WORDS BY VINCE EAGER
BILLY FURY
It was Wednesday 1st October 1958, and a dark, dank, depressing day in the Merseyside town of Birkenhead. Here stood the local Essoldo Theatre where Marty Wilde, the John Barry Seven and myself were appearing that evening in a Larry Parnes show entitled ‘Extravaganza’. The theatre had survived many air raids that the Luftwaffe had inflicted on the area some 14 years earlier, and to the rear of the venue was barren land where many stores and businesses – once the heart of the Birkenhead community – had originally stood. It was this now desolate stretch of wasteland at the rear of the Essoldo that I had to navigate in order to reach one of the then popular Wimpy burger bars.