Millicent Martin I REMEMBER…

Millicent Martin, 85, is one of Britain’s most beloved entertainers, and has enjoyed success on both sides of the Atlantic. She looks back on her childhood in Essex, sharing an apartment with Julie Andrews and working with everyone from Michael Caine to Jane Fonda

- Simon Button

…MY VERY FIRST TIME ON STAGE WAS AS A BALL OF WOOL. We were singing “Ba Ba Black Sheep”— though I don’t recall where or why— and I was a three- or four-year-old in a sack with a red wool wig, with two other children, sat in a trolley that was pulled on stage.

I also remember that we had a lovely white bull terrier at home in Romford with the very imaginative name, “Snowy”. I’d put her in a pram and wheel her around, as you would with a doll. But my memories of my early years are very limited, maybe because the war years came when I was five and everything was scary so I blocked it all out.

…MY DAD WAS A MASTER BUILDER. He was brilliant. He had a photographic memory and he would draw out these elaborate blueprints for homes. Once he’d finished them and looked at them for 20 minutes he never had to look at them again; he’d build a home with all the measurements and everything in his head. And my mother was a mother. She was funny, with a very dry sense of humour.

…I SANG IN OLD PEOPLE’S HOMES FROM A YOUNG AGE. I’ve no idea how that came about but I recall saying to my family that I wanted to sing and I wanted to dance, so they subsequently put me into the Italia Conti stage school when I was five years old.

The war put the kibosh on that for a few years but when I was 12 I went back and stayed for the next four years.