brother’s home in Doncaster, that they would be married; which they were in October 1947.
Ben and Norma at work in the Middle East.
Ben carried this photograph of Norma with him for the rest of his life.
After being de-mobbed, like many ex-servicemen Ben took a job in the civil service, in his case in the Post Office, in which he remained until he retired. In 1951 he and Norma followed his parents to Canvey Island in Essex, where the then half-rural life was pleasant and property was inexpensive. I was born there in October 1954.
In later years Ben and Norma became prominent members of Canvey’s newly-built Anglican parish church, St Nicholas, and eventually he served for over a decade as one of its churchwardens. He re-developed the skill of light comic verse, usually written for important events in the church’s life; and although much of it, being immensely topical and based around local personalities, is meaningless now, there are also quite a number of pieces which have a more general application to the sillier side of church life and would be appreciated by many who have followed a similar course. When the idea of some sort of publication was first mooted many years ago, he himself chose many of the pieces and established the pattern that serious reflective pieces would alternate with the lighter churchy ones.
My mother Norma died in September 1992 just before her eightieth birthday; Ben followed her in January 1996 halfway through his eighty-seventh year.
A little collection of his poems is available to friends and interested people, in memory of both of them, for a donation of £5. Click here for details if you'd be interested!
