HARRY PEARSON
THE BIG TEES
Harry Pearson reflects on Teesside’s proud history of beauty queens
E
lsewhere in this issue you’ll read
an interview with Teesside’s former
Miss Great Britain, Preeti Desai. I
imagine her family were chuffed
when she was crowned.
I can still recall the excitement back in
1969 when my Auntie Kay came back from
Filey Butlin’s (so popular back then it had its
own railway station) bearing a sash declaring
her the winner of the holiday camp’s
‘Glamourous Granny Competition’ for the
third summer in a row.
Admittedly, the thrilling news also created
some confusion because my Auntie Kay
wasn’t a granny, or even a mother. It was a
very long time before anyone told me this
was because my Uncle Len – who’d finished
an impressive third in the knobbly knees
contest – wasn’t actually her husband and
had another family down south. Well,
Doncaster. Folk were more respectable in
them days.
Both Preeti and my Auntie Kay were part
of a proud Teesside tradition that stretches
back to the first decade of the last century. It
was in 1908 that 18-year-old Ivy Close from
Portrack was declared ‘The Most Beautiful
Woman in Britain’ by The Daily Mirror.
The Mirror had begun life in 1903 as a
newspaper written ‘by women, for women’,
but after a year when circulation didn’t
match expectation the proprietor Arthur
Harmsworth (a boss so fearsome his
employees stood to attention when talking
to him on the telephone) fired all the female
journalists and replaced them with blokes.
Harmsworth was always on the lookout
for competitions to boost sales revenue, and
when a New York newspaper published a
photograph of an American it claimed was
‘The most beautiful woman in the world’,
pound signs flashed in the Fleet Street
magnate’s eyes.
Harmsworth asked pulchritudinous
female readers to send in photos of
42
Beauty – 1908’s ‘Most Beautiful Woman in Britain’ Ivy Close and Middlesbrough-born former Miss
Great Britain Preeti Desai.
themselves. 1,500 hopefuls responded.
Ivy’s picture was taken by her dad, Jack.
The contestants were whittled down to two
dozen of what The Mirror would now call
‘leggy lovelies’ and they were asked to report
to London to be photographed again at the
Wimbledon studio of society snapper, Elwin
Neame.
It was no contest. Neame, gazing down
into the lens of his camera, fell head-over-
heels in love with the Stockton lass’s “dreamy
sylph-like brand of loveliness" and, it
seemed, so did the judges.
Ivy won the competition and with it a
brand new Rover motor car and the honour
of having her portrait – painted by Sir
Arthur Hacker – exhibited at the Royal
Academy in Piccadilly. Shortly afterwards
she took the prize in a head-to-head with
the American lady whose photo had sparked
The Mirror’s contest and so has some claim to
having been the first ever Miss World.
Two years later Ivy and Elwin Neame were
married. He became a film director, she a
screen actress, appearing in more than 40
movies. The Neames were quite the dashing
celebrity couple, whizzing about the Home
Counties on motorbikes and going to live in
New York where they hung out with Charlie
Chaplin and Laurel and Hardy.
Sadly, Elwin was killed when his motorcyle
collided with a car in 1923. A dozen or
so years later Ivy married an Australian
stuntman-cum-make-up artist named Curly
Batson - whose movie credits include such
unforgettable 1950s' titles as She Gods of
Shark Reef and Attack of the Crab Monsters.
Once one of the five most famous women in
Britain, Ivy gradually faded from public view,
though if you were listening closely you might
have heard a reference to her in an episode of
Downton Abbey, which was co-created by her
great-grandson, Gareth Neame.
The portrait of Ivy Close by Sir Arthur
Hacker now hangs in the Ferens Gallery in
Hull and there’s a plaque in her honour on the
wall of what was once the Swallow Hotel in
Stockton. Maybe Preeti Desai will have one in
the future. The celebration of my Auntie Kay’s
achievement will likely stay more low key.