Still Got It, Never Lost It!: The Hilarious Autobiography from the Star of TV’s Pineapple Dance Studios and Dancing on Ice

Contents

Cover

Title Page

1 Nanny Downer and Nanny Twinkle

2 Me and Mr Whippy

3 Doreen Cliff School of Dance

4 Italia Conti

5 A Big Wrench

6 Heaven … and Beyond

7 Panic

8 London Studio Centre

9 Piero

10 Miss Saigon

11 When in Rome …

12 La Dolce Vita

13 Take That

14 Falling Out of Love

15 I’ll Tell You What I Want

16 Spice Boy

17 Cats

18 Angel Eyes

19 Pineapple

20 Bump’n’Grind

21 Cirque de Celebrité

22 The Seven-Year Hitch

23 Celebrity Circus

24 Thirty … Forty

25 TVWs

26 Straddle-him

27 Pineapple Chunks

28 Riff-raff with a little je ne sais quoi

Epilogue

Photographic Insert

Acknowledgements

Copyright

About the Publisher

1

Nanny Downer and Nanny Twinkle

I’ve never been backward in coming forward, if you know what I mean. I’ve always been able to express myself and get my point across in any way necessary. I suppose I get that from my mum Pat – or Patricia Pamela Spence, to give you her full title. One of my strongest memories of Mum is that she never held back from expressing herself – if she had anything to say, she would just say it, especially when it concerned us kids. Pat was fiercely protective of us when we were growing up – not that she thought we were angels; by no means. There’s me, who you know, otherwise you wouldn’t be reading this little book; my sister Rennie is the eldest, then there are 11 months between her and Tania; then I am followed by the youngest girl, Kelly.

Mum had Rennie, Tania and me in the space of three years, and after the birth of each one of us she had a nervous breakdown. It’s not that we were bad babies, you understand – it’s just the family genes. I have never had a nervous breakdown, but I have been on the edge of one all my life! We’ll get to that later in the book – the panic attacks and the hypochondria. It’s really a wonder that I’m still alive, as I’ve had every disease under the sun. I’m a walking miracle.

Thinking about it, considering Dad worked two jobs day and night when we were babies, he must have come home just to do the deed with Mum. I think I must take after him in that respect; it’s a good thing I’m gay and don’t procreate. Honestly, I would be fathering kids left, right and centre. I’m ready at the drop of a hat.

At this time my parents lived with us three children in a two-bedroom maisonette called Keyes House in Enfield, London – Ponders End, to be precise. No wonder Mum had a nervous breakdown after each birth. Did I mention that she had her first child when she was just 17? And each one of us was a home birth.

I was born at 12.01 exactly. There’s a story behind this that Dad always tries to tell, but Mum always chips in with her penny’s worth. I was born on 6 April 1969, and before you try to work it out, yes, I do look good for my age. You can figure it out – I was always crap at maths.

I don’t know if this still happens – I don’t have any kids, so I’m not up on this kind of thing, but never say never. If I were born on 5 April, Dad would have received some kind of tax rebate. As you can imagine, what with having a young family, already with two toddlers, and only 11 months between them, Dad was practically trying to pull me out so that he could claim his rebate. While Mum lay there screaming in labour, Dad was shouting at her like she was some thoroughbred about to win the Grand National.

‘Go on girl, you can do it, push, push, get it out!’

I don’t think you’d get a thoroughbred in a council flat – you wouldn’t fit them in, all that straw and hay, but anyway.

So, she’s pushing and he’s shouting – ‘Push, shout, push, shout!’ – and in the middle of all this Dad’s begging the midwife that if I came out on the sixth, could she backdate me to the fifth? The midwife, a large West Indian lady, who, even though I’ve never met her, I like to think of as my second mum, firmly replied no. So Dad thought, the direct approach isn’t working. Try and charm her, ask her about her family, her husband, children, their names – anything he could think of to get me signed off for the fifth.

