THIS is a story that may never be told.

Last Friday, our sports desk was working on an article about Fred Perry, the last British male to win Wimbledon in 1936, just in case Andy Murray made it to the final.

“Did you know Perry was engaged to a Darlington actress?” someone asked, before ditching the article when Murray crashed out.

Because I am an irritating know-all, I did know. Mary Lawson, of Pease Street, Darlington, was the first Twag (a tennis wife and/or girlfriend). I’d heard about her in 2001, but that story also never made it onto the sports pages as Tim Henman never made it beyond the Wimbledon semi-final.

Perry, who won the title in 1934, 1935 and 1936, was a smash with the ladies. He once tied sheets together and abseiled from a hotel window to visit a female player on the floor below.

He was married four times and enjoyed dalliances with leading Hollywood ladies such as Jean Harlow, Bette Davis and Marlene Dietrich.

But Mary came first. In fact, when they became engaged in August 1934, she was possibly more famous than him, despite her humble beginnings in a terraced street off Yarm Road.

Her father was a railway craneman; her mother died when she was three and she always credited her elder sister, Dorothy, for sacrificing her life to bring her up.

Mary, who attended Dodmire School, must have been a precocious madam. At five, she was entertaining injured First World War soldiers billeted in Feethams, an old Pease mansion, and then she became a regular at the Scala in Eldon Street.

Aged 12, she led a professional touring party of young girls around County Durham for three years, before heading to Brighton and then Frinton on the Essex coast where she was spotted by Gracie Fields.

Fields’ endorsement opened West End doors and when Mary was 17 the Carlton Theatre, whose leading lady had hurriedly had to return to the US, gave her the starring role in the musical, Good News. She was a star.

In 1929, she triumphantly toured Australia – her hometown was agog to learn that she earned £60-a-week – and then she moved into films. She met Perry when he visited the studio where she was making Falling In Love.

They fell in love and days before he left for New York to defend his US title, he popped the question.

She was the Posh to his tennis-playing Becks. The paparazzi loved them, and a swirl of rumours engulfed them.

Nine months later, she called it off. “Publicity has killed our romance,” she wailed.

One paper said: “The conversations which led to the breaking off were carried out by trans-Atlantic telephone and cost Mr Perry, who is in Los Angeles, about £200.”

Mary’s career stalled. Her films weren’t blockbusters, even when she co-starred with Stanley Holloway, and she returned to the stage. But she married well, to Francis Beaumont, son of la Dame de Sark – the ruler of the Channel Island.

May 4, 1941, found them in Liverpool. When the air raid siren sounded, everyone else in the house retreated to an underground shelter while Mary and Francis stayed in their room.

When the bomb struck, those in the shelter survived, but the two upstairs died.

“Miss Lawson had a meteoric, eventful and even hectic career,” said the Echo. She was only 31.

Will a Brit ever make it to a Wimbledon final so we can tell this story?