

JESS NORMA and
JESSICA ASQUITH AND NORMA BURTON
EBURY SPOTLIGHT
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First published by Ebury Spotlight in 2025 1
Copyright © Jessica Asquith and Norma Burton 2025
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For our beloved Michael. The kindest, hardest working and most creative, caring and loving husband, Dad and Grandad. You gave us the most beautiful life. We hope we’ve made you proud x
Dear friends … — 9
1. Childhood 13
Norma’s famous slow cooker chicken casserole 45
2. School 47
Our favourites — 67
3. Love — 69 A word from Jake … 89
4. Family and Friends 95
Norma’s secrets to a long life — 117
5. Work — 119 Getting to know you … 139
6. Grief 143 It’s good to talk … 157
7. Fame and Social Media — 161 Going viral 187
8. Technology 191
Norma’s best one-liners 203
9. Holidays 205 Lingo Bingo — 213
10. Past Versus Present — 217 Let’s play … Mrs and Miss 231
11. Fashion and Beauty 233 Our favourite days out together — 249
12. Ageing and Caring — 253 Just how Norma likes it … 275
13. Life Lessons 279 A word from Kate — 287 A Final Word 289 Dear Jess, dear Nan … 293
Afterword — 299 Acknowledgements 301
Dear friends …
Jess First of all, thank you for being here. This is such a special moment for me and Nan and we can’t tell you how excited we are to share it with all of you. Reading books was always a big part of our relationship when I was growing up and if we’d been told back then that we’d eventually be writing one ourselves – together – we wouldn’t have believed it.
Norma It’s another adventure in this rather peculiar journey we’ve found ourselves on. The last couple of years have been nothing short of extraordinary. Like a dream.
Jess When we posted our first Jess and Norma video in March 2022, we had no idea that it would become what it has. We get requests for selfies in the street, we’ve had television appearances, meetings with celebrities and we’ve grown a community of more than four and a half million friends and followers!
Norma And now, of course, we’ve been given the opportunity to write this book.
Jess Who would have thought you could become a celeb at this grand old age, eh?
Norma I’ll be asking you to fan my face and peel grapes for me soon, Jess.
Jess All right, Your Majesty! It’s true that we’ve got followers from all around the globe and still can’t get over the fact that people recognise us wherever we go. Nan says it’s like having a huge extended family.
Norma We have to leave the house half an hour earlier to account for the number of times we get stopped when we’re out and about.
Jess And we don’t move quickly at the best of times, do we? I’m going to have to get you a balaclava, Nan, so people don’t recognise you.
Norma Oh no, Jessica, I’ll never get bored of stopping for a chat. Everyone has been so lovely. We’ve met some fantastic people.
Jess Writing this book has been a dream of ours for quite a while now. We know how lucky we are to have each other and we’re so proud that the world gets to see how special our bond is. But there’s a story behind our relationship that most people don’t know and it’s one we feel ready to tell.
Norma We’ve been through an awful lot together – good and bad –haven’t we?
Jess We have. But those more personal details have never felt quite right for the internet or social media. In this book we want to open up about the bigger picture – from our childhoods to falling in love; from coping with grief to family ties. And, obviously, social media fame, which has been the plot twist neither of us saw coming.
Norma You’re telling me.
Jess As many of you will know, I’ve been Nan’s full-time carer for a while now and we’re going to discuss a bit more about that arrangement as well as sharing our different perspectives on life in general.
Norma And I believe we’re going to reveal the secret recipe for my famous chicken casserole …
Jess Hold onto your hats for that, everyone. You’re going to hear
from both of us throughout the book – we’ve written every page of it together, so it’s more like an extended conversation than anything else.
Norma Which brings us to the other reason we wanted to write it … Jess … To encourage more communication and stronger connections between the generations. Finding that common ground through conversations that go beyond surface-level chit-chat about the weather.
Norma Although admittedly, we do love a natter about that as well!
Jess But we’d also like to inspire people to have more meaningful heart-to-hearts which delve a little deeper and ask thoughtful questions.
