LITMIR.BIZ

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the fabric and when she started the machine one day, a rat suddenly ran across the factory floor. Una lost concentration and the saw cut off the top of her finger. Blood was spurting everywhere, all over the material, and everybody was screaming.

      Mrs Cullen came out of the office and asked what all the fuss was about. ‘Una’s cut the top of her finger off,’ I told her. ‘Very careless,’ Mrs Cullen said. ‘She has destroyed all this material.’ Mrs Cullen stopped the cost of the fabric from Una’s wages, but nobody was surprised – that was how things were in those days. Una went to the hospital that day and she never came back. After that, I couldn’t bear working there any more.

      I was restless and I suppose my family wanted me to make use of my talents, such as they were. It was my Uncle Jimmy, who was walking behind me one day, who suggested it. He poked me in the back with his walking stick as I slouched along. ‘Be proud of your height,’ he said to me. ‘Stand up straight, Rosemary.’ Even to this day, I have to remember to make a conscious effort to stand tall. My mother agreed with him about my posture and that’s how it was that she enrolled me with the Miriam Woodbyrne Modelling Agency in South Frederick Street to learn deportment. I was taught how to glide rather than walk, swivel my head, pose for photographers and make best use of my long legs, skinny body and blonde hair.

      Miriam was a lovely lady, very motherly and caring, and gave me great encouragement. It was a case of being in the right place at the right time because Christian Dior brought a collection to Brown Thomas in Dublin called the New Look. The dresses had billowing skirts, tiny wasp waists and soft rounded shoulders. Adrienne Ring, another model, and I were the only Irish girls at the agency with the right figure for his clothes. Adrienne was beautiful. She was dark, I was blonde, so we looked well together, and Dior brought some of his own models from Paris as well. I loved modelling but didn’t realise at the time that this experience would be so beneficial to my career in the motor industry. At 18 years of age I thought that fashion was going to be my life. I had no idea that one day I would be sitting on top of the bonnet of a car, flashing my legs for the photographers.

      My mother was a very good dressmaker and she suggested that we open a little boutique together. It wasn’t like the boutique dress shops you see today – we didn’t sell dresses off the peg, but designed and made dresses to order. I was in good company as Ib Jorgensen was also designing dresses in a similar set-up in Dublin.

      Our shop was upstairs at 23 South Anne Street in Dublin and had a back room, which we furnished with a lovely antique desk and big ornate standing mirrors, where clients came for fittings. The front room was where we did the cutting and sewing for the bespoke garments. Dad’s best friend financed the setting up of the business and on the first day we opened he took us for a celebratory meal in the Royal Hibernian Hotel, then one of the most fashionable places to eat in Dublin. I ate unfamiliar food and drank champagne for the first time that day; that night, I was very sick and vowed never to drink again!

      We employed a wonderful machinist, as well as Betty, who came to work for us as a finisher and a go-for to assist us. Betty was about my age, we were both young and innocent and mad keen on pop music. We loved The Beatles but I am a little embarrassed to say that the only singer that ever really got to me was Adam Faith, a British teen idol from London, who was in the charts non-stop. He had developed this sexy way of singing, pronouncing every word in a distinctive way, which sent me, and thousands of other girls, crazy. When he came to Dublin, Betty and I went to the Theatre Royal to see him. There were the usual supporting acts but I can’t remember any of them; I was impatient to see Adam, everyone else was irrelevant. When he finally appeared on stage the audience erupted and sang along to his latest hit: ‘What Do You Want If You Don’t Want Money?’ Betty and I knew what we wanted!

      We found out that he was going to appear at the Pavilion Ballroom in Blackrock, County Louth, and that was when Betty and I became groupies. I drove us to Blackrock in great excitement. When Adam came on the stage and I saw him up close, just a few feet away, he was even more adorable; he was gorgeous, tiny but gorgeous. Betty and I stood close to the stage and somehow he noticed me – well, I suppose at 5’10”, with long legs, blonde hair, painted-on freckles and screaming into his face, he could hardly miss me. As he was leaving the stage, he came over, stood beside me and asked my name. I looked down at him – he was only up to my shoulder – and I stammered: ‘Rosie.’

      We went backstage afterwards and Adam and I got on very well. Mind you, he did most of the talking, because I was breathless and, in any case, had nothing to say. We just sort of clicked, as they say. I know now that Adam was a notorious womaniser but at the time I imagined he only had eyes for me. He said how much he loved Irish girls and their red hair, which upset me a bit, and I decided there and then that I would become a redhead. He went back to England and he telephoned from time to time and sent me postcards.

      Adam was playing Dick Whittington in the Wimbledon Theatre later that year and asked would I like to come to the pantomime to see him. Would I what? I was surprised that my mother made no objection and she said I could stay with my sister Pamela, who was by then married and living in London. So I dyed my hair and discovered, much to my annoyance, that you need a special complexion for bright red hair, which I didn’t have, but the damage was done. I made a skin-tight green dress to get the real Irish look and made sure to wear dead flat shoes. At the time I thought I was the bee’s knees, but looking back I’m not so sure.

      The tickets were there at the box office with a little note saying that I should come backstage after the show and we could go for something to eat. The theatre was magnificent, all brown and rose-pink with hints of cream and gold, a bit like the Theatre Royal in Dublin. As I looked around me I thought I was in heaven, and when I sat in my seat in the stalls and he blew me a kiss, I was ready to pass out.

      When I went backstage, he introduced me to Eve Taylor, his manager, and we were supposed to go out to dinner but he was too tired. He was living with Eve and her husband at the time and it was taken for granted that I would stay with them. When we got back to the house, we had a drink and then Adam said he was going to bed, which was understandable, considering he had spent most of the evening onstage with a cat, trying to become the Lord Mayor of London.

      We went upstairs and he brought me into the bedroom and I realised then that we were meant to be sleeping together in the same bed. He got undressed and got into the bed and was fast asleep in no time. I took off my shoes and maybe I might have undressed but I had on one of those waspie things – waist clinchers, they were called – and I didn’t want him to see me in that. I climbed on to the bed, and as I lay there it dawned on me that, although he was asleep now, eventually he was going to wake up. I wasn’t ready for what might happen when he did. I waited, thinking what to do, and then made my decision: I crept downstairs, opened the hall door, never thinking there would be an alarm, and left the house behind me with the bells ringing in my ears. I didn’t care, I was out of there.

      I met Adam in London 30 years later. He had been in a TV series, Budgie, which was now a musical, playing at the Cambridge Theatre in the West End of London. A friend of mine told me she had heard that he had afternoon tea every day in Harvey Nichols and suggested we go along. He remembered me, or at least he said he did, but the magic was gone: we were both that much older and wiser.

      The boutique in South Anne Street continued to attract custom, although I felt we could do better. When we received an order from Cutex, the nail polish company, who were bringing out a new shade of pink, I was delighted. They had heard about us and asked me to make a dress in exactly the same colour as the polish. This was just the kind of publicity we needed, and the business flourished after that.

      In celebration of the success of the company, for my 21st birthday present my father decided to drive us to Spain. It was my first time on the continent and I was very excited – I didn’t realise at the time that driving the roads of Europe would be something I was to become very familiar with. We stayed in Sitges, a historic town on the Mediterranean coast, where the beaches were wonderful. It was so different from Ireland and I loved it.

      The following year, my good friend, Mairéad Whelan, and I decided to go on our own. I met Mairéad through rugby. Her father, who was President of the Old Belvedere Rugby Club, got us tickets for the matches

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