Being the bright spark that Dad is (not), he decided that he would name me after the midwife’s husband, having known her only two hours. He figured this would convince her to backdate my date of birth. She was very flattered, apparently, but her professionalism didn’t wane. I finally came out, as I said, at 12.01, a breech birth with the umbilical cord wrapped around my neck like a feather boa. I must have been doing a show in there. I’ll perform for anyone and anything, intestines, kidneys – an audience is an audience. Ever the ultimate professional, like the midwife, I wasn’t about to compromise my integrity by arriving early on the stage.

By now Mum had collapsed with exhaustion but Dad, undeterred, was still trying to work his charm on the midwife, who was busy trying to save me from strangling myself with my umbilical boa.

‘So, can we put that as the fifth then?’

He thought it was like delivering Coca-Cola, which was his second job – you could backdate the invoice. Well, no, the midwife was having none of it. The sixth it was, my name had been declared – Louis.

Or it would have been, if Dad could spell. He was the one who registered my name, and I ended up with an ‘e’ instead of an ‘s’. Mind you, if I’d had both, I would have been Louise, which I could have worked, and I have actually, many a time. Well, thank Kylie, I should be so lucky, lucky, lucky, the midwife’s husband’s name wasn’t Alfred. I don’t think I could have worked that. Alfreda, Alfrena? No, it just doesn’t work. In fact, I love my name, and I’m glad that Dad made the lucky mistake with the ‘e’, by choosing a letter I could actually pronounce. With my lisp, being born on the sixth of the fourth, ’69 is enough of a challenge. It’s far more unique, and it makes me feel special; I know what you’re thinking, I am special. Special needs – I do have some of those, but I’ll get to that soon.

I REMEMBER crawling on the concrete outside the maisonettes, where there was a lingering smell of stale wee. Maybe that’s why I have an obsession with clean toilets now. I always make sure I don’t sprinkle when I tinkle; I’m always a sweetie and wipe the seatie. I think having three sisters in the house probably had something to do with that as well.

The four of us kids used to share the bathwater. Once, after a trip to the seaside where I collected some shells, I took a wee in my little shells while I was in the bath. I thought it was OK because I was using the shells, but my sisters were not happy to be bathing in my piss. Another memory I have of my time in Keyes House is of crawling into the flat of a neighbour who had purple walls and a black leather sofa in her living room. She also had a Sixties beehive, even though we were well into the Seventies at this point.

When I was about four, we moved from Enfield, to Braintree in Essex. We were a part of the mass evacuation, which was called the London Overspill, which started in the 1930s and continued into the 1970s, to relocate families from Inner London to new and expanded towns, like Braintree. Although we loved living there, from the first day we arrived it was always so much cooler, when people asked where we were from, to say we were from Braintree but born in London. Truth be known, apart from the smell of piss and leather, some of my fondest memories are from number 19 Goldingham Drive, Braintree, Essex.

Our new home was a three-bedroom semi with parking space out the front for Dad’s green Consul, with beige leather interior. One of the best things for us kids was the garden, which was big enough for a small paying show. We staged many shows and guess who was the star attraction? We would charge between 1p and 5p, depending on what costumes and sets we needed.

It’s as clear in my mind as if it were yesterday. The first song and dance number I performed in our garden theatre was the song ‘Me and My Shadow’, choreographed and staged by Mum. The curtains were made of old bed sheets.

You see, when she was young, she and her older sister, my Auntie Maureen, had tap lessons as well as Ballroom and Latin. If Mum had been given the opportunity, she could have been a professional dancer.

She had, and still has, such wonderful rhythm, and whenever she danced you could not take your eyes off her. At family weddings we always danced together and everyone would say, ‘Oh, he gets it from you, doesn’t he, Pat? He’s a great little mover, isn’t he?’

I always felt so proud of my mum. She always looked beautiful and wore the latest fashions. She looked very sexy, but not in an obvious way. She had a wonderful figure and I remember one particular occasion, my cousin Gary’s wedding, that we attended.

Mum was beautifully tanned and wore a white dress with a pattern of black butterflies. The dress came just above her knees and the skirt part was like a second skin. It was very fitted, while the top half of the dress was a very loose sleeveless blouson with a slash neck.

