Mr Starlight. Laurie Graham

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      But everything George had was from Garrards, top of the line, in beautiful silver-bronze display cases.

      Sel said, ‘How about on loan, like a library book?’

      George said he didn’t really see how he could, considering the value of the goods.

      ‘Unless somebody stands surety for you,’ he said. ‘How about your uncle? Won’t he treat you?’

      I always had a more mature appearance than Sel.

      Sel said, ‘What, Uncle Cled? No, he’s as tight as a duck’s arse. Oh well, I’ll just have to hope nobody notices I’m wearing the same old studs.’

      That was when Hubert Conroy stepped forward. ‘Why if it ain’t Mr Starlight!’ he said. ‘Can I help? My money any good around here?’

      So Hubert left a precautionary deposit with Austin Reed and Sel walked out with a set of lapis lazuli shirt studs and a new name. Hubert only called him ‘Mr Starlight’ because he couldn’t remember his name. All he knew was he’d seen him in the Starlight Club. But anyway, it stuck. Ever after that Sel styled himself ‘Mr Starlight’.

      Hubert said, ‘Come and meet Kaye. She’s in the Garden Lounge ordering tea and pastries.’

      Hubert was a retired refrigeration tycoon from Los Angeles, California. He was a big man, very friendly considering his wealth, and he knew what he liked. ‘It’s a pleasing thing’, he said, ‘to find a vocalist singing tuneful songs and not ignoring his audience. Eye contact, that’s what I like. There are too many performers who act like they’re singing to an empty room, never mind the poor Joe who’s paid for his seat. And enthusiasm is another thing I like. Me and Kaye have seen big names and there are some come out on the podium and look like they’re doing you a biggest favour just being there. You this boy’s manager?’

      ‘No …’ I said.

      He said, ‘Well, you should be. I know a good thing when I see it and he’ll go far. Have a pastry.’

      Kaye wanted to know all our history and Sel was never afraid to embellish a story, or ‘make it more entertaining’ as he put it. How we’d grown up barefoot and starving. How we’d had to sing for our supper even when we were nibs, and then the Virgin Mary had visited him on his deathbed and told him to head for America.

      I said, ‘That story better not get back to Mam. You’ll get a clip round the ear.’ We’d always had shoes and three meals a day.

      He laughed. He said, ‘It won’t get back to her and anyway, I was just giving value. Fans want a story. Rags to riches or riches to rags. Mam’d understand that.’

      We were walking aft along the sheltered promenade when we ran smack into Milligan, the Ship’s Writer. He never forgot a face. ‘Well, what have we here?’ he said. ‘Two lost boys.’

      You got a warning the first time you went out of bounds. After that they sacked you.

      Sel said, ‘I’m glad I’ve run into you. I’ve been thinking, now I’ve replaced Glorette I should be getting my own cabin.’

      Milligan looked at him. He said, ‘On this occasion I’m going to pretend I’m deaf as well as blind, Mr Boff, but it’ll only be temporary, the same as your promotion, so don’t depend on being so lucky a second time.’

      Sel never batted an eye. ‘Temporary!’ he said. ‘We’ll see about that.’

      His name was on the agenda they printed every day. The first time it said ‘Tonight in the Starlight Club, Sel Boff replaces Glorette Gilder who is indisposed’. The next day it said ‘Midnight in the Starlight Club, Selwyn, with the Lionel Truman Band’. The last day it said, ‘Au Revoir Gala with Mr Starlight, Midnight in the Veranda Grill’.

      I said, ‘You must be driving them round the bend in the print room.’

      ‘Not at all,’ he said. ‘I’ve brought a bit of interest and variety into their lives. And I’ve been talking to Lionel, too. I’m going to loosen things up. Take requests, talk to people. I’m not up there to see how fast I can race through the play list.’

      I said, ‘Well, while you’re redesigning the show, you might think of singing one of my compositions. That’d give the evening a bit of added interest.’

      ‘Such as?’ he said.

      I said, ‘How about “You’re the Vinegar on my Chips”?’

      ‘I don’t think so, Cled,’ he said. ‘I think it still needs work.’

      See, he was all for himself.

      He wore the blue lamé jacket for the Au Revoir, with the lapis studs in his shirt and he fetched Kaye Conroy up to the microphone, kidding her to do a daft old Max Miller song with him, ‘La-di-dah-di-dah’. Now there’s a song that needed further work. But he pulled it off, wisecracking between verses. He had them in stitches. And then he did a canny thing. He changed the mood. Number 22: ‘Till Then’. He played it straight to settle them down, and then he went roving, like he’d started doing at the Birmingham Welsh, casually looking for a place to perch. But I knew him. He’d already weighed up the scene. He knew exactly who to aim for. Mrs Gertie Walters, widow of Walters the suet king and worth a mint, but Sel didn’t pick her out because of that. He picked her because she was sitting on her own, looking wistful, and he took her hand and sang to her as if he was singing to our mam.

      Although there are oceans we must cross

      And mountains that we must climb

      I know every gain must have a loss

      So pray our loss is nothing but time

      Ooooh ooooh …

      He closed with ‘A Grand Night for Singing’, then straight into number 49, ‘We’ll Meet Again’ and there wasn’t a dry eye in the room.

      It was a grand night for singing, and for playing. I was proud to be there; proud to think he was family. I thought, ‘Perhaps he has got what he takes. If he can light up an agent the way he’s lit up this crowd …’ This wasn’t the Nechells Non-Political. This was Lord and Lady Delacourt, and Aly Kahn, plus a very big name in suet.

      We didn’t go to bed. We never did before a New York docking. Mother Carey made us smoked salmon and scrambled eggs, and then we went up to the dog deck to watch the pilot take us through the Narrows. There was the kind of mist you get before a hot day so they blasted the foghorn a few times, bottom A. I loved the sound of it.

      I said, ‘So today we go looking for an agent.’

      ‘Correct,’ he said. ‘Hubert sees me in musical shows for family audiences. Hubert’s got contacts in Los Angeles.’

      Hubert Conroy giving him this inflated opinion of himself didn’t help Sel strike the right attitude when we went to sign off. Glorette Gilder had got a clean bill of health for the next sailing.

      Massie said, ‘You can put your iridescent garments back in mothballs, Selwyn.’

      Sel said, ‘You’re not having her back, after the way I performed?’

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