![\"June](\"http:\/\/www.bohemiavillage.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/bv\/June-at-Music-Hall-Tavern-Blackpool.jpg\")
<\/a>June Hudson at Music Hall Tavern, Blackpool<\/p><\/div>\n
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June is a singer and entertainer. Born in the Cheshire village of Haslington, near Crewe, she began performing when she was very young.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was brought up by my granny, Emily Cooper. Dad worked for Rolls Royce on the planes and my mum worked in a factory making bombs and incendiary bombs. My dad was in the Home Guard and was injured when Rolls Royce was bombed.\u201d<\/p>\n
June loves to reminisce, in fact she often includes anecdotes and stories about the old days in her act.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was no electricity in granny\u2019s house. We had an old tin bath which came down once a fortnight for us to have a bath in.\u201d<\/p>\n
Her love for singing began when her dad took her to The Cozy Club in Haslington. \u201cHe lifted me up onto a table and I sang. To everyone\u2019s surprise I was really quite good.\u201d And a star was born.<\/p>\n
Back at home, June spent hours twirling round and round the garden like a ballerina. Her granny agreed to let her have tap dancing lessons at a shilling a week. \u201cThat was a lot of money in those days.\u201d<\/p>\n
At the dance class, Carroll Levis, a talent-spotter singled out June and invited her to join a troupe that he was putting together for a show to be performed at the local theatre. June loved being on stage and bitten by the show business bug she has been performing ever since.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy big influence is Vera Lynn. I\u2019ve been told that I sound like her and I wrote to her and to my surprise she wrote back and sent me a signed copy of her book with \u2018To June. Good luck with the singing,\u2019 written inside.\u201d<\/p>\n
Her association with Vera Lynn continued when June performed in Blackpool.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was singing at The Conservative Club and someone from the Burma Star Association was in the audience and afterwards they asked me if I\u2019d sing for their annual get-together at the Winter Gardens Theatre in Blackpool. They loved the old songs and my little stories. I was very nervous before the show, but when I went out onto the stage, with that big band and all those lovely people out to have a good evening, I had the time of my life.\u201d June was singing at the RAF Club in Cleavleys. After her act, the African Star Association approached her and asked her to sing in the Planet Room at the Winter Gardens, in Blackpool.<\/p>\n
June supplemented her income by working at Littlewoods Stores. \u201cI ended up being one of their supervisors and buyers.\u201d<\/p>\n
One evening, she and a friend went to The Mecca in Blackpool for a night out. There she met Ron, her future husband, and they have now been married for forty-five years. They had two sons, Michael and Edward. Sadly, Edward died when he was just three from a heart condition. This tragic event triggered June\u2019s tireless fund-raising activities for charity.<\/p>\n
The family left Blackpool and moved to Tunbridge Wells. June and Ron heard through their local church, the United Reformed Church, that the Kent and Sussex and Pembury Hospital needed money to buy a CAT (Computerised Axial Tomography) scanner. June and others formed a committee and set about organising events and raising awareness. At one event they raised five hundred pounds in one day \u2013 when she told fortunes at Tonbridge Castle when footballer Emlyn Hughes stopped by – see pictures below:<\/p>\n
<\/a>June Hudson and Emlyn Hughes 1982<\/p><\/div>\n
<\/a>June Hudson Fortune Teller 1982<\/p><\/div>\n
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The family moved back to Tunbridge Wells after her mother died and June sang in local clubs and pubs to raise money for charity. Her husband Ron, a class one football referee for 37 years, helped with June\u2019s fund-raising appeals by blowing the whistle to kick off festive draws and announcing the winners of prize winning holidays.<\/p>\n
June appeared on television in \u2018My Kind Of People,\u2019 when she sang with the star of the show, Michael Barrymore.<\/p>\n
June and Ron moved to Bohemia twelve years ago. They are regular baptised members of the King\u2019s Church on the Ridge.<\/p>\n
\u201cSinging is exhilarating. It\u2019s great for exercise and general well-being.\u201d June bought herself an amplifier which she uses nearly every day and when Ron had to go into hospital in 1998 for a heart operation, he asked her to record some of his favourite songs so that he could listen to her as he recuperated.<\/p>\n
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NOWADAYS<\/strong><\/span>\u00a0June has made a second CD,\u00a0Nowadays<\/i>, (pictures below) which features over twenty songs and is sold to raise funds for the King\u2019s Church, Hastings.<\/p>\n