Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
I partied with Lulu, Birds star’s pet tig Wogan to surprise
Lynne Carol spent nearly four years on the Street as busybody Martha Longhurst, who sat with Ena Sharples and Minnie Caldwell in the Rovers’ snug gossiping.
When they killed Martha off in 1964, Violet Carson, who played Ena, was so upset she marched upstairs and told Granada boss Sidney Bernstein they’d regret it.
They got rid of Martha anyway. She had a heart attack over her glass of stout in the Rovers, her spectacles falling on to the table.
The night she was due to die on Telly Savalas, the tough-guy actor who played TV detective Kojak, was larger than life.
I once had to interview him at London’s Savoy Hotel, and we had a few drinks together. I found him to be a really intelligent and articulate man.
But he said: “Wherever
I go, people seem afraid of me. I’m really a big pussycat.”
At the end of the interview, he reached over I was invited to the comedian’s home quite a few times.
There he’d be, sitting quite unashamedly on the sofa in vest and underpants, gazing at a giant fish tank the length of one wall.
Or else he was watching horse screen, Lynne was determined to watch. I suggested we could watch the last episode together.
At first, she thought it was a good idea, but changed her mind and told me: “No, I think I am going to be too upset.”
She would watch it at home In Blackpool with husband Bert Palmer, also an actor, she said.
I phoned her afterwards. Bert answered and said: “She’s really very upset.” Lynne was close to tears. Later, she admitted: “I cried when I watched my own funeral.”
When it comes to nice guys, they didn’t come better than Terry
to a box and produced half a dozen lollipops. He said: “Here, take some of these. I hate the damn things. But because Kojak is always sucking a lollipop, the TV people give me these by the bagful and insist I should always suck them in public. “To be honest, I hate the taste of them.”
So I went back to the office with a pocket full of Kojak lollipops and gave them to colleagues. racing. Gambling was his only real hobby. He would think nothing of betting £5,000 on a horse.
But he once told me: “I never gamble more than I can afford. I’ll never lose more than I can earn working the next week.”
During half a century in journalism, Ken Irwin, a former Daily Mirror showbiz reporter, met all the big stars, becoming friends with many.
Now 84, Ken has looked back on his career, writing a book telling his favourite, most moving and most mischievous stories. In our exclusive extracts, he tells of pop stars’ Lulu, the little girl from Glasgow with the big voice, was always great fun to be with.
One time, she invited me over to do an interview, she suddenly said: “Ken, you don’t half remind me of my Maurice. You could almost be his double.”
Maurice was her first husband, one of the Bee
Gees’ Gibb brothers. I had a beard, and long hair.
And I did have a toothy grin, just like Maurice.
I remember Lulu talking about the days when the Bee Gees used to hang out with the Beatles and other rock stars. Lulu never took drugs, she said, but told me that when they had overnight parties, she was the one who would be making breakfast for hungover guests.
“And with some of them, they were taking cocaine together with their egg and bacon,” she said. breakfasts of bacon, eggs and cocaine, interviewing Bernard Manning in his underwear, and why Telly Savalas thought Kojak’s favourite prop really sucked.
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