Miner Jackie Toaduff is a real-life Billy Elliot who danced with royalty and was wooed by a Hollywood screen legend. He tells Steve Pratt how he overcame his parents’ objections to have a life on the stage.

SEVERAL times Jackie Toaduff interrupts one of his fascinating showbiz stories to say something along the lines of: “When I was a boy running around barefoot in Stanley...”.

Even this real-life Billy Elliot can’t quite believe that a coalminer’s son from a North-East pit village has partied with the rich and famous, danced with a princess and been wooed by a screen dancing legend.

Now he’s written his autobiography, Coaldust To Stardust, featuring a cast list like a who’s who of showbiz and royalty, led by his dancing partner Princess Margaret.

The opening chapters find young Jackie’s parents appalled that he wants dancing lessons. Coalminer’s sons don’t dance, he’s told.

“But I was determined. Our neighbour’s daughter was having lessons, so I used to go in and watch,” recalls 76-year-old Jackie, who’s run a hotel in Derbyshire with his singing partner, Roy, since retiring 15 years ago.

“One day she was having problems executing the steps and her teacher, Jocka Richardson, looked at me and said, ‘this little kid can do that’. So I got up and did it. He said I was a natural born dancer.

“He went to see my mother, but she almost kicked him out of the house. She said, ‘no son of mine is going to do that, it’s a lasses’ game’.”

He didn’t give up. But again his parents refused permission when another dancing teacher offered help, forcing him to take dancing lessons in secret.

His undoing was to take part in a concert.

Next day, he was the talk of the town. “The neighbours went to see my mother and said, ‘your Jackie was marvellous last night’,” he says. “She gave me a good hiding.”

At 14, he went down the pits and stopped dancing until he saw an English folk song and dance society appeal for clog dancers to take part in a competition. “So in three weeks I learnt how to clog dance – and won the junior championship.”

He became front page news by dancing with Princess Margaret after a clog dancing show at London’s Royal Albert Hall. “She beckoned me over and said she thought I had batteries in my shoes. She’d never seen feet move so fast. She asked if I did any other kind of dancing. I replied ballroom dancing, in a fashion. She said she’d like to dance with me sometime.”

Soon after, he was summoned to partner her on the dance floor. “At the end I took her back to her seat like a gentleman should and she invited me to join her. Everyone was looking, thinking what’s a Geordie coalminer doing sitting with royalty?,” he recalls.

“Next day I was on the front pages.”

He spent 12 years down the pit until a trip to Blackpool with his mates changed his life. “We didn’t have any beer money left and they saw there was a £30 talent contest on the Central Pier. They insisted I entered to get some beer money – and I won,” he says.

Later, at a club, he was spotted by someone in the audience whose brother staged a clubland command performance every year. “He said he could get me in the show.”

He was as good as his word and, in January 1958, Jackie found himself trudging through thick snow to a boarding house in Blackpool where he met the singer, Roland Roy, who was to become his stage partner.

He and Roy developed into a singing double act known as Roy and Jackie Toaduff. He’d gone from coalmine to showbiz – “black and white to glorious Technicolor” in his words.

They worked in the US, toured South Africa with Bob Monkhouse and travelled all over the world doing shows for the Armed Forces.

HIS memoirs feature a starry list including Margot Fonteyn, John Mills, Vincent Price, Gloria Swanson, Jenny Agutter, Michael Caine, Barbara Stanwyck, Merle Oberon, Larry Hagman, James Cagney and Vera Lynn. He met many of them aboard the QE2 during the two decades the duo performed on board.

One very special friend was Ginger Rogers, with whom Jackie stayed at her Palm Springs home and, he says, wanted him to marry her.

They first met briefly while she was appearing in Mame in London when she gave him a parting kiss after chatting post-show. “As a lad I’d go to the cinema and watch in awe her dancing with Fred Astaire and here she was giving me a kiss,” he says.

Meeting again on the QE2 was the start of “the most fantastic, remarkable friendship,” he says. “I feel stupid saying this but she fell in love with me. Her friends said they’d never seen her so happy as when she was in my company.

I have love notes from her and a Valentine card.

“But I didn’t fancy being Mr Rogers number six. Of course, she was older than I was and I knew she was a legend, far above my status.

But none of that bothered her, she still wanted us to be together.

“We were very good friends until the day she died. I used to pinch myself and think, ‘am I really that coalminer from Stanley in Ginger Rogers’ company and she wants to marry me?’.

■ Coaldust To Stardust is available to buy from peakpublish.com