A memory my dear mother always tried to put behind her, but which became something of a family legend, was the day she took me to see a striptease show.

That wasn’t the plan, of course. I was still at junior school when she decided to treat me to the Saturday matinée at the Empire, the Leeds theatre at the heart of Briggate until 1961. (The site is now occupied by the Harvey Nichols department store.) Variety shows were a big thing in those days with bills including singers, dancers, jugglers, acrobats, comedians and so on. Nothing was said when she bought our tickets, although she did admit afterwards to wondering why I was the only child in the audience that afternoon.

Imagine her shock when a fan dancer glided onto the stage as the star performer! In truth, certainly compared to what’s on offer nowadays, it was all quite innocent. From memory, it centred around banter between the lady on stage and an unseen man, the sentence, “Couldn’t you take off a little more?” figuring prominently. I doubt whether anyone saw much in the way of forbidden flesh, as the fans were large and expertly manoeuvred, but I was fascinated and Mum must have looked like a rabbit caught in the headlights. Seated as we were in the middle of a row, we couldn’t leave until the end of the show, at which point Mum took my hand and we scuttled off, she hoping that no one we knew would see us leaving the theatre.

Later on, while I was choosing some new books, she expressed her dismay to Frances, the Children’s Librarian, who laughed heartily and said, “But surely you’d heard of Phyllis Dixey?” Mum hadn’t, of course, and must only have glanced at the advertising poster outside the Empire that afternoon. It was years before she saw the funny side of the incident. In fact, I’m not sure that she ever really did.