Why we didn’t go to our sister’s funeral
By the two surviving Beverley Sisters
BEFORE Teddie and Babs, the two remaining Beverley Sisters, sit down and t alk to me, there is a pause; a reflective moment when they seem confounded, half-expectant.
‘We still can’t believe Joy isn’t sitting here between us,’ says Teddie. ‘We refuse to believe it,’ chimes Babs. ‘We can’t think that she’s not going to walk through the door.’
‘We haven’t accepted it. It will come to us very slowly,’ concludes Teddie. ‘There’s no question that we actually still feel Joy’s presence here between us.’
They blink away tears and move their chairs nearer to each other, closing the gap between them that their elder sister used to fill. The chasm left by Joy’s death, aged 91, last month following a stroke is physical, palpable — because the trio spent their lives literally side by side.
Whenever t hey performed, gave interviews or appeared in public, the line-up was unchanging. On one side was Babs, on the other was Teddie, and in the middle, flanked by her younger twin siblings, Joy.
No matter which hit it was — I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus, How Much Is That Doggy In The Window? or their matchless signature tune Sisters — the formation did not vary: Teddie, Joy, Babs, that glorious combo, The Beverley Sisters.
Once Britain’s highest-paid female entertainers, ‘The Bevs’ were the saucy, glamorous, funny Spice Girls of their day (although these natural-born performers could actually sing).
They were as close as their three-part harmonies, living in adjacent houses in North London and dressed identically. They spoke, as they sang, in chorus and appeared on This Is Your Life and Desert Island Discs as a trio. They even all shared a birthday: the twins, now 88, were born exactly three years after Joy, on May 5, 1927.
Clearly, they still consider themselves a single entity. ‘It’s one of The Beverley Sisters speaking,’ announces Teddie when she calls to fix a time for our inter-view. In the words of their theme song, written for them by Irving Berlin, ‘There were never such devoted sisters.’
As prototype pop stars they garnered a vast fan base in the Fifties and Sixties, and became global celebrities. When, in 1958, Joy married the England and Wolves football captain Billy Wright, the couple got stuck in traffic and huge crowds on the way to Poole Register Office.
Billy asked a policeman, holding back the hordes, what was going on. ‘Billy,’ exclaimed the policeman, ‘these people have all come to see you and Joy get married.’
They were f amously daring, too, shocking prissy Fifties TV bosses with their see-through blouses and midriff-revealing dresses; outraging critics with their risque lyrics. (One song featured the admiral’s daughter who never got her bathing costume wet — because she swam naked.)
‘We wanted to pierce the Fifties bubble of correctness and primness,’ says Teddie. ‘ We were shy personally, but bold professionally,’ adds Babs.
They often entertained the Royal Family, notably at the Palladium. ‘We wore completely sheer tops to one performance and we said to the Queen Mum: “Do you think we’re rude?” and she roared her head off.
‘She was a great sport. So warm. We went to Windsor to perform for her. She loved to dance. And she taught us the song, “Horsey, Horsey, Don’t You Stop.” ’
Unlike celebrities of today, however, The Beverley Sisters’ personal lives remained just that. Today the twins have only agreed to a rare interview — breaking almost a decade’s silence — in honour of their elder sister. ‘ We vowed we wouldn’t say anything more after we got our MBEs in 2006,’ begins Teddie. ‘But this is for Joy,’ says Babs. ‘I’ve had plenty of cries for her,’ says Teddie. ‘It’s music that sets me off. A girl sang Somewhere (There’s A Place For Us) on X Factor last week and I wept buckets. That’s what kills me. Music.
‘We were extremely lucky we had Joy, and in all the years we were together the bond never wavered, not for a heartbeat,’ she continues.
‘We never had a bad word. Not with Billy either. He was a darling. None of us could have married a man who was jealous or objected to our closeness.’ There was a line in their Irving Berlin song that ran: ‘Lord help the mister who comes between me and my sister.’
And even though Joy and Billy shared 36 blissful years together until his death in 1994, the Posh and Becks of their era, they still lived next door to the twins.
‘Billy was perfect in that sense,’ says Babs. ‘He was part of the team.’
As the joke back then went: ‘So Billy Wright’s married one of The Beverley Sisters. Which one?’
‘The middle one … you know, the centre half.’
Then Babs tells me about the last song the Bevs ever sang together, at Joy’s house — next door to theirs in Whetstone, near Barnet — at a family gathering a few weeks before her death on August 31.
‘We were having a lovely time reminiscing,’ she says, ‘And we all sang a comic song our father used to sing on the stage.’
The sisters’ beloved parents, George and Victoria Chinery, had a music hall act, Coram and Mills. The twins, inveterate entertainers that they are, raise their voices in flawless harmony recalling that last time they sang with Joy during the impromptu concert in her living room.
‘Twas just getting dark in the fish shop; the winkles had just gone to bed,’ they begin, to the delight of onlookers in the hotel lounge where we are chatting. ‘We all sang. Joy was faultless, as always. She corrected our harmonies once or twice,’ smiles Teddie, ‘But we all remembered the lyrics. It was a jolly day, we had a great giggle; it was the last time we sang together.
‘And though we had no idea we’d lose her so soon, when we chatted about Dad that day we remember her saying “I’m looking forward to seeing him again.” And that was a comfort to us when she died.’
Joy’s unexpected death just a few weeks later left her sisters completely distraught. They couldn’t bear to go to her funeral, a small, private, family affair held last week.
