Glittering ground-breaking career

Kingswood Chapel at Worthing Crematorium was packed to capacity for the funeral of West End musical star Sheila Mathews, ITV’s first star singer with 12 million daily viewers. 200 close friends and former theatrical and TV colleagues attended.

A screen in the chapel brought up glamorous heyday pictures of Sheila, and recordings of her singing, dancing and acting. The curtains closed on her coffin to the song I’ll See You in My Dreams, sung by Joe Brown, who co-starred with Sheila in the long-running West End musical, Charlie Girl.

At the reception following the service, hosted by Miss Mathews’s daughter Sally Reading at Findon Manor, there was an even longer musical and photographic tribute to Sheila Mathews’s career, now recognised as the longest performing career in British entertainment history.

Miss Mathews died on August 11 at the age of 99 at Cavell House Nursing Home in Shoreham after several weeks as a patient in the strokes unit at Worthing Hospital, where she was registered under her married name as Mrs. Sheila Reading.

She had desperately wanted to live to celebrate her 100th birthday on May 31 2027, and to receive a royal telegram from King Charles III, whose late father, Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, was among her greatest admirers.

Among those taking part in the funeral service were the actor Richard Frost, who appeared with Sheila Mathews in the British TV soap opera, Crossroads, in the 1970s, and also the British theatre director and choreographer Johnny Worthy, who starred in Guys and Dolls at the National Theatre and appeared with Lauren Bacall in Sweet Bird of Youth. The eulogy was delivered by Brighton actor Tony Jackson.

Miss Mathews long career began in June 1930 at the age of 3 when she made her stage debut at Alexandra Palace, London, dressed in white satin pyjamas and billed as ‘Bebe Sheila’ in a group of child dancers known as The Rosebuds.

After child roles in early British films, her West End debut came at the age of 16 in Strike A New Note at the Prince of Wales Theatre in which her dancing partner was the 18-year-old future comedy legend Eric Morecambe.

At 17 she made her London Palladium debut in Happy and Glorious with Tommy Trinder and Elisabeth Welch, followed by a second Palladium appearance in Out of This World with Frankie Howerd. Her success in these productions led to her being chosen to appear in the

21st Royal Variety Performance staged at the London Palladium on November 13 1950, in the presence of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, afterwards the Queen Mother, and also of Princess Elizabeth, later Queen Elizabeth II, and her sister, Princess Margaret.

In 1951 she went to the United States to star in cabaret, and while there she met and married the American singer William (Bill) Bender. But the marriage proved short lived.

She returned to the UK in 1955 and became one of the leading British stars in the inauguration of independent television with her own hit series, Friday’s Girl, which topped the new ITV ratings with 12 million daily viewers.

She went on to make numerous television appearances including Sweet ‘N’ Sour with Clement Freud, Mrs. Nash in Shelley with Hywel Bennett, Mrs. Boswell in Minder with George Cole and Dennis Waterman, and then the role in which she was most widely seen, as the glamorous Laura Marshall in Crossroads as motel boss David Hunter’s girlfriend.

At the same time as her success in television drama roles, she sang and danced up a storm as one of the principal performers in the hugely popular BBC television series, The Good Old Days, in which she appeared many times between 1955 and 1983.

After her return from America, Sheila Mathews made a happy and stable second marriage in 1957 to the writer, director and designer Charles Reading, the only man to have directed Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, in a cinema film about the work of the international children’s charity, Unicef.

Through this connection the Readings became on extremely friendly terms with Prince Philip, who invited them both to a Buckingham Palace garden party to celebrate the Golden Wedding anniversary of his marriage to the Queen. Sheila attended the event wearing a large straw picture hat to disguise the fact that underneath it her hair was in curlers.

Sheila’s West End roles continued. In 1980 she played the leading role of Madame Amery in The Umbrellas of Cherbourg and in 1985 Maria Duchess of Dene in Me and My Girl. These productions were followed by two consecutive years on the London West End stage as Mrs Darling in Peter Pan.

Reading directed Sheila in a highly successful television series, The One O’Clock Gang, and also wrote Glamorous Nights at Drury Lane, in which she appeared with the veteran musical comedy star Evelyn Laye, and made her final appearance at the London Palladium in 1992.

Charles Reading died from a heart attack on May 17 1999, causing Prince Philip to abandon protocol and to send a personal message of sympathy and appreciation to Sheila, signed simply ‘Philip’.

Following her husband’s death Sheila continued to share the family home in Southwick with their daughter, Sally Reading, who cared for her mother devotedly throughout the remainder of her life, and was at her bedside when she died.

In June 2020, Sheila Mathews celebrated 90 years as a performer since her debut at the age of three at Alexandra Palace, London, in June 1930, dressed in white satin pyjamas and billed as ‘Bebe’ Sheila in a group of child dancers called ‘The Rosebuds’.

The anniversary found her still on stage and teamed up with another veteran performer, Antonia Pemberton, in a production entitled We’re Still Here, billed provocatively as “an irreverent evening of saucy anecdotes and satirical readings.” As Sheila observed later, “Some of it was a bit near the knuckle!”.

Equity, the actors’ trade union, calculating that Sheila, at 93, now had the longest performing career in British entertainment history, awarded her honorary life membership. On June 23 2023, the British Music Hall Society presented her with their Lifetime Achievement Award. As her daughter, Sally Reading, brought her on stage at the Royal Hippodrome Theatre, Eastbourne, to receive the award, the capacity audience rose to their feet in a prolonged standing ovation.