Cyril Fletcher Cyril Fletcher was a famed comedian, television personality, entrepreneur and writer of ‘Odd Odes’ who later wrote many gardening books. Torbay Civic Society Chairman, Ian Handford tells us more.
C
yril would first visit Devon at the age of eighteen but it was not until he and his wife Betty moved to Torquay for eighteen months in the early 80s that he turned up at my business premises, the Adding and Calculating Bureau in St Marychurch. Here, one of my staff, Mrs Mary Hutchison, helped him with his correspondence using our secretarial services. Cyril Trevellian Fletcher was born at Watford Hertfordshire June 25th 1913 into a family who owned an early Morgan three wheeler. This would often convey his father a lawyer and the family around the Wiltshire Downs, to Bath, Bradford on Avon and even distant Dorset. His maternal grandfather was John Ginger who worked at the Berskins Brewery in Watford High Street. John owned land where Cyril had his first taste of matters of the earth, spending hours watching his grandfather dig, manure, plant and harvest goodies to be eaten or displayed later. These experiences fired his imagination, which led to him writing extensively on gardening. His paternal grandfather was George Fletcher owner of a grocery shop in the High Street, where Bottoms the butchers and Butchers the opticians traded; these names seemed most odd to Cyril - the idea of odd-odes perhaps in embryo. At the age of seven Cyril attended Woodside School North Finchley until the family moved on to Trowbridge Wiltshire, where his father was appointed Town Clerk. While attending Trowbridge Dame School, Cyril could never have envisaged that when he was an adult he would portray a ‘Dame’ in panto. Now his father moved again becoming Clerk to Barnet Council; here in the midtwenties Cyril was installed at Friern Barnet Grammar School. Now he organised its concerts until at the age of seventeen he got his first job as a clerk at Scottish Union and National Insurance Company on a salary of £50 a
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year. From 1930 he studied drama at Guildhall School of Music & Drama every week while still a clerk by day. He organised the company’s annual dance and as an avid reader of poetry he discovered John Clare, John Masefield and William Wordsworth, following which his earliest odes appeared in an unofficial company magazine. We can never know why Cyril chose to come to the Ferry Hotel Dittisham to celebrate his 21st birthday but we do know that by the age of twenty-two he resigned his job to become a comedian. His initial break was in 1936 when BBC Radio hired him. This led to his first opportunity to perform live on stage courtesy of Greatrex Newman owner of the Fol de Rols summer show. Newman booked his new personality with a funny voice, to play at White Rock Pavilion, Hastings. His early success brought him two summer shows at Llandudno and, as radio was still his main medium, being ‘live-on-air’ was par for the course for Cyril. When attending interviews or rehearsals Cyril always turned out in a bowler hat, washed leather gloves and a rolled umbrella. Soon he was being recruited by theatres as distant as Plymouth in the south to Glasgow in Scotland. Forever in demand but always short of new material in 1938 Cyril recited an Edgar Wallace poem live on air. ‘Dreaming of Thee’ was an immediate hit and a newly discovered talent. Failing his medical in the Second World War (due to a mastoid operation) his stage career continued until eventually he met singer Betty Astell at a Charity Concert at Colston Hall Bristol. There supporting his bandmaster friend Henry Hall, he confided to Henry after the show that he was going to marry that beautiful singer Betty Astell - and later he did, on May 18th 1941. The newly-weds embarked on a six-month tour before moving to a new home at Welwyn Cottage, Hertfordshire. Now they spent four glorious years creating a garden of
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