POP star Helen Shapiro gained an unexpected fan when she was invited to a school fete in Oxford.

She bowled over not only the pupils at Bayswater Secondary School at Headington but the headmaster as well.

Mr K M Gallop was so impressed with the teenage singing sensation that he praised her at the school prizegiving a week later.

He told parents and pupils: “I am not altogether ‘with it’, but she has a good voice and she is a young person of 15 with good manners.

“Her manner of leave-taking at the end of her visit here on fete day impressed all those who were present, including our chairman of governors.

Oxford Mail:

  • Miss Bayswater, 15-year-old Jean Ramsden, and her attendants presented Helen Shapiro with a bouquet

“Her complete naturalness and poise were an excellent example to our teenagers.”

He urged parents to make sure their children were courteous to others at all times.

He said: “I find the great majority of pupils are courteous in school, but many are reported to be rude in the streets, particularly when taken to task over ill manners or trespassing.”

Miss Shapiro became the youngest female chart topper in the UK with You Don’t Know and Walkin’ Back to Happiness in the early 1960s.

She had become so popular that nearly 2,000 people flocked to see her when she arrived at the school fete in 1962.

The Oxford Mail reported: “When she arrived, she went inside the school and had a Coca-Cola while the mayor and mayoress of Oxford, Alderman and Mrs Evan Roberts, had sherry with the fete organisers.

“After waving to the crowds from an upstairs window, Miss Shapiro went down to sign autographs at sixpence a time for half-an-hour, raising £3 10s for school funds.

“Then escorted by police and fete organisers, she went round the grounds, stopping to talk to residents from the nearby Townsend House old people’s home.”

After Alderman Roberts had opened the fete, the mayoress crowned Miss Bayswater, 15-year-old Jean Ramsden, of Bayswater Road.

Other attractions during the afternoon included a PT display by pupils, a fancy dress competition, a first aid display by the West Oxford division of St John Ambulance and a performance by the pipe and drum band from Esso House, Abingdon.

It is not known how the fete organisers managed to secure such a star booking, but Miss Shapiro had appeared a few weeks before at the New Theatre, Oxford.

Does anyone remember her visit?

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