Mr Starlight

Dedicated to

Caryl Avery and Les Zuke,

my A to Z friendship,

and

to my best boys,

Tony Bird and Charles Darwent

Give my regards to Broadway

Remember me to Herald Square

Tell all the gang at Forty-Second Street

That I will soon be there

COHAN

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty-One

Twenty-Two

Twenty-Three

Twenty-Four

Twenty-Five

Twenty-Six

Twenty-Seven

Twenty-Eight

Twenty-Nine

Thirty

Thirty-One

Thirty-Two

Thirty-Three

Thirty-Four

Thirty-Five

Thirty-Six

Thirty-Seven

Thirty-Eight

Thirty-Nine

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About the Author

Also by Laurie Graham

About the Publisher

He had six bathrooms at the finish, every one of them done up to a different scheme, although most of them were never used. There was his, with a heart-shaped tub and a mirror on the ceiling, and the monogrammed towels folded just so, and nobody else supposed to go in there, only Pearl who looked after him. And then there was my favourite with a glass block floor and gold-plated dolphin taps, and a whole wall filled with water and tropical fish. Not that bathrooms interest me that much. Still, it’s funny to think how we started out in Ninevah Street, with a lav down the yard and a jerry under the bed, in case you needed to go in the night, and a tin bath dragged indoors and put on the hearthrug, but only for special occasions.

We all had baths when our Dilys was getting married, so that was quite a production, and I had another one, I remember, when I was bad with the measles and the doctor had been sent for. But generally speaking, you could go all year in our house and never see that tin tub. Until Sel started getting top billing and Mam got stars in her eyes. Ever after that, if it was club night, it was bath night.

I was in the trimming shop at Greely’s Motors in those days, working six in the morning till two in the afternoon. You could earn more doing a night shift but after I got jilted, the size of my pay packet didn’t seem to matter any more. Renée and I had been saving up, getting our little bits and pieces together for when we were married, but when she called it off, well, I lost heart. And if I worked the early shift it meant I had my evenings. I could do the clubs with our Selwyn, as his accompanist.

When we started out they billed us as the Boff Brothers but that soon changed. Soon it was Selwyn Boff, the Saltley Songster, with Cledwyn Boff on piano, only in smaller letters. It has been my experience that once your letters get smaller they’re unlikely to get bigger again. Then, as he developed a following he dropped the Boff and tried being just plain Selwyn.

‘Your own, your very own Selwyn,’ the emcee would say and by then nobody cared who was playing. As long as Sel was out front, holding the ladies’ hands, looking into their eyes, making out he was singing for nobody in the world but them, he could have had a chimpanzee on the piano stool. Mam used to say, ‘Did you play nicely last night, Cledwyn?’

I’d say, ‘I could have played bare-arsed with my elbows for all anybody would have noticed.’

And I’d duck before she could clout me.

Our mam’s profession was teaching pianoforte so we were all expected to learn when we were nippers. But Dilys apparently would never sit still and pay attention, so she was sent to tap dancing instead, and when Mam decided Sel had the makings of a singer he was sent to Miss Jaycock in Paradise Street, for voice and elocution. After that I got the piano to myself and when I joined the Boys’ Brigade I learned the trumpet too.

Mam believed everybody should be able to do a turn, even if it was only play ‘God Save the King’ with a comb and tissue paper, but Dilys never liked performing. She’d sidle off outside and hide down the yard if we had company, if she thought Mam was going to make her climb up on the table and do ‘You are my honey, Honeysuckle’, and then, later on, she did put up a lot of weight due to married life and you can’t dance if you’re heavy. It’s harmful to the knees.