Then & Now: Iestyn Edwards

When I turned up at Guildhall in the eighties to study classical singing there was a small problem – I was already hooked on ballet. The great Joan Kemp-Potter, sadly no longer with us, once said to me, beadily, “More of the Schubert, duckie, less of the Sugar Plum…”

But my evening job, head usherette at the Royal Opera House, allowed me to watch ballet obsessively. And each night in the foyer, I would entertain fellow staff members and latecomers with my ‘lumpen but curiously graceful’ imitations of ballerinas. I hankered to play Odette, the Swan Queen. In March 1986, opening the first ever Rag Week Revue, opposite Peter Snipp as the prince, I got my wish and Madame Galina was born – using a ballet style based on prima ballerina Natalia Makarova and behaviour on my madder Welsh aunts.

After Guildhall, I worked in the Royal Opera House bookstall, taught singing at Guildford School of Acting and continued with my own singing lessons. When I realised I was bitter about my pupils being on stage, I stopped teaching at Guildford and moved to Aldeburgh. There, club booker Emily Latham saw me perform as Madame Galina at a private party and arranged for me to audition at Murray’s, Soho. Two weeks later, I was on stage in front of Jude Law, Madonna and Kate Moss.

Meanwhile, Auriol Marson, president of the Aldeburgh Music Club, overheard me practising – singing, not ballet – the day their baritone soloist cancelled for a performance of H.M.S. Pinafore. Libby Purves was at the show, and later asked me to sing sea songs at the annual Whitebait Supper in Greenwich, which led to my first military gig.

Accompanied by harpist, Louisa Duggan, I sang on HMS Victory, in the presence of Her Majesty The Queen, at the naval dinner hosted by First Sea Lord, Sir Alan West, to mark the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar. Sir Alan recommended I audition for Combined Services Entertainment (CSE).

But it turned out the CSE wanted Galina, not singing, insisting that I “pull colonels on stage to dance with you!”, I signed up expecting to perform for Officers’ Mess in the Park Lane Hilton – but CSE wanted to know how I thought I would cope with desert conditions, camel spiders and insurgency attack. In Iraq.

I did four tours of Iraq and Afghanistan. Performing on the outlying bases, bedding down behind the wire with squaddies, eating with them, swapping stories (but mainly listening to theirs), travelling by armoured car and helicopter, being mortared. Stacks, the toughest, warriest Royal Marine, took exception to something I said onstage at my very first show and hoiked me out of the venue over his shoulder to dump me on the turret of what he called the ‘naughty tank’. We’re the closest of friends these days; and he taught me to drive. In a Saracen armoured car.

I’m currently touring literary festivals with my new book, My Tutu Went AWOL. My ‘talk’ combines stand-up, Madame Galina and song. As Madame Galina, I’m resident at the Cafe de Paris. The management often ask me not to pick on the VIP table – hardly surprising because, as the newspapers declared, it’s a performance which “takes the ‘I need a volunteer from the audience’ conceit and knocks seven merry bells out of it!”

Iestyn’s new book My Tutu went AWOL is published by Unbound.

This article first featured in the Autumn/Winter 2018 edition of the Guildhall magazine, PLAY, and was written by YBM for the Guildhall School.