Norma We can all learn so much from each other, can’t we? Family stories, social history, lived experiences, different points of view … and finding the time to sit down and talk is so important because life is precious and short.
Jess You can see how we’ve all lost a bit of that. It used to be quite normal for extended families to live close by and for kids to have their grandparents just around the corner.
Norma Yes, but as the world has opened up and more people have gone off to university, settling in different parts of the country or even further afield, families have become somewhat fragmented. Those connections can be distant.
Jess And, let’s face it, people are either rushing about trying to manage a million things at once or they’re buried in their phones, which means we’ve even less time to nurture our relationships.
Norma I think that mobile phone is surgically attached to your hand, Jess.
Jess I’m as guilty of that as anyone. But a good chat can work
wonders – and so to that end, more than anything, we hope to spur people on to pick up the phone, get in the car or hop on the bus and speak to their older relatives. Don’t put it off and leave those questions unanswered and tales untold.
Norma One day, sadly, it will be too late. There are questions I wish I’d asked loved ones when they were still alive. Things I’ll now never know the answers to.
Jess We are so grateful to every single person who has taken the time to watch our videos and send us the kindest messages. We know a lot of you guys find comfort from watching our videos because our relationship reminds you of a loved one. We’re always so touched to hear your stories. Hopefully you’ll find this book just as heartwarming and we promise to give you plenty of Jess and Norma giggles along the way.
Norma Without further ado, I think we ought to get going, Jessica.
Jess Are you telling me to shut up?
Norma I am, love.
Jess OK, boss. Here we go.
With love, Jess and Norma xxx
Childhood
Norma When I think of my childhood, I remember an open fire in the living room. I think of fish and chip suppers on holidays in Scarborough, my mother’s home-baked bread and the scent of her Cuticura talcum powder.
Jess When I think of mine, it’s Nan. It’s this house – the one everyone will recognise from our videos, with the wellcushioned armchair she sits in, the brown leather sofa and the archway to the dining room. It’s her home-made chicken casserole, the Royal Jelly soap in the bathroom and afternoons snuggled up together watching Tracy Beaker. Always surrounded by love.
Norma That’s what every child deserves, to be loved and to feel loved, isn’t it? Don’t get me wrong, when I was growing up we did have some difficult times, but I was so very loved and I was happy.
Jess Um, ‘difficult times’ is a bit of an understatement, Nan. You lived through a world war, for goodness’ sake.
Norma Yes, that’s true. But we didn’t think of it like that; we were all just trying to get on with life as best we could. I’ll always be thankful to my parents for everything they gave me and taught me. I needed that security blanket of a happy home because I was quite shy and reserved as a little girl. I tended to hang back and certainly never liked being in the spotlight.
Which is funny to think now, considering everything that’s happened in the last few years.
Jess You’re certainly not shy these days! You and Alfie Boe are practically best mates and I’m surprised you’ve not been given a leading role on Corrie the number of times you’ve been on that set.
Norma We have friends in high places now, don’t we? There’s no way young Norma would have had the confidence or pluck for all this. I always felt a bit inadequate as a youngster.
Jess And now you’re a TikTok sensation.
Norma So they tell me.
Jess What do you think you’d tell baby Norma, if you could go back in time, to give her a bit of a confidence boost?
Norma Ah, I’d love to tell her that everything would be OK and that it will all work itself out. There was nothing to fear because life would turn out to be a very happy one indeed.
Jess That’s so sweet. If only it were possible for us to do that for our younger selves. We’d be able to save ourselves so much heartache and worry.
At first glance, our childhoods are worlds apart, but I’ve always thought there are some interesting similarities that have given me and Nan a real understanding of each other. For a start, her father passed away when she was just seven years old and I didn’t see my own dad as much as I’d have liked. However, the biggest similarity is the enormous love both of us were cocooned in. Me from Nan and Nan from her mum.
Norma My mother and her own wonderful family, whom I still think about often, laid such strong foundations for us all, Jess. That love and grounding has lived on.
