Joan Turner

Someone sent me this recording of Joan Turner on cassette tape many years ago and I've just found it again. Not really my cup of tea but remember her from the radio and TV in the 50's and 60's when she was still a big star in the U.K. Sadly she fell on hard times and now lives in sheltered accomodation in Surrey I believe and planning on writing her autobiography which includes her affairs with Terry Thomas, Tony Hancock and other show biz stars of the time.

Wikipedia says-

"Joan Turner (born Belfast, Northern Ireland, November 24, 1922) is a comedienne and singer who, in the 1960s and 1970s was a major star in the UK. She had her own television show, topped the bill at the London Palladium, appeared in the 1963 Royal Variety Show and topped the bill over The Beatles She appeared in the London stage musical Oliver! for two years, was romantically linked to Peter Sellers and was one of the highest-paid women in British showbiz.

In later years, it was reported that, after two divorces, she "drank and gambled away her fortune"and she was declared bankrupt in 1977.

In 1991, she was a guest of honour at the Queen Mother's 90th birthday celebrations. and, in the early 1990s, attempting to revive her career, she had a role as Auntie Lou in the Channel 4 series Brookside and a cameo role in the BBC TV series EastEnders.In 1996, she went to California to attempt to give it "one more try".

In March 2001, the Sunday Mirror newspaper reported that she was living "among the winos, drug addicts and down-and-outs in Beverly Hills, Los Angeles... dressed in charity shop clothes and surrounded by her worldly possessions - with barely a penny to her name." She was interviewed in situ as a "bag lady" on Sunset Boulevard in the August 2001 Channel 4 documentary Celebrity: The Rise and Fall and it was reported elsewhere that she had spent five years as a "down-and-out" in LA. Later that year, she returned to the UK."


Joan Turner - Live