Ramblings

By 2003 I had reached the stage of life where I came to value experiences more than possessions, so I was glad to receive a birthday present from my parents of two tickets to a Murder Mystery Dinner at Grim’s Dyke Hotel. Grim’s Dyke had been the home of W.S. Gilbert, of Gilbert and Sullivan fame, for the last twenty years of his life – and my cousin had her wedding there in 1977.

The food was excellent, and the murder mystery was good fun, but not without embarrassment. One of the actors, a vivacious lady in her fifties, scanned the diners and, after a quick, feline assessment of who might be most discomfited by her attention, settled on me. Literally, settled on me: she came and sat on my lap. Presumably she was establishing her character. “You look terrified!” she said. “I am!” I replied. But I got over it, and we had a very pleasant evening.

The acting troupe was called Masquerade, and Debbie thought she might have recognised some of them from TV appearances. So in an idle moment I emailed their manager, Robin Cook (not the former Foreign Secretary) to ask who had been in the cast.

He came back with a full and interesting reply. Sarah-Louise Young was soon to be starring in a West End musical in Leicester Square, Cliff Kelly had been in a 1999 Channel 4 sitcom called The Estate Agents, Maureen Marsh had been in City of Angels in the West End, and Steve Ashton had recently been in a production of Crazy for You. We had missed one of their regulars, Reece Shearsmith, who was currently working on The League of Gentlemen.

But the name which caught my attention was that of Iris Fenton – the actress playing the character called Mollie Brown who had sat in my lap – who, Robin assured me, was often mistaken for Helen Mirren. As a nerdy rock’n’roll fan, I had of course heard of Shane Fenton, who had enjoyed six top 40 hits with the Fentones in 1961/62 including the excellent I’m a Moody Guy, and went on to much greater success in the 1970s as Alvin Stardust. Perhaps Iris had a connection to him? Robin confirmed my hunch.

Yes, Iris had indeed been married to Shane Fenton from 1964 and had later adopted the Fenton surname although her husband married her under his birth name of Bernard Jewry. They split in the 1970s, soon after Alvin Stardust became successful. But a little googling revealed that to be just a fraction of her part in music history.

She was born Iris Caldwell in 1944. Her older brother Alan started a band, changing his name to Rory Storm to match his wild stage act with the Hurricanes. Rory was an extremely popular live attraction in Liverpool, at one time rivalling the Beatles, but his voice didn’t sound great on record, and he never achieved chart success. These days Rory Storm and the Hurricanes are best remembered for Ringo Starr, who was recruited to the Beatles when Pete Best was sacked. Rory saw his drummer – his drummer! – go on to huge worldwide fame, while he remained no more than a colourful local character.

But what makes Iris pop music royalty is that at different times she had dated not one but two of the Beatles.

Iris started dating George Harrison very young. She tells her story in this superb article on It’s Only Love – the Beatlegirls website.

“I met George at the ice rink in 1957 when I was 12 and he was 14. Every night he would come round to our house after school. He used to play guitar and wanted to get into Rory’s band but Rory said he was a bit young. We went out for ages – but it was a totally different concept to boyfriend and girlfriend today. We’d walk down Lilly Lane which was like a lovers’ lane and kiss and cuddle.”

“Rory opened a skiffle club and I wasn’t supposed to go because I was under 15 so I put cotton wool in my bra and blue blusher on my eyes. At the end of the night, Rory made a joke about his little sister having cotton wool down her bra. I was so embarrassed I ran out in tears. Then I heard footsteps behind me. It was George. I ran into his arms and he gave me the best kiss ever. I can still feel it right in my tummy, even now. He was lovely.”

“But we split up when I was having a party. He insulted a friend. We were playing a game where all the girls were named after fruit. The boys would come in and mum would ask if they wanted pears or apples, and whoever was that girl got a kiss. George didn’t find his choice that attractive. When my mum asked do you want lemons or pears? George just said: ‘I’m not hungry’. I was so upset. He had insulted my friends. I said I never wanted to speak to him again.”

