"SHE was an absolute one-off," said entertainer Gary Wilmot on the life of fellow entertainer Billie George, who died in South Devon recently.

Billie and husband Trevor helped Gary find his footing on the stairway to stardom and became lifelong friends.

"If I wasn't on the road I would have been at the funeral myself," said Gary.

"When I first started, Billie and Trevor offered me a summer season at one of the holiday camps in Torbay. It was a fantastic grounding really.

"The money wasn't the best in the world but I remember at the time it being reasonably good. It was about £200 a week. It probably hasn't changed much.

"It meant there was a lot of variety involved and the atmosphere down there was absolutely fantastic. And it led on to all sorts of things."

He added: "I can remember when Trevor and Billie asked me if I wanted to star in my own show and have my name in lights above the theatre. They called it the Gary Wilmot Show. I had only been going for two or three years at the time and it was the most wonderful thing to happen to me."

Gary was a relative late starter having not begun his acting career until his early 20s.

His mum was from Birmingham and his dad had arrived from Jamaica in 1948 on the 'good ship' Empire Windrush, in the first big wave of immigration after the Second World War.

By the 1950s the couple were in London, in Lambeth — where Gary was born in 1954.

His family has a musical background, but he had no early ambitions for a life on the stage.

His dad was the bass voice that provided the line 'I am a mole and I live in a hole'.

But he died when Gary was just seven and Gary didn't start treading the boards until he was 22.

However, friends say he had always shown a talent to entertain and so, with encouragement from those around him including Trevor and Billie George, he took his first step on the road to stardom.

"I have many, many happy memories of Torbay and of what Trevor and Billie achieved, not just me but with people like Michael Barrymore. They gave Michael his name.

"Whenever I would work with them in the Belgrave Hotel in Torquay I used to have such a good time and learnt so much. Even knowing and working with them it took me months and months to actually work out how they did their act.

"Over the years I used to go down and visit them.

"Billie was always so elegant. I can just see her now, she was such a great influence and, of course, together they were such a good double act in their own right. Their memory act itself was a great entertainment."

In 1989, Gary's first West End role was that of Bill Snibson in the award-winning musical Me And My Girl.

He played the role to critical acclaim for two years, the late critic Jack Tinker describing him as a 'musical talent of the highest order'.

A successful theatre tour of a new comedy Teething Troubles followed, earning him further acclaim.

With direction by Simon Callow, Gary's next role was that of Joe in the award-winning Carmen Jones followed by the world premier of the Barry Manilow musical Copacabana.

In 1997, Gary created the role of Elliot Garfield in The Goodbye Girl as well as starring as Fagin in the Cameron Mackintosh production of Oliver!

Then Gary spent a highly successful period at the Bristol Old Vic in Willy Russell's play, One For The Road, and starred in the concert tour of Music To Watch Girls, Pirates of Penzance and Chitty, Chitty, Bang, Bang.

He said he got used to the slog of touring pretty quickly.

"You have to do it," he said.

"It's like asking a fisherman if he likes carrying all of his gear to the river bed. It's something that has to be done. It's like a rock band lugging all that gear.

"There's a line in our play that says: 'Like all things new, you get used to it in the end'. Touring is a bit like that really, you get used to it."

This new play is the production of Lord Arthur Savile's Crime which plays at the Theatre Royal from Monday.

In the play Lord Arthur Savile , played by Lee Mead, is deliriously happy.

He is a pillar of Victorian society on the verge of marriage to the lovely Sybil Merton, when a brief departure from late 19th century convention leads him to an encounter with a chilling clairvoyant called Podgers.

Podgers secretly reveals that at some point in Arthur's life, he is destined to commit murder.

To protect his future wife, Arthur decides he must commit this bloody deed before he marries.

As he searches for the most convenient person to sacrifice, chaos ensues in this highly entertaining comedy of upper-class morality.

"Last night in Blackpool was the best audience that we have had so far," he said.

"The tour has just got better and better as we have gone along.

"The most frequent comment that we get back is what a great night out the show is."

JONPAUL HEDGE