Mum was one of ten – she had three brothers and six sisters – and they were all such lovely people. They were very tight
knit so I had lots of aunties and uncles around me. We were always together. Most of them settled in Headon, the village where they grew up – a couple lived in Upton, which was walking distance – and the whole lot of us would congregate after church on a Sunday. Happy times. The village of Headon wasn’t too far away from Retford, a market town in Nottinghamshire that my mum moved to when she married my dad in 1916.
Number 46 Nelson Street. That was our family home, a rented three-bed end terrace I shared with my parents and two older sisters, Joan and Betty. I can still remember the rent man coming up the front path to collect the money every month. Even now, all these years later, I live only a few miles from that house. I’ve never been one to stray too far from home.
Jess Number 46 is still there, standing strong! Me and my partner Jake went to view a house on that same street when we were looking to buy our own place in 2022 – it would have been so strange if we’d ended up there.
Norma Ooh, that would have given me goosebumps, Jess. My mum stayed in that house until she died and by then she was the owner – we were so proud when she bought it because she really did love living there.
My mum and dad, Jessie and Tom, were hard up but they always managed to keep our heads above water. I certainly didn’t ever feel we were ‘poor’ because everybody around us was more or less in the same boat. Dad worked for a drapery company. My mum had gone into service, looking after two little girls when she left school at 15, although once she’d had my eldest sister, she didn’t go out to work again.
Jess There was a big age gap between you and your sisters, wasn’t there?
Norma That’s right. Joan and Betty were 16 and almost nine when I came along. My mother was 38 when she had me, so she was quite a bit older than most of the other mums.
Jess So do you think you were an accident?
Norma I beg your pardon?!
Jess Do you think you were, you know … planned?
Norma Oh, you are brazen, aren’t you? To be perfectly honest, I think not. But I was very much wanted, Jessica.
Jess A happy accident, then.
Norma If you want to call it that. I was born just after lunchtime, 6 March 1934, delivered by a lady called Nurse Noble at the Mount Vernon nursing home in the east of Retford. And let me tell you, my mum had to walk herself all the way there while she was in labour with me.
Jess Wow … How far was that from Nelson Street?
Norma Well, I wouldn’t like to walk it myself! It was a fair old way and especially for a labouring woman.
Jess I guess women like your mum were made of tough stuff.
Norma She had to be. She knew nothing else. Life was difficult back then, but people had no choice except to soldier on.
Jess It can’t have been an easy labour either, given the size of you. Tell our readers how much you weighed.
Norma Jessica, I try to hide these things, as you know.
Jess Go on, Nan …
Norma I was a big baby. Let’s leave it at that.
Jess How big?
Norma All nine-and-a-half pounds of me.
Jess Ever so petite!
Norma Stop your mischief-making.
Jess Shall I change the subject before you clip me round the ear?
Norma I think you’d better.
Jess Those houses on Nelson Street are so sweet, real traditional British terraces.
Norma Yes, they had good bones and people like my mum would take great care of them. There was a large open passageway down the side and we’d walk down there to come in via the kitchen at the back. The front door was only used for special occasions or when the doctor called. Mum was very particular about that.
Upstairs, Joan and Betty shared a bedroom at the front, and I had the little room at the back to myself. You had to walk through my parents’ room and down two steps to get to that little bedroom.
Jess A lot of people who live in those houses today have converted what would have been your bedroom into a bathroom. That was the case with the one me and Jake went to view.
Norma When my mum bought the house herself in the sixties, she received a government grant to do just that. Up until then, the toilet had been outside.
Jess If anyone needed the loo in the night, they had to use the potty, right?
Norma You do like the nitty gritty, don’t you, Jessica? It wasn’t like a child’s potty you see today; it was more of a large bowl. But what else were we to do? You couldn’t very well go out into the garden in the middle of the night in the freezing cold, you’d catch your death.
And I can promise you that my lovely mother was very hygienic about the potty. I’m quite sure we don’t need to go into any more detail than that.
Jess I’m just pulling your leg, Nan.
