Flick Rea’s family ahead of the funeral service

SHE was well-known from the Town Hall chamber to her favourite patch of Camden in the north west of the borough, for her spirited speeches and a rollercoaster ride of ups and downs in local politics.

But last Wednesday, mourners who gathered for Alderman Flick Rea’s funeral heard more of what she was like away from the green benches of Judd Street.

It was the peak of the recent heatwave – the hottest day of the year – but nearly 200 people still arrived at Golders Green Crematorium to say a last goodbye to the long-serving Liberal Democrat councillor who has left an indelible memory on her Fortune Green neighbourhood and Camden as a whole.

She died aged 88 in May.

There were messages sent from Sir Keir Starmer, the prime minister, and Sir Ed Davey the leader of the Lib Dems; the former recognising Alderman Rea’s contribution to Camden, the latter an old friend who she had first met decades ago.

These were unscripted contributions in a service which Alderman Rea had otherwise planned herself, from the hymns, to the pictures included on a carousel of photographs from her life, to the speakers.

Those who did take to the lectern talked of her kindness and concern for others, but also how this RADA-trained actress liked being at the centre of attention, perhaps most often at her own war table in the kitchen at her home in Agamemnon Road.

It was the glimpses of her life once the gavel had fallen on proceedings at the council meetings which stirred that lump in the throat nostalgia.

Her son, the journalist Robert Rea, told how Alderman Rea had, as they had grown older, become as much of a friend as his mother.

And in a touching anecdote, he told how they shared a love for quizzes and crosswords. “There was one charity quiz in particular that we would do every year, 100 cryptic questions. For several weeks we’d get absolutely obsessed with it, calling each other regularly with suggestions and theories about the answers,” he said.

“I’d pick up the phone and all mum would say straight away is something like ‘I’ve got Number 72’, or ‘Number 34 is an anagram but I can’t make it make sense’. Somehow between the two of us, we always made it make sense eventually.

“When I was going through mum’s papers after her death, I came across a quiz drawn up by those very same cryptic question compilers. In fact, it’s the last one they ever put together, it’s called ‘The Final Puzzle’ – talk about symbolic.

“Anyway, mum had left it blank, probably because she hadn’t got round to doing it, but I like to think it meant something more.

“I like to think it was her little post-dated gift to me. Something she knew I’d find after her death, something for me to solve and think of her. “I’ve nearly finished it now,” he said, looking across at his mother’s coffin, adding: “There’s just a couple of clues you can still help me with.”

Sir Ed Davey with Flick Rea at a party last year to celebrate her contribution to local government

He thanked Alderman Rea for a childhood which was always interesting, and said they had a shared curiosity of the world, a love of history and researching obscure branches of their family tree.

“I know the next time I listen to something gory or gruesome about the Corbins, that a great uncle was a serial bigamist or an ancestor from a few generations back spent some time in the workhouse, I’ll think I must tell mum about that… but there will be nobody to tell.”

Corbin was Alderman Rea’s maiden name.

She married fellow actor Charles Rea in Taunton in the early 1960s; the Somerset town was where she was born.

He died in 1992 and Robert Rea said they had been “deeply in love with each other”.

They had two children: Robert and daughter Kate.

In the pages of this newspaper, she was known as the sparky councillor who once elected in Fortune Green could not be unseated by the Labour Party, even when the Lib Dems were at their lowest ebb.

Flick Rea with her daughter Kate and son Robert

At the party’s peak, it led a coalition running the council for four years in the 2000s – a time in which she notably pushed through the beautiful refurbishment of the Prince of Wales Baths in Kentish Town.

Closer to home, she was part of many community groups and campaigns to make life better for residents in West Hampstead.

She was awarded an MBE and, after stepping down from the council, the rare of honour of becoming an Alderman.

She had spent 36 years in the chamber, so it was no surprise that among the audience were familiar faces from her party, many who were councillors themselves during the various surges they have had here over the years. Some still are.

Her good friend Jill Fraser, the fish and chip shop worker who won a seat at the Town Hall and later became the Mayor, was there, so too was Ed Fordham, the parliamentary candidate who came so close to winning in Hampstead in 2010.

They were among those who have since moved out of London but retain that special bond so many have with this borough.

Old opponents, full of respect for a woman who livened up the council chamber like few others, joined too: the former Labour council leader Georgia Gould and the current one, Sagal Abdi-Wali, as well as the ex-Conservative group leader Gio Spinella.

It was one of her longest friends in politics, Keith Moffitt, himself a former council leader, who she asked to speak under her instructions.

He joked about their constant bickering and her “exceedingly long stories” but reminisced on an enduring friendship.

“She didn’t have a degree but she was incredibly well informed, well educated,” he said.

“She and I had a holiday in Rome and it was like being on a guided tour: every ruin, every cathedral – Flick would tell you what it was all about.”

Flowers at Golders Green Crematorium

He added: “At St Mary’s Hospital, even though she was physically frail, she was still discussing minor figures from Greek mythology and things like that.”

Robert Rea added of those final days: “She loved to make a splash… One of the last things she said to me in hospital, and these may go down as her final words: ‘I wonder if I will make the front page of the Camden New Journal’. Of course, she did, and page four and five as well and six.”

Others to speak and provide readings included Father Jonathan Kester from Emmanuel Church, her granddaughter Orla Gramm and daughter-in-law Lorren Rea.

It all ended with the melodies of Glenn Miller’s orchestra, but there was an obvious location for friends to head to for a wake: Agamemnon Road, and one last gathering around her kitchen table.