Lulu in the nude - and when the stars came to Shrewsbury

“I got quite a shock, I can tell you. But she seemed completely unperterbed,”  So explains John Holding as he tells me of the day he saw pop star Lulu in the nude.
“Well, to be accurate, she wasn’t completely in the nude, but she wasn’t wearing very much at all, let’s put it that way.”
John worked at Shrewsbury’s principal hotels during the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s - “the golden age” as he likes to say - when showbusiness royalty frequented the county town, the big names of the day performing at The Granada or The Music Hall.
“Lulu would have been in her twenties at the time and on this occasion  she had a bit of a sore throat and had requested a drink of honey and lemon. So I walked into her room with this honey and lemon and there she was sitting there topless. She obviously thought nothing of it. She just asked me to leave the drink on the table and that was that.”
John was at Shrewsbury’s famous Lion Hotel at this time, and before joining the staff of the Lion, he had worked at the much-missed Raven Hotel in Castle Street. During those years he served as apprentice chef, porter, head porter and hotel manager, and he talks of those times with tremendous affection.
During this period he met and greeted Morcambe and Wise, Cliff Richard, Max Bygraves, Lionel Blair, song and dance man Frankie Vaughan, Adam Faith, Coronation Street’s Elsie Tanner, Diddy David Hamilton, jazz legends Acker Bilk and Kenny Ball, TV celebrity and game show host Hughie Green, singing stars Helen Shapiro, David Whitfield and Petula Clarke, and the great comedian Tony Hancock.
Every one of them experienced the warm welcome, friendliness and professionalism of the ever-enthusiastic John, a man clearly proud of having served the public (as well as the showbusiness elite) over many years.
I first interviewed John back in 2001 and bumped into him again recently. Because he has had such a colourful career and because he has much to say about the Shrewsbury of yesteryear compared to the Shrewsbury of today, we thought it would be good to get together for another chat. 
And when it comes to chat, believe me, there is no stopping this man!
Only one of John’s showbiz-related memories has been forever tarnished by recent revelations and that is his meeting with Jimmy Savile.
“He was doing a Lands End to John O’Groats cycle ride at the time. I had got him to sign in at The Lion. So he comes sweeping in: ‘Ah, good evening young man!’ he says. So I pass him the book to sign in and he writes straight across the page: ‘Jimmy Savile was here!’ Of course, at that time, everyone thought he was a lovely man. And the next morning, everyone was clapping and waving him off. Ah, well.”
John, who lives on Sunnybank Road, Shrewsbury, with his wife Beryl, and who also dotes upon his stepson Mike and stepdaughter Sue, is 73 and soon to retire, having spent the last six and half years working at Sainsbury’s.
He spent four years at The Raven, those last four years before it closed in 1959. “Nowadays there would have been uproar that such a beautiful old building with so much history should be under threat of demolition. Nowadays, you see, it would have been saved and would be the equivalent of The Grosvenor in Chester, a place where people would simply have to go to have their coffee and scones. The head waiters back in the golden age wore white gloves. It was a wonderful place.”
“We just haven’t got that quality any more. We haven’t got the etiquette any more. Every customer at The Raven would have his cases carried for him. I was in stripes and coat-tails. I’m talking about a time when Shrewsbury had the Wildings store across the road in Castle Street, Modelia’s ladies clothes shop, Morris’s restaurant on Pride Hill, and the lovely old Granada which had a superb restaurant upstairs. There was Sidoli’s across the road from The Raven. He was another gentleman with a lot of etiquette. Those days are gone.”
John, like me, also mourns the loss of the Victorian market hall and The George Hotel (although I don’t remember either of these myself and know them only from old photographs). Both, had they survived, would surely have been assets now in a beautiful old town like Shrewsbury.
But why does Shrewsbury no longer attract the big stars (even with its spanking new Theatre Severn?)
John says simply: “It’s a different age now. I’m not sure we have stars of that calibre any more.”