Family Histories: KKKK-Katy!

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Some of you who’ve been watching progress of the exhibition via my Facebook page, may have noticed occasional messages there from my cousin Katy. We are great chums, and have been since I was taken in by Katy’s parents, my aunt Amy and her husband J.L. Manning, so that l could attend the Italia Conti Stage School in Clapham North. The school didn’t board pupils, and I was too young to be living on my own. By the time I came to live with the Manning family in the 1960s, my lovely cousin Jane was a fashion model living in the U.S., but Katy, embarking on a career in the theatre, was still at home. (I shall be writing about Jane and my American family in a future post.)

Amy had been the youngest of eight siblings until Trevor turned up unexpectedly to surprise and inconvenience everyone, not least his parents, who’d thought that their child-rearing was over! Amy often told me that she and Trevor became close because her parents put her in charge of the late arrival to the family. Trevor admitted that while his mother adored and spoiled him, it was Amy who shouldered the day to day responsibilities of looking after him

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Trevor arrived when most of his siblings were already adults. Here he poses in a photographer’s studio set with his eldest brother Reg, just back from World War I

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Trevor turned out to be a mischievous boy, always getting into scrapes for which his sister was invariably held accountable. The other siblings were all either adults or getting that way, and he explained to me that his relationship with most of them was more akin to their being his aunts and uncles. But Amy was definitely his big sister and protector, and that closeness lasted throughout their long lives.

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Trevor and Amy in the garden of Oak House, Llanfrechfa

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So it was to Amy that my dad turned when I needed a place to live in London, and as had always been the case in his life, his big sister came up with the solution. Off I went with a suitcase to live with the Mannings in Dulwich, and just as Amy and Trevor had been close as siblings, so Katy and I became close cousins. Since then, despite the fact that life has taken us down divergent pathways… mostly on different continents… Katy and I have remained very close.

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And so we come to Jo Grant. Jo Grant was a significant role in an iconic TV series with an iconic leading man, and as his companion for three years, Jo/Katy will forever be the iconic Doctor’s ‘assistant’ of that time. Blonde and diminutive, with shaggy-cut hair, mini-skirts, thigh-boots, skinny bomber-jackets and trademark silver rings on every finger and thumb, Jo/Katy gamely chuckled and screamed her way through the Doctor Who universe!

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Jon and Katy

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These days I meet grown men that go misty-eyed and weak at the knees when they recall Jo Grant, and it tickles me that her creator is my cousin. It follows Katy everywhere, this adoration for a character that undoubtedly opened doors for her, but would become, as all such things must eventually become, something she had to distance herself from.

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I think Katy has balanced her life very well. She enjoyed… and continues to enjoy… a great post-Who career, and she has two wonderful children, Georgie and JJ. She attends the occasional convention and puts on the ‘Jo Grant’ show for the fans, and I think she relishes the weirdness of finding her younger-self reinvented as an action figure, in her own words, “in wrist-restraints under plastic”! Because Katy knows I am a geek at heart… with a ‘Big Bang Theory’ love of science-fiction and an undiminished delight in toys… she sent me a gift that has blown my socks off with happiness. I present to you, “little” Jo!

 

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Be still my beating heart.

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Below: Me, my sister Jacqui and Katy. London in the mid-1950s

Below: some time later! Georgie, Katy, Jack and me.

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