Sad news. The last surviving member of that fabled and eternally camp trio The Beverley Sisters, Teddie Beverley has shimmied her way up the dazzling stairway to Fabulon, at the ripe old age of 99.
True "national treasures", The Bevs (as they were known) gave a much-needed boost to post-War Britain with their close-harmony singing and their cheery personas, which made them an ideal Light Entertainment staple. They always dressed in identical outfits, had a string of hits in the 1950s, performed endlessly on the cabaret circuit, and were the highest paid female entertainers in the UK for more than 20 years, becoming "gay icons" in the process.
I actually saw them on stage, headlining the Gay Pride festival at Jubilee Gardens [where the London Eye is located today], at the first Pride I ever attended way back in 1985!
Another long-distant chapter of my life closes. Sigh.
More Beverley Sisters over at the Dolores Delargo Towers Museum of Camp, including this footnote, that I simply have to repeat here:
FOOTNOTE
Such was the "camp icon" status of the girls, even Rod Stewart, Elton John and Freddie Mercury desired their "look":
[In 1978 the trio discussed] "...the possibility of the three of us forming a supergroup; the name we had in mind was Nose, Teeth & Hair, a tribute to each of our most remarked-upon physical attributes. The general idea was that we could appear dressed like the Beverley Sisters. Somehow this project never came to anything, which is contemporary music’s deep and abiding loss."
