THE appearance of Lulu at the Commonwealth Games reminded Ann Spokes Symonds of the night she appeared on stage with the singer.

The Scots-born star brought the 2014 Games in Glasgow to a rousing climax with fellow singer Kylie Minogue, with one newspaper proclaiming: “Not bad for 65, Lulu!”

The then Ann Spokes’s night of glory came in January 1977 during her year as Lord Mayor of Oxford, in a charity music hall at the New Theatre.

The Oxford Mail reported: “The Lord Mayor swapped her robes of office for a fairy’s wings and twinkled across the boards like a professional.

“Unaccustomed as she was to public displays of this nature, she was obviously determined to prove that charity begins not at home but in front of an audience of more than 1,000.

“Determined to prove, too, that anything the county council could do – its chairman, Bob Weir, appeared, appropriately some might think, as the Devil – the city could do if not better, then at least as well.”

The music hall was a late-night show, starting after the evening performances of the pantomimes at the New Theatre and the Playhouse had ended.

Lulu, who was starring in Aladdin at the New Theatre, was joined by other leading figures from the pantomimes, plus Fenella Fielding and Oxfordshire poet Pam Ayres.

The Mail reported: “At the end of the evening, the audience weren’t the only ones smiling. Three charities – Oxfam, the Red Cross and the International Federation of Acts Solidarity and Aid Fund – had a profit of more than £2,000 to share between them.

“Everyone concerned in the music hall gave their services entirely free – both performers and theatre staff.

“The ushers, even after two pantomime performances earlier in the day, insisted on giving the theatre a full clean-up before the show began.”

Mrs Spokes Symonds, of Davenant Road, North Oxford, recalls: “It was fun being a fairy. I wrote my own script – ‘My wings are tiny, they cannot be wide when you travel park-and-ride’.

“The chairman of the county council performed as a devil and came up through the trap door on stage.”

Memory Lane this week

 

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