Jeillo Edwards (Clottey),

Times

September 09, 2004

Lives in Brief

Jeillo Edwards (Clottey), actor, was born on September 23, 1942. She died on July 2, 2004, aged 61.

Jeillo Edwards was one of the first black actresses to appear on British screens, and her durability is due entirely to her patience and good nature throughout the difficult 1960s and 1970s. Arriving in Britain from Sierra Leone in 1960, she survived mainly on her role in BBC Radio’s African Theatre, which, scheduled just once a month, meant a meagre existence for some time. She got her primetime break in 1972, with an appearance on Dixon of Dock Green. She was to become a regular on the BBC World Service, and was the natural choice during African Performance seasons.

Radiant, booming and always cheerful, Edwards had brilliant enunciation — despite a mouth which, had she cared about it, could have made the reputation of any orthodontist. Able to play West African and West Indian with equal verve, Edwards was much in demand in African theatre, in which she specialised in playing the domineering matriarch; a formidable soldier in the battle of the sexes that rages in both these societies. At the same time she was the protective, home-cooking woman ready to show mercy to the most unprincipled transgressor. Many of the plays in BBC African Theatre were politically powerful and benefited from writers exiled by apartheid, such as: Lionel Ngakane, John Matshikiza, Jabu Mbal and Alton Khumalo. At the farthest possible remove from this, she appeared in some of the most cutting-edge television comedies of recent years, including Spaced, Red Dwarf, Black Books, The League of Gentlemen and Little Britain.

Edwards’s desire was always to play the romantic lead on either television or radio — something always denied due to her full figure and her full-blooded voice. The closest she came was perhaps her radio role as Cash Madam, a rich sugar-mamma with a legion of pliant young men — a well-known caricature of the Nigerian upper class. Her catchphrase was: “No sweat, only perspiration.”

She was probably never employed to her full potential. Her best shot at becoming a mainstream comic actress was as Mrs McGregor in the poorly received Jimmy Perry series Room Service (1979). One of her strongest performances was as Rose in A Beautiful Thing, a perfectly realised short film about love on a South London council estate, directed by Hettie MacDonald.

Edwards was a pillar of Sierra Leone community groups in Kennington, South London, and for several years she held court at her own restaurant, Auntie J — the name by which she was affectionately known among her acting peers.

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