Memories of Big Carry On for Bernice

Life didn't get much better than this. Fresh from being crowned as Stourbridge Jubilee Queen, 16-year-old Bernice Fairman was whisked on a VIP tour of the famous Pinewood Studios and entertained by the big film stars of the time.

Memories came flooding back when she saw a picture of herself with Carry On stars Barbara Windsor and Kenneth Williams in the Express & Star last week.

Bernice Grindley is one of several readers who came forward after we appealed for information about a series of old pictures which will feature in an exhibition at Himley Hall over Easter.

Former Express & Star photographer Graham Gough will be displaying a series of pictures spanning his 57-year career in a month-long show starting on April 3 at Himley Hall, and was seeking to find details about four of them which had been lost in the mists of time.

Bernice, now 48, first found out about our appeal when a friend rang to say she had seen her picture in the Express & Star.

"She recognised me, so I can't have changed that much," she says. "My son has been joking that I looked older then than I do now." Now married to Robert, the couple, from Greyhound Lane, Stourbridge, have a 27-year-old son Russell, and a 26-year-old daughter Donna.

As well as meeting Kenneth Williams and Barbara Windsor, she also remembers chatting with David Tomlinson and Bonnie Langford, who were making the film Wombling Free at the time.

"Barbara Windsor and Kenneth Williams were very good company, they gave up a lot of their time for me," she recalls. "We were doing the can-can, kicking our legs in the air." The tour, organised by the Odeon cinema, was presented to her at the Dudley Press Ball where she was invited as a guest after winning the Stourbridge Jubilee Queen title.

The mystery of two men with boxing champion Freddie Mills was solved by Bill Porter, who recognised it as having been taken on a visit to the Revo electrical works in Tividale, where he worked as a salesman in the late 1950s.

"I think the man on the left was his manager Ted Broadribb, while the man on the right was Revo's managing director Dudley Felton." Mr Felton was also recognised by his former secretary Vera Randle.

Two callers identified a severely-damaged church as St Michael's and All Angels' in Caldmore, Walsall, which had been hit by a fire in 1964. Wendy Stone, whose father Harold Hinton was the verger at the time, remembers worshippers having to use a nearby chapel.

Cecil Shaw recognised the photograph of two women digging in a churchyard as his aunt Ethel Roberts, and his cousin Lynne.

Mr Shaw recognised the church as St James's and said it was in Pensnett rather than the Eve Hill area of Dudley as Graham thought.