About Us
Angie Davidson Interviews Helen Shapiro
One of our Patrons is the singer Helen Shapiro. In 1961, as a fourteen year old schoolgirl, she scored a top 3 chart hit with her first record 'Don't treat me like a child'. By the end of that year she went on to have several other top 10 & top 20 hits such as 'You don't know' and perhaps her most famous song 'Walking back to Happiness'.She appeared many times as a London Palladium headliner and topped the bill in a nationwide tour with the Beatles as her support act! Helen said "we could see they were going to be big but we never realised quite how big!" Apparently all the performers on the tour used to sing together on the coach with the Beatles doing back up vocals!
During this time she won many awards including the Variety Club's Silver Heart as the 'Most Promising Newcomer', the Melody Maker Award as 'Britain's Most Popular Female Vocalist' and was runner up in 'Top World Female Singer'. By the age of 19 she'd sold millions of records world-wide and had three silver discs to her credit.
Later on in her career she moved into her favourite kind of music, jazz, doing many concerts with trumpeter Humphrey Lyttleton & his band and also with her own band. Helen's career has spanned many areas including theatre with musicals such as 'Oliver' in the West End of London. She even appeared in the soap opera Albion Market for several episodes!
At The end of 2002 Helen decided to quit the concert circuit figuring that 42 years was enough. She wanted to concentrate on her Gospel Outreach evenings in a more full time capacity, although she still does the occasional TV and radio programme.
Helen told us "I was delighted to be asked if I would become a Patron of the St. Thomas' Lupus Trust. I already had a little knowledge of lupus due to the fact that I had lost a cousin to it in 1963. She was just twenty.
My cousin's sister was also diagnosed as having lupus a few years ago. This came as a great shock because none of us were aware of the positive treatment that had developed over the intervening years. She received treatment at St. Thomas' and the disease is under control although, of course there are flare ups.
If it wasn't for the dedicated work of the doctors and researchers such as those at St. Thomas' the picture for my cousin would have been much darker".