Iris trained as a dancer and performed at the Tower Ballroom in Liverpool. It was there, in December 1961 – when she was seventeen – that she met Paul McCartney, performing with The Beatles. McCartney was impressed by her doing The Twist and the fact that she was already working professionally in showbusiness, and soon after they began dating. “Paul and I dated for a couple of years,” recalled Iris, “It was never that serious. We never pretended to be true to each other. I went out with lots of people. I was working away in different theatres at the time but if I was back home then we would go out. There were never any promises made or love declared.”

Iris and Paul were together for about a year. The Beatles often visited the Caldwell family home at 54 Broad Green Road as Paul recalls. “We used to go back to Vi Caldwell’s. I went out for a short time with Rory’s sister Iris, a dancer. Their house was the only one open at that time of night. Vi was a night owl. It was our late-night hang-out, really, just cups of tea and card games and chatting. I remember playing an Ouija board with Cilla (Black) and her friend Pat.”

But the Beatles’ manager demanded that any girlfriends should keep a very low profile. “Epstein was not very pleased that I was going out with Paul and I wasn’t allowed to go anywhere with the group in case any of their fans saw me. But every night after they’d appeared at The Cavern, Paul would come round to our house – and when they went away to Hamburg he used to write me the most fantastic letters.”

According to Fab: An Intimate Life of Paul McCartney by Howard Sounes, one night, Iris and Paul went on a double date with John and Cynthia Lennon. John and Paul staged a mock fight in the restaurant so they would get thrown out and not have to pay, and later pulled the same trick at another restaurant.

Iris says “In those days I was the one doing well in showbiz. I was dancing in theatres all over the country and he was just another lad in another group. …Then one day Paul phoned me in a tremendous state of excitement. Love Me Do had just been released and Paul wrote to me: ‘Wow cor jeez it’s number 26 in the New Musical Express top 50.’ He was so thrilled. Like a little boy.”

“When I was going out with Paul and we’d had a row, George would still phone up asking if he could take me out. I don’t think there was any rivalry over me. It was all good-hearted. Things were so different then.”

Some think that she inspired “I Saw Her Standing There” – and indeed, Iris was 17 when Paul met her, and he seems to have been very taken with her. But he has said that he wrote about a 17-year old girl dancing so that the group’s female fans could relate to the song.

Their relationship ended after Paul met Jane Asher, but Iris and Paul remained good friends. Iris married Shane Fenton in 1964. Eight years later, she had to face a terrible tragedy.

In 1972 when Rory was working as a DJ in Amsterdam, he and Iris were called home after news that their father had died. While Rory was at home comforting his mother, he overdosed on a mixture of sleeping pills and alcohol, and died on 28th September 1972. His mother Vi, consumed with grief after losing her husband and son, took her own life. Some have speculated that Rory also deliberately took his own life, but his brother-in-law Shane Fenton was convinced Rory’s death was unintentional:

“Rory became very ill. He had a chest condition which meant he couldn’t breathe properly. He found it difficult to sleep. so he’d take his pills with a drop of Scotch which doped him completely. At the post-mortem it was established that he hadn’t taken enough pills to kill himself. It had been nothing more than a case of trying to get some kip, but because he was so weak, his body couldn’t handle it. He died in the night and his mother found him. She must have felt that she’d lost everything. I think she took an overdose, but I’m convinced that Rory didn’t. When you’ve known somebody long enough, you know whether they’re going to do it or not. The whole thing was an accident.”

In a very short time, Iris had lost her father, her brother and her mother. But she was resilient. After her divorce from Shane Fenton/Alvin Stardust in the mid 1970s, she remarried in 1983, and worked as a dance and drama teacher. Her two sons with Fenton have both excelled, in very different ways.

Their older son, Shaun Fenton, went to Haberdashers’ Aske’s School and Keble College in Oxford, where he obtained an MA in Philosophy, Politics and Economics. He was headteacher at Sir John Lawes School and Pate’s Grammar School, and is now headteacher at Reigate Grammar School, where his biography on the school website modestly ignores his distinguished musical lineage. He was awarded the OBE in 2020 for his services to education.

Their younger son, Adam Fenton, is the drum’n’bass and hip hop producer and DJ Adam F, who was a fixture in the lower reaches of the UK singles charts for a few years from 1997.

How little I knew, as I recoiled from this unexpectedly close contact, about the lady on my lap: her ringside seat at the birth of the biggest band in history, who she had known, who she had loved, and the personal tragedy she had come through. Looking back, I feel honoured.