South Shields actress and entertainer Helen Russell who performed in WW2 troupe ENSA dies aged 100

A North East actress and entertainer who was one of the last links to an elite Second World War performance troupe has died aged 100.

Helen Russell, from South Shields, reached her milestone birthday in May and was still entertaining and writing poetry a couple of weeks before her peaceful death last week, her family said.

Helen Hillcoat, whose stage name was Helen Russell, was born on 30 May 1924, and was one of the few surviving members of Entertainments National Service Association (ENSA), which formed during the Second World War to entertain military personnel between 1939 and 1945.

Joining ENSA as a 15-year-old, she toured England, Scotland and Ireland, singing and dancing.

Born in London, off Oxford Street, and near the London Palladium, young Nellie Torry, as she was christened, would wait at stage door to get the autographs of the great stars of the day.

"I was bitten by the showbiz bug as a young girl and bought The Stage every week," Helen previously said. "Fortunately I could sing and dance well, so I was able to follow my dreams."

Helen started her career aged eight and performed in her first professional pantomime (Dick Whittington) at the Winter Gardens in Morecambe when she was only 14.

During the Second World War, Helen married Colin Hillcoat, who ran a dance hall in Belfast.

“It was an exciting time there, too," said Helen. "Joseph Locke was a personal friend of Colin and I got to sing with him at the club.”

At the end of the war, Helen and Colin returned to South Shields, Colin's home town, where she has been an adopted Sand-dancer since 1946.

In 1947 their daughter Beverly was born and Helen spent time caring for her while Colin ran a grocery store in Fatfield, Washington.

In the 1950s, Helen kept her hand in showbiz, singing at church events and, as a member of the South Shields Amateur Operatic Society, playing many roles, including Annie Oakley in Annie Get Your Gun.

A friend who performed in working men's clubs with an entertainment troupe heard Helen sing and invited her to step in when he needed an artiste.

"I seemed to be well received and from there I became an artist in my own right, singing and dancing throughout the region at working men's clubs," she said.

She played these venues throughout the 1950s and 1960s and it was not until the 1970s that she got an agent.

"We didn't have a telephone in the house so I'd take calls on the local public telephone box to tell me where I was playing that night," said Helen, a life-long member of the union Equity.

"Sometimes it meant getting a bus 12 miles to Newcastle and then catching another to, say, Stanley in County Durham, or Ashington in Northumberland, a further 15 miles away, then heading back after 10pm - all the time humping my guitar and other equipment. I had no helpers."

Helen has previously said it was a very different time as a woman entertainer.

"On a Sunday afternoon when I played the clubs I'd often be asked by the concert chairman if I was the stripper," she continued. "There weren't many solo women entertainers in those days.

"Mind you, the strippers came on, took their clothes off, got dressed and then travelled to the next gig by taxi. They were well paid and could do two or three spots in clubs from mid-day to 2pm.

"Muggins here had to sing and dance and then pack away my guitar and equipment. I could only do one performance."

Working in the clubs in the 1960s, meant changes for her. She explained: "When guitar groups became popular in the 60s I had to stop dancing on stage because of all the leads and wires.

“That's when I took up the guitar and later started writing my own songs.”

Fame led to her doing a television advert with David Macbeth for Sunderland-based Vaux beers in 1965 and appearing on variety shows filmed at Tyne Tees Television, including a double act with Bill Pertwee of Dad's Army and working with Dick Emery.

She also had many appearances at Balmbras, the music hall made famous in Newcastle thanks to Geordie Ridley's song The Blaydon Races.

Helen was a contemporary of North East legends Bobby Thompson, Bobby Pattinson and Dick Irwin, all of whom she knew well and regularly worked with.

Her plethora of on-screen appearances include When The Boat Comes In, Supergran, Catherine Cookson adaptations, Highway (during which she sang with Harry Seacombe), Auf Wiedersehen Pet, The Boys From The Blackstuff, Tracey Beaker, Emmerdale, The Fast Show and the film Billy Elliot.

Helen gained a new layer of younger fans when she appeared in a music video as a witch with the famous heavy-metal band Venom for their song Nightmare.

On stage, Helen's credits include performing in her self-penned plays Off the Shelf (2007) and Keep Calm and Carry On (2011) and, which were professionally produced at the Customs House in South Shields.

She also worked many years doing Theatre in Education (TIE) around South Tyneside and Sunderland, and loved working with the children. She also did various plays with The Open Clasp Theatre Company in Newcastle.

Helen was also an original Dirty Duster, a play which transferred to Newcastle's Theatre Royal and sold out twice. It continues to tour the UK and internationally 22 years later.

Helen was still performing in the Dirty Dusting UK tour until the age of 90.

Ed Waugh, playwright and co-writer with Trevor Wood, of Dirty Dusting, said: "I had long known who Helen was - everyone connected to the entertainment industry in the North East did - but I only got to know her after she performed in Dirty Dusting in 2003.

"We became firm friends. An intended half-hour "pop-in" visit to her house would end up being an hour and a half or two hours. She always had new stories to tell and was always writing or performing.

"We'd often go for coffee and she'd tell me about her recent theatre trips to London or elsewhere in the North East.

“If I bumped into her in the street she's start dancing and singing. Helen was just a fantastic person.”

He continued: "She was hospitalised with pneumonia up to a day before "Helen at 100", a celebration of her showbiz life at The National Centre of the Written Word to celebrate her centenary.

"True to form, the show must go on. Helen spoke for an hour, regaling everyone in the packed room with her hilarious anecdotes and songs.

"She and Jean Southern, aged 99, also an original Dirty Duster, sang Helen's show-stopping song You Never Get Out Alive. It brought the house down."

Ed added: "I visited Helen at her house a month ago and she told me how she was writing sonnets. She'd started re-reading Shakespeare to brush up on, and learn, the craft. Helen then regaled me for 20 minutes with her new work, eight new poems. She was amazing!"

Helen was also part of the hugely popular Angels Of The North variety group with the two other original Dirty Dusters - Jean Southern and the late Gwen Doran.

Her regular successful contributions to BBC Radio 4's Poetry Corner sparked Helen's creative desire and she became enthused about writing poetry in the 1970s, a genre she returned to during the Covid lockdown.

Helen's daughter Beverly, 77, said: "Poetry became mum's new love, she loved the written word, although not an avid book reader, she would rather compose her own work."

Following the success of her book of poetry Oh! Life is a Joy, launched as she turned 100 in May, Helen was also working on a new book of poems for children which she hoped would be a fitting focal point for her 101st birthday and a legacy for her beloved grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Beverley added: "I always knew my mum was popular. She would be stopped in the street, and often we would go to Marine Park in South Shields, her favourite place to sit in the cafe and watch the swans on the lake and the children in the playground, and many times someone would come over and say how they saw her in a play or a show.

"The response to mum's plays, songs and poetry and now her passing, has been overwhelming. We are a very close family, and we all take great comfort in the outpouring of love from everyone around us.

“To me, she was just my mum: a loving, wonderful woman who loved her family and had many close friends. She also happened to have a remarkable career.”

Her granddaughter Kate added: "I, we all, will miss her."

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