The best part of the dress was the back. I say the back, there was no back to the dress. It was a scallop back, which fell in soft folds at the very base of her spine, and when she walked across the room, everyone stared as the ruched folds of the dress swayed from side to side. With each step she took, her exposed back would contract and release like it was dancing in perfect rhythm with her step. I was filled with pride to have such a beautiful mum.

Her choreographed number for ‘Me and My Shadow’ was a soft-shoe shuffle with lots of sways here and there. It was a hit and often repeated in the garden theatre.

For refreshments we served diluted orange juice and a couple of butterfly cakes. I tell you what, it was worth every penny. You can’t get me for 5p these days.

Truly, Braintree was like heaven. All you could smell was the manure that had been laid on the nearby farmer’s fields, mingled with the beautiful smell of fresh-cut grass. Anyone who comes from the country will know exactly what I mean. My first memories of Braintree are of bright sunshine and open space, with fields going on forever. I had never seen so many trees – the only ones I could remember from Ponders End were in the middle of a roundabout. Thinking back, they were not even trees, they were just bushes. I remember that, even though I didn’t understand the meaning of the word posh at the age of three. I think if I did, the new house would have been it. I knew things were about to change, I could smell it along with the shit in the air.

Remembering our earlier life in Ponders End, I’m sure my parents argued neither more nor less than any other parents. With Mum’s nervous breakdowns and Dad working every hour God sent, being in a one-bedroom maisonette with three screaming kids would put any relationship under pressure.

I remember once when the pressure got too much and it all exploded. We had popped round to Nan and Grandad Twinkle at Christmas.

Dad had bought Mum a beautiful chocolate-brown, full-length leather coat, with a split up the back and a fur collar. Mum loved it. She had bought Dad a lovely watch with a black leather strap – I say leather but knowing Mum, it was probably a bit of PVC, but it’s the thought, isn’t it? There we were, in the pissy lift on our way up to the sixteenth floor … The three of us kids were modelling suede and sheepskin jackets. My sheepskin was white and my sisters’ was pink. I wasn’t happy about it – I also wanted pink sheepskin – but what’s a budding gay to do when he can’t make himself understood at the tender age of three?

1st floor. Ping! 2nd floor. By the 3rd floor the argument had started, but don’t ask me what that was about. By the time we reached the 6th floor it was in full swing.

Me, with my dad, modelling a sheepskin and suede bomber jacket with a lovely piece of costume jewellery to boot!

10th floor, Mum was trying to get Dad’s watch off his wrist and I don’t think it was because she wanted to know the time.

12th floor, Dad had taken off the watch and thrown it on the floor.

13th floor, Dad had ripped Mum’s coat off her back.

14th floor, Dad had torn the coat in half.

15th floor, Mum stamped on Dad’s bright new watch.

Ping! 16th floor, doors opened and there was Nanny Twinkle waiting to meet us, none the wiser about the antics that had been going on between floors 3 and 16.

IT’S FUNNY, isn’t it, how everyone’s Nan and Grandad seem to have certain names? Nanny Twinkle, Nanny Downer or Irish Nanny as we called her was an absolute treat. She literally made us piss our pants. Then there was Nanny Lock, because she lived down by Enfield Lock. Nanny Twinkle was Nanny Twinkle because she had a Yorkshire terrier called Twinkle, whom we all hated. It was like a little rat with a bow in its hair; it bit our ankles without fail whenever we visited.

Nanny Twinkle was as deaf as a blinking dodo so she would never hear us screaming and Grandad Twinkle would just growl back at the dog. He was a stern little man, Grandad Twinkle. In fact, he also had a talent – the complete opposite of mine and a little bit rougher. In his day he was a champion flyweight boxer. In fact, he was third best in the world. We didn’t really have much to chat about, he and I, when I was a child. I only liked to visit them for the 50p that Nanny Twinkle would give us out of her teapot when we left.

Grandad Twinkle knocking them out.

Nanny Twinkle was a tall lady, so we can safely say that I didn’t get any of her genes. She was a lovely woman who used to make all her own clothes. When Grandad wasn’t looking I would try to get on to her Singer sewing machine, to run up a costume or two out of her old doilies. She always had a lovely purple rinse – not always the same shade, but she was way ahead of Gaga.

