Catherine Ethel Kirby

                                                                        MEETING KATHY.

It was back in nineteen sixty four, when I was first to ever meet one of my teenage pop idols.

She was doing a summer season at one of the norths biggest holiday resorts at that time. Good old Blackpool, famous for its tower, south, central and north piers and every year the resort would be filled with stars of that era.

I had joined a fan club, and the lady who ran it lived quite close to me and we became friends.

She organised a fan club meeting in one of the bars in the famous Blackpool Tower.

A whole gang of us met that evening.  We were all introduced to each other. We walked up to the A>B>C> Theatre and watched the Kathy Kirby Show. Also on the bill was Frank Ifield the famous yodeller.  Back then live theatre was a wonderful experience for a teenager in the swinging sixties.

The show was a wonderful experience and Kathy looked beautiful. She was in fine singing form and gave a marvellous performance. We thoroughly enjoyed the show. After the performance all of the fan club group were escorted around to the stage door and taken inside of Kathy’s dressing room. Something I will never forget.

Kathy by this time had changed out of her stage gown and was sat in on a stool in front of a brightly eliminated dressing table and mirror. She was wearing a high neck tangerine coloured sweater, a pair of rather loud plaid trousers and a pair of low heeled black patent shoes.

Also in there was the famous man himself Burt Ambrose, who to me seemed rather an old man then. He was sat crossed legged on a sofa quietly smiling at the gang of us. Don Phillips was also in there, he was Kathy’s musical director at that time, and I remember a perfect gentleman.

We were too shocked to speak and Kathy said very little, just kept on smiling as she always did. The fan club secretary introduced all of us and we all shook Kathy’s hand and then had a photograph taken with her. Boy did we think we were important then!  Meeting this beautiful lady with such talent and stardom.

After that evening, we saw Kathy appear live at lots of other venues. In fact we saw her that often that we became to be rather good friends with a lady named Vera. She was Kathy’s dresser for most of her working life.

A very nice woman who resided in a small flat in London’s West End. We visited her on many weekends, used to spend all of our weeks working money on trips to London. By the time I was nineteen I knew London town and Mayfair like the back of my hand. They were happy days indeed.

I was to meet my dear husband to be when I was twenty years of age and I settled down to married life. Then our sweet little daughter was born, and for many years to come I was busy being a housewife and mother. Sadly they grow up and she flew the nest, but brought us a beautiful little grandson. He had a torrid entrance into the world and it was touch and go at that time as to whether or not he would pull through. A terrible period for all of the family, and for the first time in my daughter’s life, mum could do nothing to help her but pray for her child’s life.

Well our prayers were answered and he is now fifteen years old, a fine young man who is very well mannered. We went through the first of his years worrying about his health, however as things turned out he was very lucky. In Kathy’s later years she became very fond of Louis and loved me to talk to her about him. She loved children!

During all of these years I had lost touch with Kathy and Vera, as you do when bringing up a family.

I had returned to work when my family duties eased off and worked very hard for some number of years. I had worked mostly with the senior citizens and when I was to come across Kathy again she herself had become one. Kathy was twelve years older than me, but when you start to approach the age of sixty, twelve years becomes rather a lot.

I was sat one evening surfing the internet and I was thinking back over the years and wondered what had happened to Kathy and Vera. I punched in Kathy Kirby in the search engine, and two websites popped up. This confused me somewhat, never the less I knew that Kathy was still alive and kicking. I decided to make a phone call to one of the sites. I was to first ever speak to Mr Graham Smith. He brought me up to date with Kathy’s life.

I asked if I could forward a few gifts for Kathy, when I heard she had fallen on hard times. Graham said send them to him and he would forward them on to the two men in Kathy’s life at that time, her manager and his friend, he claimed looked after Kathy these days. This I did, I sent a beautiful bracelet a long letter and also the picture that was taken all those years ago in Kathy’s dressing room. I heard nothing more about it

I must admit that I was a little cross to say the least, that picture was the original and I had no copy. My next move was to contact the other website run by Kathy’s manager. I explained to him what I had done, and was totally amazed by what he said.

Which was?  If you have sent them to Graham Smith Kathy won’t ever receive them, he then went on to give Graham a rather bad name and accused Graham’s wife Margaret of probably wearing the bracelet.

I was shocked by his words. So I picked up the phone and I am afraid I was very nasty with Graham and accused him of the most awful things. He insisted that he had forwarded the gifts on to the manager’s friend who lived in Kent.

Of course at this point I did not believe him. When I phoned the manager back to tell him of my actions, he seemed very pleased indeed. Even thanked me for doing so. Oh boy, had I much to learn about the truth in the months that followed all of this.

I kept in contact with the so called manager for weeks and weeks. I sent him some gifts for Kathy, but by this time he had kindly let me ring his mobile phone when he was paying Kathy a visit and I had spoken to her and asked her what colour pearls she preferred for her birthday present.  On this occasion Kathy did get the pearls simply because she was aware I was sending them to her via her manager.

Of course I knew nothing of his dishonesty at this time.  I sent many more gifts over the months, that I now know Kathy never received. They were kept by these two con men. They told me that Kathy was on the breadline, and she was because they were helping themselves to her money and sharing it between themselves. As time went on i got clever and i was becoming a bit suspicious of some of what he was telling me.

The manager had set in progress the filming of a D.V.D. and the company involved had been to Kathy’s flat to do the filming. Kathy was having a bad day as it happened and they did not like the outfit that had been chosen for her to wear.

It was too dowdy and Kathy sat in her sitting room that at the time was in great need of decoration. The whole episode was not turning out at all good on camera, so it was postponed for a week. I got a phone call from her manager telling me what had happened. So I suggested that he should let me choose her outfit and lend her some clothes and jewellery to brighten up the occasion and make her sparkle, as I thought was only fitting for the great star she once was.

He was delighted by my offer, so I sent her a complete wardrobe. The filming went ahead and proved successful the second time around. Because of all of this, I was able to persuade him to let me have Kathy’s telephone number.