Cue for a leading role.....

Although both of them waved goodbye to their 80th birthdays some time ago, Bob and Eve Kelly remain a hale and bonny couple

Their sense of wellbeing is testimony to the invigorating powers of the life they have pursued.

Their years together (they have no children) have been spent in the embrace of luscious romance, gorgeous clothes, sumptuous dance numbers and storylines orchestrated by 21-piece orchestras. Life, in short, has been a musical.

Bob and Eve have been pillars of the local amateur operatic society world since just after the war. In 1948 they were instrumental in setting up the Little Theatre Club.

This year, in acknowledgement of their pioneering role, they were guests of honour at the club's 50th anniversary production, Some Like It Hot.

The Kellys' house in Thorpe Bay remains a haven of gracious living. Here, over an elegant tea, Bob and Eve talked about life and musicals, a subject on which they continue to hold strong and influential opinions.

"Not everyone agrees with me," Bob pronounces, "but I think all amateur shows now are under-rehearsed.

"The main companies put on two shows a year but they don't really have the charisma to throw it all together in six months.

"When we did our first show, No No Nanette, we rehearsed for 18 months. We worked at it until we were flawless."

If the chorus-line was well drilled, it was hardly surprising. The Little Theatre Company was founded in the aftermath of the Second World War, and probably the majority of them had seen military service.

Bob himself, still straight-backed and smartly dressed, served with the RAF during the war and brought notions of military orderliness to the ranks of the amateur operatic and dramatic societies.

"I'm a disciplinarian," he says. "I cringe if the curtain goes up and things aren't spot on.

"The company has got to be better than best. It's their duty to be perfect. They are taking money, after all."

Bob has not been frightened to give the company an earful of his displeasure when required. On one memorable occasion, a pair of suitcases formed the setpiece props for a hotel scene. A joker in the company filled these cases with bricks, and almost gave the leading man an on-stage rupture.

"That was WRONG," says Bob. "Fun, I know, but wrong. I didn't half give it to them, I can tell you." He sounds like nothing so much as a terrifying headmaster.

Just as much as today, the fortunes of Southend amateur musicals tended to be decided 40 miles to the west, in the City of London.

Pinstripe types found refuge from the ledger books in love-duets and can-cans. In consequence, the Square Mile seethed with Southend thespian politics. Bob himself was working at Lloyds in 1947 and the idea of the Little Theatre Company was concocted over a good City luncheon.

"We'd originally been members of the Westcliff Operatic Society," Bob recalls. Then came the putsch.

While Bob can't quite remember the details of the ferocious backstage politics of 50 years ago, he does remember that: "Members who dated from the pre-war period were all ousted off the committee.

"On hearing of this, some dozen or so members walked out in the middle of the AGM."

Amateur operatics and dramatics were no activity for the faint-hearted.

That fateful City lunch, shared by Bob and another mainstay of the Little Theatre, Eric Walker, came a few weeks later. "I said what a shame and waste of talent had resulted from that walk-out and as about a dozen members were involved, why not start our own society?"

With one major hiccup - when Bob and Eve went to work in America - the pair have been pillars of the Little Theatre ever since.

Bob served as chairman for many years, so it comes as something of a surprise to learn that he had absolutely no interest in performing.

"I might occasionally have helped to swell the chorus line," he accepts.

He recalls one occasion in particular when: "I started onstage as an admiral or general or something, then had to rush into the wings, change, and come straight out again at another level as a private!"

Bob had always been a man's man, with little time for the artificial world of the theatre.

A fine sportsman, he played for Hounslow Town football club and was on the books for Brentford. Spare moments through the summer were spent playing cricket and tennis.

This all changed the day in 1937 when he went for a drink at the Osterley Hotel in west London.

Eve Kelly recalls of that day: "I'd gone there with some other girls who liked dancing and suddenly this tall gentleman walked in. I walked straight up to him and said 'Would you like to dance?' "

Bob said that he couldn't dance. It was, however, a lady's excuse-me night, and Bob's friends leant on him very heavily. "You simply can't refuse her on a ladies' excuse-me night, it's not on," they told him.

And so it has been since then - the dancing Eve, with the more solid presence of Bob next to her.

They moved to the Southend area, where Bob says: "It really was the end of the line. I had my sporting activities, but I thought: I really should be interested in something for Eve to do and that I can do with her - and she's a good dancer."

At that stage they discovered the Westcliff Operatic Society. There was no question of Bob dancing a can-can on stage, but he realised immediately that "a successful company needs good organisation - I became interested in the ramifications of running a company, particularly the cost factor."

So while Eve danced the nights away in the chorus line to her heart's content, Bob would be backstage "keeping an eye on things in one way or another."

This was the pattern for the next 20 years. Then, in 1965 Bob was invited to take his Lloyds' experience to Boston, USA. Here he thrived as vice-president of an insurance company. However, amateur theatricals, stateside, were a different matter.

"We went to one rehearsal and we could scarcely believe the bad manners," he says. "They treated the chorus as canon-fodder, they'd shout things like 'Shut up at the back.' And of course, there was the accent. American intonations are not the best!"

So they came home. As Eve says: "You don't realise how important theatricals are until you've been away from them."

Not such a little Little Theatre company after all.

The stage was set for an enduring partnership - Bob and Eve Kelly

Picture: STEVE O'CONNELL

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