Wish You Were Here!: The Lives, Loves and Friendships of the Butlin's Girls. Neil Hanson
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do was get their photos taken for their staff cards. ‘It was a bit like being arrested,’ Mavis says, smiling at the memory. ‘You had to hold up a number while they photographed you. We had no time to spruce ourselves up after having been up all night and we looked a state! I’ve still got my photo and it’s hilarious! I just look bewildered and bedraggled.’
They were then allocated a chalet and issued with their uniforms. Musicians usually wore green jackets rather than red ones, and had to live off camp in rented houses and ‘digs’, because there wasn’t enough staff accommodation available for everyone on the camp. However, the entertainments manager told them that if they were willing to do a few general redcoat duties when they were not playing their instruments, they would be given red jackets and allowed to live in chalets on site. That sounded like a good deal to them, so they became Butlin’s redcoats, too.
They found their chalets, and as Dave was not part of a couple, he had to share his with another single redcoat whom he had never met before. When Ken and Mavis walked into theirs, the first thing they saw was that they’d been given a chalet with bunk beds, which was not exactly ideal for a newly married couple. So they went back up to the office and said, ‘Bunk beds? What? Do me a favour. We’ve not been married twelve months yet!’
They promised to find Mavis and Ken a chalet with a double bed and they moved into it the following day. It was late April, right at the beginning of the season, so the chalet hadn’t been occupied all winter and it was cold, damp and very basic. Mavis did her best to make it a bit more homely, though since there wasn’t any heating, the only way to keep warm was to put on extra clothes or fill a hot-water bottle from the hot tap in the shower block – if there was any hot water – and rush back into bed with it.
There wasn’t much time off anyway, because the work was harder than they had expected. All the redcoats had to help with the big clean-up to get the camp ready for the season, and they also had to learn to find their way round the camp, because, like London policemen, redcoats were expected to know everything, from the location of the nearest toilet to how to reunite a lost holiday-maker with his chalet.
They had to play backing music for all the competitions throughout the day and then play their own set in the bars in the evenings. They also played in the Redcoat Show every Friday night – the cabaret in which all the redcoats did a ‘turn’ – and had to do a bit of dancing in that as well. Playing the music wasn’t hard, of course, because after their years of playing in clubs that had become second nature to them and they loved it; it was continually shifting their instruments and equipment from one location to another that they found exhausting.
All the redcoats, entertainers and musicians used to get a weekly rota to show them where they were working and what they were supposed to be doing. Most Butlin’s camps were on flat coastal plains, but the Ayr camp was on a hilly site, and although most of the camp was at the bottom of the hill, there was a section at the top where they used to hold competitions, singing contests and other events. For some reason, Mavis, Ken and Dave ended up with a rota that had them doing a half-hour show at the top of the hill and then another half-hour show immediately afterwards at the bottom of the hill. So with the other contests elsewhere in the camp, plus their evening session in the bar, they were having to move their kit four or five times a day. Mavis had her accordion, which was heavy enough, but then Dave had his drums and Ken his bass, and they had microphones, amps and speakers, too. Ken worked out that they were spending more time moving their gear than they were actually playing it. At the end of each gruelling day, Mavis reflected ruefully that one of the main reasons they’d come to the camp in the first place was because they were fed up with constantly having to do this when they were playing the clubs. And to make matters worse, it rained and rained and rained, pretty much non-stop, for what must have been five or six weeks.
Butlin’s had just finished installing a chairlift at Ayr and Billy Butlin, accompanied by the South African singer Eve Boswell, arrived to perform the official opening ceremony in the June of 1959. All the redcoats had to congregate at the bottom for the send-off as Billy and Eve got into the chairlift – but the manager had warned the redcoats beforehand: ‘As soon as the chairlift sets off, you’ve all got to run to the top, so that you’re there to greet them again when they get off.’
‘I suppose he thought that if we did, it would look like there were twice as many redcoats as there actually were!’ Mavis says. So as soon as it began to move, they all set off and began sprinting up the steep hill. It was 500 yards, but they just about beat the chairlift up there, though they must have looked a strange collection, puffing and panting, and with their faces as red as their blazers!
Any thoughts that Mavis and the others might have had about the chairlift making their lives a little easier were soon dispelled, because it was forbidden to carry anything on it. They continued carting their equipment up and down the hill and put up with their ridiculous rota for another three weeks, but Ken and Dave then went to see the entertainments manager and said, ‘We’re really not happy with this schedule. Can you not change the rota to make it a little bit easier on us?’
The entertainments manager just said, ‘I’m sure we can work something out. Just leave it with me, lads, and I’ll see what we can do.’
A week went by and there was still no change in their rota, so they went back to see the manager. This time he said, ‘Oh, it’s okay, lads, you seem to be managing all right as it is.’
They lasted another week and then they went back to see him for a third time. ‘Look,’ Ken said. ‘We’re not happy with this and you’re not doing anything about it. So unless you do, we’re going to quit.’
‘You can’t do that,’ the entertainments manager said. ‘We’re just coming up to peak season. What’s your reason for wanting to leave, anyway?’
Dave, who never said much but had a very dry sense of humour, pulled a long list of their grievances out of his pocket and started reading from it, until the manager cut him off in mid-flow. Although he wasn’t happy about the idea of them leaving, he still wouldn’t do anything to meet their complaints, so they handed in their notice on the spot.
The night before they were due to leave, they were playing their last set in one of the bars, performing on a stage with a little curtained rail right round the edge of it, when one of the bosses at Butlin’s head office, Wally Goodman, who organised the entertainment for the company, turned up. ‘He was a lovely guy,’ Mavis says. ‘Very short, with a beard and a moustache with twirly ends. We didn’t even know he was there until suddenly his head popped up over the top of the curtained rail and he said, “When do you finish?”’
‘Tomorrow!’ Ken said.
‘No, no, I mean, what time do you finish tonight?’ Wally said. ‘I want to talk to you.’
He told them that he didn’t want them to leave and was willing to do whatever he could to deal with their grievances, but by then it was too late; they had already arranged a series of bookings elsewhere. They finished that evening and went straight down to London as soon as they had packed their bags – another overnight drive.
They spent the next few months mainly doing shows on American army bases around the South of England. The shows were good fun and they enjoyed doing them, but then, out of the blue, they got a message from Wally Goodman at Butlin’s, saying, ‘Are you available at Christmas?’
They had planned to go back up to Yorkshire – they already had quite a few club and cabaret bookings there – but Ken said, ‘Well, we could be … What have you got in mind for us?’
It turned out that the band at the Butlin’s Metropole Hotel in Blackpool had fallen out with the management and walked out. Christmas was the worst possible time for that to happen, as there were non-stop shows and pantomimes and the hotel managers now suddenly found themselves with no musicians to play at them. So Wally made them a very good offer. It was a great venue and guaranteed work, with nice accommodation in the hotel itself. The alternative was to spend the winter travelling from club to club, often driving for three or four hours after the show through ice and snow to get to the next venue, and then staying in what were often pretty dingy, miserable digs.