PRETTY AS A PRIMROSE

PRIMROSE Pay was a friend to the stars when she worked as a glamorous hostess in clubs in Brighton.

Always looking like a movie star herself, Primrose was a poised and beautiful woman whose job was to entertain the customers who visited the clubs she worked in during more than thirty years in the business.

She knew the rich and famous on first-name terms and remembers dancing with actors Errol Flynn, Douglas Fairbanks Junior and Clark Gable, whom, she vividly recalls, had bad breath.

Now 84 and still putting on her make-up as soon as she gets up every day, Primrose leads a quiet life in a rest home in Hove.

But she was thrilled to discover she has not been forgotten after all these years.

Earlier this month Primrose was described as a popular bar-hostess in an Argus article recalling Brighton in the Fifties.

Reader Chris Horlock, from Shoreham, then sent the Argus an old postcard of Primrose pictured behind the bar of the Royal Standard pub and asked what had become of her.

Primrose, now a great grandmother, was surprised and delighted that people remembered her as blonde and glamorous after all these years.

She said: "I used to be quite famous, you know. I knew how to entertain people.

"I was a bit shocked when I read people still remembered me. It is pretty good to be remembered after 50 years.

"I suppose people have not forgotten me because I was a bit cheeky. I used to be beautiful and I was a wonderful dancer.

"I could tell jokes non-stop for two hours - and they were smutty."

Born in Brighton, Primrose Taylor, as she was then, was one of eight children.

She had no great ambitions when she left Pelham Street School at the age of 16. Her father was a publican and when a friend of his suggested Primrose start work as a hostess, she happily took the job.

Primrose, who describes herself as the black sheep in the family, won the Miss Southern Beauty title.

Dame Anna Neagle's husband, film producer Herbert Wilcox, who lived in Kemp Town, gave her a screen test but her parents refused to allow her to pursue movie stardom.

Over the following years she worked in more than a dozen clubs in Brighton and Hove. Many of the clubs were started by her husband, Lionel Pay, whom she married at the age of 33, and for several years the couple ran the Royal Standard.

She said clubs in those days were respectable places where members wore evening dress and treated her well.

Her job was to greet visitors at the door and then dance or chat to members.

She recalls: "I didn't earn a lot of money but I met some very famous people and many film stars.

"I made an impact on people. I was known as Primrose the hostess and everyone loved me.

"I always tried to look smart and glamorous and people used to say I looked like a film star.

"I became very famous during the war and I still get letters from all over the world from people I met 50 years ago. I saw it as my job to keep people smiling."

Primrose has fond wartime memories of working in the clubs in Brighton.

She said: "It was marvellous. You had the Blue Lagoon, opposite the King Alfred in Hove, the Clock Tower Club, Brighton Club, Jimmy's Club and the Stage Club. I worked in all of them.

"I had everything during the war. I would entertain the troops in the club but it was only the officers.

"I used to get stockings from the Americans and I remember an English officer asking if I wanted some bacon - and then bringing me a whole shoulder."

She last worked in a club in her fifties but gave it up to look after her sick widowed mother and never returned to the world of entertainment.

Primrose said: "My mother came first but I did miss it terribly.

"It is years since I have been in a club and I have missed the atmosphere. It was mostly gentlemen in those days, none of the riff-raff.

"I always felt safe, even going home at 5am. But they are not the same now. Clubs used to be marvellous places but now they are rubbish."

A smart appearance has always been a priority to Primrose and now she struggles not to feel depressed about her ill health.

She may be confined to a wheelchair after suffering heart attacks and strokes but she still sparkles at people who call to see her at the Byron Rest Home, in Vallance Road, Hove, where old friends regularly visit.

Every day she makes up her face with her bright blue eye-shadow and brilliant red lipstick and neatly styles her hair.

She said: "I still had blonde curls until three years ago. I want to be made up when I go to my grave."

She can still recall her daily beauty routine going back over the years.

She said: "It was very important to look smart. I was a natural blonde but during the war, when it was hard to get peroxide, I used stomach powder to bleach my hair.

"When there were difficulties getting stockings I would tan my legs with coffee and use a pencil to draw a line up the back of my leg.

"I always had scarlet nails and red lipstick, the redder the better."

She clearly loved her work and has no regrets.

She said: "I look back and think that I made such a lot of friends over the years. It was part of my job to have a smile on my face but I was always happy.

"But I do think I look terrible now compared to how I used to look."

Granddaughter Tracey Brown, 30, of Patcham, said: "She loves the attention and we are all so pleased for her that people still remember her."

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.