Norma Next to the outdoor toilet we had a wash house, as we used to call it, where my mum had a copper, which was a large metal tank used for heating water. Monday was wash day and she’d get up at six o’clock in the morning to fill the copper up bit by bit with buckets of water carried from the kitchen. Then she’d light a fire underneath to heat it all up and add the laundry to the now-boiling water before fishing it out with a pole and transferring it to a tub.
Then she’d get her dolly-legs out.
Jess Her what?
Norma A dolly-legs was a long wooden pole attached to a small four-legged stool. Mum would plunge that into the tub with the laundry and then twist the clothes from side to side to get them clean. After that, she had to feed each item of clothing individually through her mangle to wring out the water and on wet days they’d be hung up to dry in the living room where we had a line running across wall to wall.
Gosh, it must have been backbreaking work and a tortuous life but, do you know, I never heard her grumble. People in that day and age were proud of what they had and they looked after it.
Jess Did everything get washed on the Monday wash day?
Norma Yes, including us! Once Mum had finished all her washing, we’d all take our baths in the tin bath in the wash house. She just kept topping the copper up while each of us washed so there would be enough hot water for everyone. Once we’d finished, we had to carry the bath between us to tip the used
water down the drain and then it would be hung back up on its hook on the wall.
Jess I can’t get over the fact you all only had one bath a week! By the weekend everyone must have been humming. People must have stunk back in the day.
Norma Perhaps we did, but nobody noticed because that was the norm. We washed in between, you know.
Jess That’s something at least.
Norma Because Mondays were always so busy, what with all the washing and bathing, Mum didn’t have time to cook the dinner from scratch as she usually would. So our evening meal was always the leftovers of Sunday lunch from the day before, along with a jacket potato. She was a wonderful cook, my mum. Dad used to say she could produce a meal out of nothing. We had home-made soups, rabbit pie, and in the summer she’d make a Lincolnshire salad, which I loved. I don’t know where it came from …
Jess … Lincolnshire, I’d guess.
Norma Thank you, Jessica. How fortunate we are that you’re here to keep us right.
It was lettuce and pieces of onion with vinegar and a sprinkling of sugar on top. We’d have that with new potatoes – Mum’s were the best I’ve ever tasted – and whatever meat there was. Dad had a vegetable allotment where he grew everything so that was very lucky for us, and on a Sunday when the joint was in the oven … oh, the smell was heaven. Roast dinners don’t smell like that any more.
Jess Sounds like Jessie could have given Mary Berry a run for her money.
Norma You say that, but she wasn’t terribly good at cake-making.
She used to make the Christmas cake, but she never thought she’d done it properly or made it quite nice enough. Her sponges were a bit like yours, Jess. If you took a bath after eating a slice, you’d sink.
Jess Don’t I know about it! You never bother to sugarcoat your verdict on my baking. I’m going to invest in a fancy food mixer to see if that helps keep my batter lighter.
Norma Well, you be careful with that. My good friend Niff Burton always said you can whisk too much.
Jess Sheesh, I can’t win.
Norma My mum was a beautiful pastry-maker, mind. Her apple pies were especially good. I could just murder a piece right now! And she worked so hard in the house. Whenever we had the chimney swept by Mrs Alvey the local sweep, I used to go outside and watch for her brush coming out through the top, which was fun. But poor Mum, no matter how well she’d covered everything up, then had to spend the rest of the day cleaning the soot from the whole of the house. The walls would have to be washed down from top to bottom and it would be late into the night before the place was beautifully clean and fresh again.
Jess This might sound really narrow-minded of me, but I’d always imagined the houses back then to have cement floors and bare brick walls.
Norma Not quite. We had plasterboard on the walls and because Mum was very house-proud, she would make rugs for the floors with rags. They called it rag carpet and it was strips of cloth cut to a certain length and then pushed or hooked through a large piece of hessian. It was hard-wearing and would keep our floors warm, although later on we had lino fitted, which Mum was awfully proud of.
But we had no modern appliances, no hot water and no fridge. We had a very small kitchen with a pantry for storage. Milk was delivered every other day by the milkman, who would bring a churn and a measuring jug. He’d dip the jug into the churn and then pour the milk into a basin my mum had brought from the kitchen and then she’d store it on the pantry floor to keep it cool. Meat and butter would be kept the same way. If the meat ever smelled a bit off, Mum would pop it in a bowl and cover it with vinegar.
