Great. Well. I’ll buy that. Except that it never did. The nearest she ever got to Shaftesbury Avenue was the De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill-on-sea, and the Male Comic got the billing. For all the audiences knew, she might just as well have used the name on her passport. Jessie Pollock.

‘We won’t call anyone Mummy or Daddy in this household: it’s out of date. Cissy. I’m Decca to you as I am to my friends. It’s friendlier. Less ageing.’

So that was that. I didn’t give a bugger anyway. Called her Mum behind her back. Couldn’t call her ‘Decca’ at school, for Christ’s sake; they’d have thought I was talking about a gramophone record.

He sat upright, lit a cigarette, swung off the bed, stepped lightly down the little steps, stood for a moment in the middle of the room, hands thrust into the front pockets of his jeans. High hopes. But they didn’t work after all: they hardly ever do for actors, far too many of them tarting about for too few jobs. You’ve got to be extra special to break through. And she wasn’t. Wasn’t extra special enough. Or Dad. Poor Dad. God’s gift to womanhood without the ‘spark’. James Pollock changed to ‘Jeremy Steerforth’ overnight; and there they were, the golden pair, Jeremy Steerforth and Decca York on the threshold of the Sixties, with glamour, fame and glory ahead: hell-bent on tipping the Oliviers from their golden throne. At least she was, when the time came.

Except it never did. It was a paper-fire, giving a bright blaze for a short time and then just floating, drifting, ashes in a cool grate. As if nothing had ever been there. ‘The cold ashes of old dreams.’ I’ll be a fucking poet yet! And the running tape of woe!

‘We could have done it, we could have been there, right at the top of the bloody heap, only Jeremy hadn’t got the balls. He wouldn’t fight, like me: I was the leader, I went ahead, I pushed, I shoved, I sold. He didn’t want to work hard enough; and it’s all bloody work, striving, climbing, shoving, elbowing, clambering, kicking, stamping on the clawing little fingers on that ladder coming up behind you. But he didn’t want that way; thought he’d done it all after one bloody season at Stratford.