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household. ‘Iris’, Shirley finally yelled up to the front bedroom window where her friend was sleeping, ‘Iris, open the bloody door!’
    Iris’s head finally appeared at the window. ‘For God’s sake Iris, open the door! We’ve been discovered. We’re going to London.’
    Walter French, as he was christened, or Frenchie, as he was known, was, according to local gossip, ‘a bit of a lad’. A thin, elegant black man from West Africa, he owned a nightclub in Bute Street that was frequented by visiting sailors in search of romance and a bit of a jive. The nerve-centre of Frenchie’s little empire, however, was the Annexe, where he had his studio. Also on Bute Street, the Annexe was a simple construction that looked like a pre-war village hall, but which was the venue for the most popular Saturday night dance in the district. Saturday night dances were held at the Big Apple and the Colonial Centre as well,but Frenchie’s was the best, everything really ‘happened’ there. The American GIs had loved it during the war because the jiving was really wild, and then there was the Calypso, and a dance called the West African High Life which absolutely raised the roof. The Annexe was also used for auditions because Frenchie, in his own way, was also into show business, and Shirley Bassey had learned to tap-dance in one of Frenchie’s classes.
    Georgie Wood was a bona fide agent from Cardiff, who supplied film companies and London theatre managements with exotic extras, or chorus girls who could appear as Orientals or Africans or Americans from Harlem. In
Memories of Jolson
, the Bay Girls were going to fill a slot as Americans from Harlem. They hadn’t known this when Frenchie rounded them up for Georgie Wood’s audition, but they weren’t bothered; they were all delighted to have a chance to get into real show business. Only Shirley Bassey had been personally invited to audition. The other Bay Girls there – Iris Freeman, Mahalia Davies, Robina Ali, Maureen Jemmet, and Margaret and Daphne Freeman – were to make up the chorus line. Though Shirley gathered that she, too, would be in the chorus, she assumed that she would be given solo songs.
    All the Bay Girls were a cut above the average. They were pretty, and they could dance and sing with some proficiency. Their mothers were heard to declare that, when the girls used to march arm-in-arm down Bute Street, singing in harmony, they were just as good, or better than, ‘those big American’ groups. And they believed it themselves after the auditions, when Georgie Wood pronounced them good enough to go to London for thefinal audition. He filled them in on
Memories of Jolson
. ‘I’m sure you’ve all heard of Al Jolson, the big American star who made a film called
The Jazz Singer
? The first ever talkie?’ They hadn’t, but tried to look as if they had. ‘Well,’ Wood continued, ‘Al Jolson won’t actually be in your show, but there’s a British star called Eddie Reindeer who will. You’ve heard of these big American shows that come to London, and this will be that kind of show, and you girls will have to be very glamorous and look as if you’re straight from the Cotton Club in Harlem . . .’
    The agent was being somewhat economical with the truth. The London variety show producer Joe Collins had discovered that coloured shows, masquerading as American, were going down very well in the British provinces. They were cheap to mount and made good money on the road. They were part of the last gasp before television killed off this particular kind of variety ‘spectacular’ that had been touring the provincial towns for as long as anyone could remember.
    The girls had believed every word of Georgie Wood’s spiel. Rehearsals would start on a certain date soon to be announced and they must be ready to leave for London as soon as the call came. Shirley and her mother decided that, to be on the safe side, she should give in her notice at Curran’s. A