Maddie’s World
In her weekly column, Maddie Grigg shares tales from her life in rural Dorset . . .
ACCORDING to my mother, when my brother was little, he used to have a thing for the English singer Helen Shapiro.
He must have been about six when “Walkin’ Back To Happiness” was released in 1961, the year I was born.
Mum says that whenever Helen Shapiro was on television, my brother would walk up to the screen and kiss her face.
Every now and then, I like to remind him of his devotion, partly to embarrass him and to get my own back for him teasing me as a child.
However, he’s pretty quick to let me know about the things I used to do when I was small, such as pouring milk into our Roberts portable radio because no-one in the family was listening to me.
“And you’ve forgotten what you used to do when Sandie Shaw was on the telly,” he says.
To be honest, I’ve always remembered it, but I let him tell me anyway so I can bathe in a nostalgic glow.
“You used to run into the bathroom and get the ball of string from the drawer, come back into the front room, kick your shoes off and then pretend to use the ball of string as a microphone and sing along to ‘Puppet On A String’.”
I would have been about five years old when the song was our entry in the Eurovision Song Contest. I vividly remember Sandie Shaw performing in bare feet.
I always admired that sense of reserved wildness about her, as well as loving her cheerful singing voice and beautiful hair and face.
Well, I was regaling our friends with that story one evening when we were enjoying the fortnightly Spice and Rice curry evening in the Lush Places pub.
It’s the night when a local chap comes in with his range of huge pans and spices and puts on a choice of mild, medium and hot curries for a tenner.
“Well, I can top that,” our neighbour, Champagne Charlie, said.
I had a feeling he might be able to. You see, I’d heard this story before.
“I was in Majorca in the Sixties with a group of my friends. We went to a disco and who do you think was there? None other than Sandie Shaw. Well, they dared me to go and ask her to dance. So I did. And she said yes!”
“Was she barefoot?” I asked, wanting to savour the detail of the moment.
“No, she was wearing shoes,” Charlie said.
At this point, I did wonder if the dancing woman really had been Sandie Shaw.
Did she cover up her feet when she was incognito or did she keep up her public appearance at all times?
Maybe it was Lulu up there on the dance floor and our neighbour had got mixed up.
“She was very lovely, I remember that. I danced with her all night,” Charlie said. “And she gave me her phone number.”
Well, at that point, Mr Grigg almost choked on his korma.
“Really?” my husband said. “And did you phone her?”
“Well, I tried.” Champagne Charlie looked wistfully into his half pint of lager.
“And . . .?” Mr Grigg said, with a forkful of lime pickle in mid-air. The suspense was just too much.
“Nothing happened. It just didn’t ring.”
We all looked crestfallen. Charlie sighed to himself as he finished his last mouthful of curry.
“I often think to myself what might have happened if she’d picked up the phone.”
And with that, we had no alternative. We all broke out into a chorus of “Puppet On A String”.
Even the Spice and Rice man joined in. n