Then there was Nanny Lock, who was my great nan – she was Mum’s nan. She was pretty amazing, I must say. At age 90, she was still getting on the bus going into Enfield Town to do all her own shopping. You could guarantee without fail that every time we turned up to visit, she would have rock cakes ready. And I do mean rock – I think they were left over from the last time we visited. She would give us a nice glass of R Whites lemonade, but don’t ask me why, she would always put a teaspoon full of sugar in it. This would take away the fizz and made it taste like syrup water.

She was the sweetest old lady, always so generous and giving, and actually gave Nanny Twinkle a run for her money with her rinse. While Nanny Twinkle was working purple, Nanny Lock would work orange and white – white roots, orange at the ends.

She topped Nanny Twinkle on the old lady scale with a slight smell of stale wee that trailed her as she passed by in her stretch polyester pants. To top it all, her crowning glory was her knitted-lady toilet-roll covers. They were white and she must have modelled them on herself, as they all had red hair. She knitted them herself – there’s someone who was ahead of the pack with self-branding. Had the opportunity been available, she might have been selling them in Liberty’s – who knows? Maybe I’ll have a word with them.

Then there was Grandad Lock, who I think must have been 95 then. He didn’t say much – he was a horse messenger during the war, taking messages across enemy lines. At least, that’s what we were told. That’s how he got his leg blown off, and he had a wooden leg. We always used to laugh at him – he had smoked from the age of five to the day he died. He always had a fag in his mouth. Us kids used to wait for him to get to the end of his cigarette, which he smoked right down to the filter, and the end would fall on his wooden leg and burn a hole in his trousers – they ended up looking like a colander. He would stick his tongue out, take the filter and chew it and swallow it. No word of a lie, we all used to laugh at this!

NOW ON to Nanny Downer, or Irish Nanny. We didn’t know her very well, only during the last five years of her life. She left my grandad and lost all contact with her family. I don’t know all the reasons behind it, but even though Grandad Downer was wonderful with all us grandchildren, he was apparently very strict with Mum and her siblings, and could be quite heavy-handed with my nan so as soon as the youngest child, Uncle Glen, was old enough to fend for himself, Nanny Downer left to live a life of her own. She cut off contact with her family in case Grandad would find her and make her life a misery again.

But one day Mum got a phone call from the hospital to tell her that Nanny Downer was unwell. She had often spoken fondly of Nanny Downer, but us kids had never met her. When she got off the phone to the hospital, I could tell she was upset.

She said to Dad, ‘We’ve got to go, we’ve got to go.’ There was a sense of urgency in her voice and it bothered me to see her looking so vulnerable and frightened. To me she had always seemed invincible.

Dad said, ‘What is it, Pat? What’s the matter?’

Mum was starting to cry now. ‘It’s my Mum, it’s my Mum! She’s in the hospital and there’s something wrong with her blood. I don’t know, I couldn’t take it in. I can’t believe it, after all these years of trying to find her. Now I’ve found her and they say she might die.’

Dad was not the most articulate person and he always left the talking to Mum in most situations. He put his arms around her and hugged her tightly. ‘She’s not going to die, Pat, she’s not. It’s going to be alright.’

I looked at Dad and felt a great deal of love for him then, for protecting Mum. She was my world and he was looking after her.

At this point, Mum had had no contact with Nanny Downer for about 10 years. As you can imagine, it was a bittersweet moment. She was happy to be in touch with her mum after all these years, but worried about the circumstances under which they had regained contact. The doctors at the hospital told Mum that Nanny Downer had leukaemia and didn’t have long to live. Literally from one day to the next, having never known her, Nanny Downer was suddenly living with us at home.

Even though we only knew her for a short period, she had a great impact on our lives, especially mine. Although she was unwell she was always full of energy, telling wonderful jokes and always laughing and smiling. She had a husky Belfast accent and was a great storyteller. I don’t think all the stories she told us were true, but they were wonderful.