Jess You what?
Norma I’d guess the vinegar freshened it up a bit. She wouldn’t have cooked it if it had been crawling, obviously. She was a wife and a mum and she was excellent at both of those jobs. My word, she was lovely. She never complained, she never fell out with anybody, I never ever heard her say a wrong word about anyone.
I used to put my arms around her to kiss her on the cheek and her skin was always so soft and lovely. And always the smell of Cuticura talc. That’s what she loved.
Jess Aw, Nan. That’s gorgeous.
Norma I do know that I said to her once, ‘Whatever am I going to do, Mum, when I’m too big to sit on your knee?’ I suppose that had to come to an end one day. Especially having been a nine-and-a-half-pound baby!
Jess I love hearing you talking about Jessie. I can see the twinkle in your eye whenever you do; it just ignites something so special.
Norma I could talk about her all day. I only wish she could have had a bit of an easier life. I know after my dad died she grieved for him dreadfully.
Jess That must have been awful for the whole family. You lost your dad, Tom, when you were still very young.
Norma He died just before my eighth birthday in 1942. I was thinking the other day about how I wish my dad could have lived that bit longer so I’d have had the chance to form solid memories of him. What I do have is so vague.
I know he loved his music and he could sing and play the piano. Not that we had a piano. And I remember he used to buy Pontefract cakes, cutting them in half for me and him to share. He would mend our shoes, patching up the leather and resoling them. But other than that, things are very hazy.
I do have a clear memory of one Christmas morning when I was about seven. I’d come running down the stairs, excitedly asking: ‘Has he been? Has he been?’ And my dad said, ‘Well, somebody has!’
I can almost feel the excitement now; it had built up so much that I didn’t know what to do with myself. There was a doll and a book waiting for me and I was thrilled to pieces.
Jess Was that the Christmas you got so excited that you ended up on the loo with the runs?
Norma Don’t you have a way with words, Missy? Yes, it was, if you must know. My sister Betty told me I’d worked myself up into such a state of anticipation that I was shaking all over.
Jess Do you remember when I was little, we used to go through the Argos catalogue around Christmas time and I’d circle the toys that I wanted? Creating that wish list is such a core childhood memory for me. And you, Grandad and my mum teamed up to make sure there were a good few presents from the catalogue to unwrap on the day.
Norma You didn’t do too badly, love. You know your grandad and I always loved treating you.
Jess It’s lovely for you to have that Christmas memory of your dad. Even though what you remember of him is blurry, your mind obviously associates him with positive, happy times like that. I think it shows how much you meant to each other.
Norma I’ve been told that my dad’s only thought every day was making sure that my mum and us girls were all right. On the day he died it was snowy outside, so bad that he’d said to my mum, ‘You’re not turning out in this to get the groceries, Jessie. I’ll go instead.’ That was typical of him, looking out for us like that. Off he went and he never came back. He dropped dead in the street.
Jess That’s so tragic. Was it a heart attack?
Norma I think it must have been his heart, yes. I would like so much to remember more. I can visualise things in my head; I can see the policeman coming to the door to tell my mum the news and I can picture the snow. But it’s all quite murky.
I wish I’d written some of it down, but I was too young at that age to understand what would be important later on. I suppose with my age being what it was, I was sheltered from a lot of the sadness. I know I left my bedroom and slept in Mum’s bed with her for quite some time after he died. Mum just carried on, but the impact of losing him was huge. She went deaf for three months from the shock.
Jess Poor Jessie. That’s dreadful.
Norma After Dad passed, Mum and I would take it in turns to make each other breakfast in bed on a Sunday. I’d do one week and she’d do the next, usually bacon and tomato and occasionally an egg. I like to think our closeness helped her through her grief.
And I know Joan, my eldest sister, was a rock at the side of our mother. She was in her early twenties by then and
working as a teacher and she was such a wonderful help, emotionally and financially. When she was first widowed, Mum got ten shillings for herself and five shillings for me each week.
