Confident and radiant: Cleo Sylvestre [Al Simmons]

CLEO Sylvestre may have reached the top of her game in an acting career that saw her become a frequent fixture on stage and screen for almost 60 years, but interviewing her was like chatting to your next-door neighbour.

Without any airs and graces, her laid-back manner would be accompanied by the mischievous smile that came into its own while singing the blues in her band, Honey B Mama and Friends.

Brought up on the Regent’s Park Estate and an alumnus of Camden School for Girls, she was always happy to return to her roots, announcing at a gig at the Kentish Town Stores last year: “I’m a real Camden girl and proud of it.”

Then she began rocking the joint with her rendition of Professor Longhair’s cheeky Red Beans, looking every bit the star in her shiny, tight-fitting dress.

It was hard to believe that she was a 77-year-old grandmother still recovering from the stroke that had put her into hospital the previous year.

Clearly keen to get her acting career back on track, Cleo beamed as she told me about upcoming rehearsals for her reprise role in Channel 5’s, All Creatures Great and Small, before rushing off for another performance.

This was the live wire who cut a record with the Rolling Stones as a teen, whose lengthy CV included the Royal Shakespeare Company and TV soap Crossroads, who for 20 years was joint artistic director of the indie Rosemary Branch Theatre, and who in 2016 created her one-woman show, The Marvellous Adventures of Mary Seacole, for the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

At the age of 70, Cleo decided to live out her enduring love of rhythm and blues by forming her own band, as happy to play for an event put on by the Somers Town History Club in 2021 as she was regular music venues.

Rather than being a sassy moniker, “Honey B” was a reference to the endangered honey bee, a sure sign as any that Cleo was not just for laughs.

She never went into acting to be a star, she told me in an interview in 2016, but to bring stories to life in the best way possible.

“Acting is political – you can really change people through theatre,” she declared.

Following her death last month, tributes poured in for her pioneering role in opening the doors for other black actors.

But whatever obstacles aspiring thespians found themselves up against, Cleo’s ultimate advice was: “If you want to do it, you still have to go for it. If you aren’t getting the opportunities then you must create them for yourself.”

Despite having no formal acting training, she made her spectacular West End debut alongside Alec Guinness at the age of 23 after arranging an agent for herself.

“I was looking for work as an extra but he put me up for an audition for this role of a young West Indian in Wise Child,” she recalled. “I didn’t actually know any West Indians to be able to do the accent but I did know this guy who worked in Dobell’s jazz shop in Charing Cross Road who was a good mimic and he coached me.”

Apart from anything else, the anecdote shows there were not many black people living in Camden when she was a child, and few from the Caribbean. However, her political consciousness came early.

“Growing up, we were practically the only children of colour around and we had a completely different view of the world than our classmates,” says the singer Mimi Romilly, who attended Edith Neville Primary School in Somers Town with Cleo as well as singing classes every Saturday at Italia Conti, then based in Soho.

“A bit older than me, Cleo took me protectively under her wing. Once she answered back to a teacher who was being horrible to her, so at a young age there she was standing up for herself.”

Her sturdy character was no doubt inherited from her mum, Laureen, a professional dancer who’d been born in Hull to an English mother and African father. A spirited personality with big ambitions for the daughter she christened Cleopatra, Laureen had a number of influential friends, among them the composer Constance Lambert who became Cleo’s godfather and took her regularly to the ballet.
Early on in her marriage, Laureen split with her Trinidadian husband, Owen Sylvestre, the man Cleo believed was her father.

It was only late in life that she discovered that her real father hailed from Sierra Leone, and she told me of how she travelled to Freetown to meet long-lost relatives beneath the famous Cotton Tree.

“It was a lovely experience. I have always felt more African and now I know why,” she said.

As a child, former BBC producer Jeffrey Morris would often visit Cleo at her flat from his home in nearby Ampthill Square.

“Her mother and my mother had similar backgrounds and were good friends, but walking into their flat was like a window to another world – it was so elegant. Cleo was two years older and like a big sister to me. I was somewhat shy and introvert, she was confident, radiant. She had creative flair and imagination and I felt lifted in her presence.”

The two always kept in touch and Jeffrey arranged for her to headline the Lissenden Gardens community festival in 2019. “Her bright star soul can never be diminished,” he added in tribute.

Warm-hearted, generous and full of gratitude for what life had given her, Cleo Sylvestre will be a treasured memory for those who knew her.