by Les Dawson
Tracy and I were wrapped up in each other and our unborn child was the bond. We would drive through the New Forest and drink in the beauty of it all, babbling on about what names we should choose for the baby. We did exactly the same as we rambled along the beach and ditto in the dressing-room.
It was quite the nicest summer season we had spent. The cast of the play – Peter Goodwright, Ron Aldridge, Michael Cotteril, Brian Godfrey, Janet Eddis and Tara Ward, not forgetting our company manager Jon Sowden who doubled as the inept photographer – were a joy to work with, so a big thank you all round.
The hazy early summer ambled by, dappling the blue sea that licked the broad blankets of sand and sent mirrors of warmth bouncing off the white-walled hotels and fine houses of a bygone time.
To me, Bournemouth is a gracious elderly dowager who hasn’t quite come to grips with the modern age. I sensed an air of exquisite decay in the resort that was almost a time warp that refused to forget the Edwardian era.
Our happiness knew no bounds and the knowledge of our love growing within Tracy welded us ever closer. The specialist in Bournemouth looked after Tracy with a fatherly eye and all was well as the summer edged into middle August. All of a sudden we experienced weather changes: furious gales humped the sea into small mountains and pelmets of sudden rain hung from darkening skies. Then we received a jolt. During a routine examination, the specialist frowned as he explored Tracy’s abdomen … ‘Baby seems small for the length of your pregnancy, my dear, and the heartbeat is faint.’
As he spoke my heart lurched. ‘Is it serious doctor?’ I managed to stammer. He gave me a shadow of a smile and launched into a maze of medical jargon that I didn’t hear: all I could think about was the baby. We left the hospital in a daze. Were we to be robbed of the child we yearned for? We wept quietly.
We moved out of the house in Christchurch and booked into the Royal Bath Hotel for the last ten days of the season. I wanted Tracy, who was looking tired and pale, to have complete rest. She slept and ate well; I made her stay in bed whilst I went to the theatre, and within five days she was looking so much better. She had a scan at the Poole hospital and, much to our relief, the baby had grown.
Home again and it was a delight to wander through our recently redecorated house. Bournemouth now seemed a hundred years ago as we snuggled close together with me hoping for the baby inside Tracy to kick. The nursery had been completed with the help of our wonderful lady, Jean, who looks after us and the stage was set for the much wanted infant.
Tracy and I have known unhappiness and our love has been forged in adversity and condemnation, but we have emerged from it all with a love so strong it could be likened to steel; now we looked forward to the embodiment of that love.…
They say the age of miracles is passed, but on Saturday 3 October 1992 at 2.35 pm in the delivery room at Saint Mary’s Maternity Hospital in Manchester I saw such a miracle when I witnessed the slightly premature birth of our daughter, Charlotte Emily Lesley, who struggled into the world a tiny 5lb 6oz to enrich the lives of us both. By doing so she has welded a ring of happiness that will encircle our destiny until the end of time. She arrived fourteen days ahead of schedule and thus gave us an extra fortnight of joy.
This clown will cry no more.
Plate Section
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In my rôle as Nurse Ada, note the necessary props. Some people firmly believed that my interpretation of a woman was enough to cure the average peeping Tom.
6 May 1989. Tracy becomes my wife in a moving and warm ceremony that held laughter and joy in the ritual. My son, Stuart, and stepson, Richard, look on approvingly as the clergyman, Mr Baker, scores with yet another great gag – my agent offered him six weeks on the pier at Cromer.
Well, that’s that, my turtle dove. Now, about the honeymoon night … even thinking about it has brought colour to my cheeks.
My bride and I enjoying our honeymoon in dear old Scotland. We had a week out of time, a castle, a piper, the splash of salmon and the crash of stags in the forest deep. We did a lot of other things, but that’s our business!
Man’s best friend is a St Bernard pup … until it reaches the size of our Delilah. Thumper and Patch, the rabbits, have just tabled a motion, can you blame ’em?
Time off for pleasure in the Isle of Man with Chris de Burgh and Norman Wisdom at the opening of Kevin Woodward’s restaurant. I did once have a photo taken without a drink in my hand!
I always concluded every pantomime by saying: ‘You’ve been a great audience and would you please put your hands together for a visiting celebrity … the one and only … Henry Cooper.’ Oh, sorry, missis! Without my knowing, Henry had crept into the theatre in Southampton for our final performance of the panto and blew the gag! It’s a good job for him that I’d lost my shorts and gum shield.
Switching on the Blackpool illuminations. What an honour – I would have done it for nothing. Wait a minute, I did!
The cast of the play Run For Your Wife. We posed for this during an extensive tour – we’d been on the road so long that we all suffered from a tarmac rash.
Tracy and I after we had just been told the great news that we were expecting a baby. And I thought Tracy was suffering from excess wind. Our joy knew no bounds….