Jess Hang on … with inflation that would be about £30 today. That’s next to nothing, Nan!
Norma It bought the necessities – milk, butter, sugar, eggs and the like.
I know my dad had once confided in Joan that he worried about not living to see me grow up. There were 27 years between my parents – so it was always something that troubled him. Dad was 73 when he died. He’d been married previously, but his first wife died of cancer long before he met my mum.
Jess Twenty-seven years is a fair amount, though.
Norma I’m sure some people mocked the age gap, but my mum and dad were so happy together. If you’re in love, age doesn’t count.
Jess OK, if I wasn’t with Jake and I introduced you to my new fella who was in his late fifties, what would you say?
Norma I’d say take him round to your mother’s.
Jess Haha! I don’t even know where I’d find a boyfriend in his late fifties, to be honest. How did Jessie and Tom meet?
Norma I don’t know. That’s sad, isn’t it? It’s things like that I wish I’d asked. There are so many things I never found out about my family and now there’s none of them left to ask.
Mum had a lot of friends in the community who were a great support for her and particularly the ladies on the street whom she was pally with. They all had nicknames for each other. My mum was Deanie because our surname was Dean.
Mrs Irwin who lived immediately across from us was Irwie and Mrs Tootle at number 52 was known as …
Jess … Stop there, let me guess. Tooty?
Norma How did you get that?
Jess Just a wild guess.
Norma And my Auntie Mae – one of Mum’s sisters – lived just across the road. She had nine children, so she’d been, er, busy.
Jess I suppose they didn’t have TikTok to scroll through of an evening back then.
Norma No, they had to find some way to pass the winter nights. But as women and as a community, they really did pull together. It was that sort of a place. On a Saturday morning everyone would collect at a café called Howard’s in the town centre – quite a well-to-do spot where the waitresses wore white pinnies and little hats. Everyone there knew each other and the women would all arrive with their baskets, dressed in their best outfits to have a coffee and a catch-up.
Jess That’s one of the lovely aspects of living in a small town. Everyone knows each other so it feels very together and familiar.
Norma It also means that everyone knows your business. We all knew who had been doing things they shouldn’t. Or, to be more specific, dabbling with people they shouldn’t. Nothing stayed secret for long.
Jess There is that. Were there no skeletons in your closet?
Norma Chance would be a fine thing.
Jess I loved the experience of growing up in a village where all my friends lived within walking distance. We’d play out until the street lights started to come on, which was the signal to stop
the game of Blocko or Kerby and head home for the night. Blocko, which I think is known by other names depending on where you are in the country (I’ve also heard it called 40-40 or Block One Two Three), was like a more challenging version of Hide and Seek – one person would stay at the base and count to 100 while the others hid. The aim for the hiders was to get back to base before being found and tagged by the seeker. And Kerby was a points-based game played with a ball while standing across the street from your opponent. You had to throw the ball, trying to hit the kerb on the other side, then catch it on the rebound. You scored points if successful.
Seems so simple and innocent now! I always felt safe and I was back and forth between your house and mine, which were only a few minutes’ walk apart, the whole time.
Norma I don’t think any of us appreciate the beauty of that freedom until we look back on it as adults. We both got lucky, Jess, growing up where we did. It’s different for children in the big cities.
When I was little we’d go primrosing – flower picking – in the woods, which was perfectly safe in those days. We’d return home healthy, sunburned and hungry.
At the back of our house on Nelson Street, there was a small stretch of concrete, big enough for bikes but not for cars, and we’d spend hours there with our whip and tops and coloured chalks. The whip was a length of stick with a lead attached which you wrapped all the way around a wooden top. Then you’d whip it away, releasing the top, and just watch it spin.
Jess So a bit like a Beyblade of today.
Norma I’ll take your word for that.
Another great love from my childhood – and one that has continued throughout my life – was our royal family. I was
fascinated by them as a little girl. Mrs Bell, who lived next door to us, had loads of big hardback books about all sorts of different topics and I used to go round and ask, ‘Please could I borrow your royal books?’