She had 22 brothers and sisters. Only 17 of them lived: I say ‘only’ – she used to tell us that they were so poor growing up, that she and her identical twin, Aggie (who died two years earlier of the same disease), used to knock on the doors of the rich in Belfast. They would pretend that Aggie was blind and that they were collecting money for blind charities, until one day they knocked on a door. The person who answered asked if they had a licence to collect money and, as Nanny Downer said, you’ve never seen a blind person run so fast. She said it was like someone had put a rocket up Aggie’s arse and lit it. When Frank Carson says, ‘It’s the way you tell ’em’, it certainly is. With her heavy accent and rolling laugh, it was definitely the way she told her stories that had us in fits of laughter.

There was another time when Mum and Dad went on holiday for a week and Nanny Downer was left in charge. I know what you’re thinking, it was irresponsible of my parents to leave a dying old lady in charge of three young kids, and maybe it was. But it was one of the best weeks of our lives and I still laugh about it now with my sisters. That was it – as soon as the door was shut and Mum and Dad were on their way, Nanny Downer (who was a recovering alcoholic, who never recovered), had me wheel her to the top of the road to Londis to get her Special Brew.

Being old and sweet-looking, in a wheelchair and with CCTV not being such a big thing then, filling up your wheelchair with Special Brew under your crocheted blanket and leaving the store without paying was quite an easy thing to do. What with me being a minor, and I don’t suppose anyone was prepared to check an old lady dying of leukaemia, it was a win–win situation.

We were set up for the week: Nan had her Special Brew and she agreed we didn’t have to go to school and wrote each of us a letter to take to our teachers. We had come down with a terrible bug – I think it was called shoplifting. She would have given Fagin a run for his money.

All of our friends came over to visit and we had what you might call an early rave. I had my first glass of cider and kissed a girl, and I haven’t touched either since. I had a puff of Nan’s JPS Special, the long ones with the extra bit of nicotine to kill you off, as she was always joking. Our time together was short, but it was a special bond that we developed with her and the jokes still have us laughing to this day. I often wish that she was still alive because I know that, now I am grown up, she would definitely have been one of my best friends as well as a special nan.

Nanny Downer could laugh even when the situation was beyond a joke. At this time Mum was working at a fashion store called Foxy Lady in Braintree town, yet another of her part-time jobs. It sold one-off designer outfits, but no designer you would have heard of. No Christian Dior here, maybe some Christine DeLor – you know the type I mean.

Mum thought it would be nice for Nanny Downer to sit in the garden for a couple of hours one sunny day while she popped off to do a shift at Foxy Lady. As it was a Saturday, I went with Mum to help her dress the shop. I say ‘dress the shop’, but I was dressing myself most of the time. It was the time of Dynasty – coat dresses and shoulder pads. I looked a treat!

We left Nanny Downer sitting in the garden in her wheelchair with a can of Special Brew that I had slipped under her blanket for her. I think Mum probably knew it was there, even though she didn’t approve, but Nanny Downer had given me the sign. She held up an imaginary can and knocked it back and forth in her hand. She used to hide the cans in her cupboard, which was more than just a cupboard but I’ll get to that later.

We wheeled her to a corner of the garden, where there was just the right amount of sunshine and shade, and she was modelling one of her synthetic blue flowery dresses, one of those that would melt if you lit a match anywhere near it. She also had one in pink and another in yellow, but that Saturday she was working the blue dress and a perky straw hat in her wheelchair.

As we left, Mum asked, ‘Are you alright, Mum? Do you need anything?’

‘I’m alright, Patsy, be off with you. Go to work.’

I think she couldn’t wait for us to leave so she could neck her Special Brew and she gave me a conspiratorial wink as I waved goodbye. As we turned out the back gate I heard the click and ‘psshhht’ as she opened her can of Brew.

What started off as a beautiful summer’s day when we left Nanny Downer in the garden quickly changed with a torrential storm while Mum and I were at Foxy Lady. But we thought nothing of it, she was sorting out stock and I was practising my window-dressing skills.

When we arrived home and walked into the garden after Mum’s shift, there was Nanny Downer in the same position we had left her. She did not have the strength or the ability to wheel herself around in her wheelchair and she looked like a drowned rat. She had been caught in the downpour and was soaked through. Her straw hat had collapsed around her face, while her synthetic dress collected rainwater in little puddles in her lap.