‘ It would have destroyed us,’ says Babs. ‘I don’t think we could have coped with kind people saying how sorry they were. Because we still can’t quite believe Joy’s not here. Of course, we said our own prayers for her, but I know once I start to cry I’ll never stop.’
Nor can they face living in their house next to hers. Instead they’ve decamped to their holiday home near Brighton, close to the house Teddie’s daughter Sasha, her husband and their daughter Francesca share.
‘Joy had said to me once when we were making tea, “I hope I die before you two. I hope I’m first to go”,’ says Teddie. ‘She didn’t want to be left without us.
‘When I think about her now, I know if anyone is in the heavenly choir, Joy will be. As long as she’s the soloist and the others follow her phrasing!’
The Bevs had a mischievous sense of humour. Their closeness was not cloying because it was leavened by their capacity to joke and tease.
When they sang, Joy always took the melody. Even as a girl in the East End she turned heads: she had natural poise; a fabulous head of blonde curls — and of course, such a voice!
The twins tossed a coin to see which part they would take at the very start of their career. Teddie lost, and Babs chose to sing the first soprano harmony; her twin took the lower one.
And so it continued for the next 60 years.
They were born in Bow, East London — money was tight but they were never impoverished — on Joy’s third birthday.
Babs says: ‘In the middle of the night, Dad crept i nto Joy’s bedroom and said: “You have another birthday present — in fact it’s a pair of presents” and Joy said, “Earrings?” and Dad said, “No, t hey’re al i ve” and t hen Joy said, “Rabbits?” ’
Their laughter is like the tinkling of a crystal chandelier.
Their adored mother instilled an ethos of caring and sharing from their early childhood. ‘A little less “I” and a little more “we”,’ was her catchphrase: it defined their lives.
‘We wore skimpy outfits in front of the Queen Mother’ ‘I know that once I start to cry I’ll never stop
‘We were good-natured,’ says Teddie. ‘We were unified. That was because of Mum’s ethic.’
They shared a bed in the family’s tiny two-up, two-down — Joy always in the middle, of course — until they were evacuated, aged 12 and 15, during the war.
Joy, they both marvel, had presence. ‘Joy’s ear was second to none,’ says Teddie. ‘She had perfect pitch. None of us wrote any of our harmonies down — we couldn’t read music — and we created every note ourselves.’
The story of how they were discovered, as evacuees in Northamptonshire, is showbiz folklore. Talent-spotted by a photographer to feature as ‘Ovalteenies’ in an advertisement for the malted drink, they sang for him a hymn in perfect threepart harmony. He, in turn, alerted a friend at the BBC, who invited them to an audition.
And who, serendipitously, should walk through the door just as they were in full song? Glenn Miller, the acclaimed band leader, who offered ‘a couple of his boys’ to accompany them.
Thereafter, their trajectory was meteoric. They conquered America, came back with Danny Kaye and starred at the London Palladium — they’ve kept some of the old show bills: there they are, above Cliff Richard! Above Morecambe & Wise! They had their own live TV show for seven years and made a string of hit records.
Their work was tireless. Then in 1967, breathless from all the world tours and live shows, they ‘ retired’ to raise families — temporarily as it turned out; they made a dazzling comeback in the Eighties, often appearing at the London Hippodrome on gay nights having been ‘rediscovered’ by Peter Stringfellow.
The twins had three husbands between them. Teddie’s marriage to dentist and waterski champion Peter Felix in 1959 lasted 13 years before they divorced. Six months later, she married the late Donald Cottage, a property developer who gave his fiancee a £40,000 diamond ring once owned by actress Elizabeth Taylor.
After a whirlwind five-week romance, Babs wed a Scots dentist, James Mitchell, in 1963, but tells me their relationship was over in three weeks (‘Drank too much’) although they didn’t get divorced for four years. She has no children but calls Sasha — Teddie’s daughter with Peter Felix — ‘our lovely daughter’.
Joy had a son, Vince, from her first brief marriage to Roger Carocari, an American musician, and then Vicky and Babette, from her long marriage to Billy.
The sisters’ domestic lives — thanks to their ethos of sharing — are difficult to untangle, not least because their five grandchildren (Kelly, Emily, Francesca, Hayley and William), refer to them all as ‘Nana’.
On the day we meet, the twins are dressed ( identically, of course) in denim jeans and embroidered denim jackets. They wear canvas baseball boots — they’re still wonderfully trendy — and jaunty baker boy caps.
They are still spry and pretty — ‘We haven’t had a thing done!’ they assure me — and are sporting their MBE medals, pinned to their lapels. They remain ardent monarchists. ‘We appeared at the Queen’s first Royal Command Performance in 1952,’ says Teddie, ‘And at her Golden Jubilee in 2002. Whenever we went to Buckingham Palace she’d say, “Oh, it’s you again!”
‘She works so hard. And she’s a year older than us,’ marvels Babs. ‘And I said to her, “We’ll retire when you do.”’
Now the trio is a duo, I wonder how they will remember their adored Joy. A flurry of memories and anecdotes ensue.
‘She adored animals,’ says Teddie. ‘Especially horses and dogs. Once we rang and she’d gone to obedience classes.’
‘For the dog, not herself,’ explains Babs. ‘She loved her garden almost as much as singing.’
‘I think of her now, in a heavenly garden,’ confirms Teddie, ‘probably calling to me and Babs over the fence. The garden was heaven to her.’
That’s where the twins like to think of Joy now: gardening in paradise; singing pitch-perfect in a celestial choir.
‘I told the Queen: We’ll retire when you do!’