Very kindly, she would allow me to bring them home where I’d sit and pore over them, looking at all the pictures and reading about the history of the monarchy.
Jess You were always a big fan of the Queen, weren’t you? I guess being a similar age meant that you felt a connection with her although you obviously had very different lives. I mean, you’ve never been ferried about in a horse-drawn carriage while wearing a tiara and waving at the public, for a start.
Norma Sadly not. But you’re right, Jess. She was just eight years older than me and I loved our late Queen to bits. I shall never forget her. She was lovely inside and out and I miss her very much.
Jess I was in Cyprus on holiday when I heard that the Queen had died in September 2022. My first thought was for you because I knew how sad you would be. I phoned you straight away to tell you to put the telly on and watch the news.
Norma I was ever so upset. Her passing had been expected for a couple of days before because there were reports that she’d been in poor health. We’d also seen Prince Charles and other family members on the news arriving at Balmoral to be with her. But it was still a dreadful shock when it happened.
Jess It did feel odd when she died. There was a strangeness in the air like there was something not quite right. Obviously for anyone to pass away, it’s awful, isn’t it?
Norma I don’t know, I’ve not tried it yet.
Jess Nan, honestly! What are you like?
Norma I couldn’t resist that one.
Jess Anyway, I know how much the Queen’s death impacted you and I could see you were grieving.
Norma It was grief, yes. I just felt the loss very keenly because she’d been there the whole time. She was part of my life. One of my proudest moments has always been the day I saw her in the flesh from just a few feet away. It was 1953, so I’d have been 19, and a cousin of ours asked me and Betty if we’d like to go along to the St Leger in Doncaster. We’d never been anywhere like the races before – we had no money to spend but, my goodness, the thrill of it all!
As we came off the racecourse, we stayed on the pavement to watch Queen Elizabeth, who always attended the Leger, drive past. She looked so beautiful with that fabulous complexion of hers. She was a vision. And with her in the backseat was Sir Winston Churchill. What an honour it was to witness a spectacle like that.
Jess That’s more than 70 years ago but you remember it so clearly.
Norma Like it was yesterday. You don’t forget things like that. We all loved the royals in our family. They are intrinsically part of the fabric of this country. I really do think that whenever there’s a jubilee or a royal wedding, we come into our own as a nation. Nobody does all that pomp and ceremony like we do.
Betty even went down to London for the royal wedding when Princess Elizabeth (as she was then) got married to Philip in 1947. I’d have only been 13 so couldn’t go with her. Betty lined the streets alongside thousands of other well-wishers all hoping to catch a glimpse of the newlyweds. When they drove past in the carriage heading off on their honeymoon, this woman – a Londoner – who was standing next to Betty shouted out, ‘What colour’s your nightie, love?’
I mean, really. But that’s London for you.
Jess I’m just picturing Betty all horrified!
Norma Oh, she was. Imagine shouting a fruity comment like that at the future Queen! She was wonderful, our Queen, and she worked so hard right to the end, always kind, thoughtful and diplomatic.
Jess I completely appreciate that she was incredible for her age, and managing the pressure of all those public appearances and speeches well into her nineties was amazing. If it was you, I think you’d say, ‘Ring ’em up and say I’m not doing it.’
Norma You don’t know that. Try me.
Jess OK, Buckingham Palace on the balcony, tomorrow at midday.
Norma I’ll see you there.
Jess I’m always telling you that you’re the nation’s true queen.
So when you weren’t delving into Mrs Bell’s royal family books, what did you spend your time doing when you were younger?
Norma I was often with my best friend, Pat Gregory. She was two years older than me and used to eat raw potatoes. Isn’t that odd? Whenever her mum was peeling them for lunch, she’d always ask for half of one and she’d eat it just like that. I tried it once myself but never again!
Jess I know you and Pat each had a nickname …
Norma Jessica, you are so naughty. You see, Pat was very thin …
Jess … And Nan was quite plump. So all the kids used to call them Barrel and Matchstick!
Norma Isn’t that cruel? I can just about see the funny side of it now …