The Incredible Noele ... continued

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Noele's mother was a Scot of Norwegian descent, and Noele's father, a Merchant Navy officer, was 'straight' Scots.  Noele regards herself as a Scot who happened to be born in London.
 
"At school I was teased about my Scots accent, but I lost it quite quickly.  I'm a natural mimic and I very quickly adopted an English accent." 
 
Noele's recall goes back beyond her school days.  "When I was two my mother put me in a little dancing class.  She had been a very shy child and she was determined I wasn't going to be like her.
 
"I'm an only child.  I don't know if my parents had planned to have others.  I know my mother had always wanted a girl, and she had always had inclinations to go on the stage - and so had her sister - but being brought up in a very stern Scottish Presbyterian household, the thought of going on the stage would have been the end. 
 
"But when I was born they looked at me and said 'We'll put her on the stage!'  I never had a chance.  Practically as soon as I could stand they used to push me up on the kitchen table and make me sing."
 
I asked Noele if she would have liked a brother or a sister.  After a long pause she said:  "No, I don't think so.  I don't know if it's because I'm an only child, but I always like to be the centre of attention.  I think this is one of the dangers of being an only child, or so they say, but having a very sensible mother, I was never spoiled."
 
Noele needed no urging to the local dancing academy.  She regarded it as a game, and before long she was leading the chorus.
 
Her first public appearance came at two-and-a-half.  It was the annual charity concert at the old East Ham Palace, and Noele, with pitch black, dead straight hair, sang "Dear Little Jammy Face".  Her face was smudged with jam and for extra effect she carried a jam jar.
 
At the next concert she sang "Oh what a difference the Navy's made to me", and did a comic vicar turn as well.
 
By the time she was five and at convent school in Forest Gate, Noele was an actress in embryo.
 
"The nuns - they were all very fond of me, I don't know why - used to say I couldn't possibly go on the stage because it was a sinful life, but I used to say 'Nonsense!  Look at what the good actors and actresses do by bringing pleasure into people's lives'."
 
At the next fund-raising summer fair, the teachers - presumably swayed by her philosophy - dressed Noele in a specially made miniature nun's habit, put her in a tent and charged sixpence for people to see the "Vision of St. Ursula."
 
Said Noele, who now gets rather more than sixpence for opening supermarkets:  "My schoolmates were livid.  'Pay to see her?' they said.  'What for?'  But we made quite a lot of money out of it!"
 
Noele was soon aware that her seafaring father was more often away than at home and so had an upbringing that was female-oriented.
 
"For most of my life my father, who died in 1957, was on the Australian run, so he was three months away and three weeks at home.  He was far less enthusiastic about my going on the stage than my mother had been, but eventually I like to think he got around to being proud of me.
 
 
 
 
 

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