Meeting Beverley
Beverley Spiers was a very close friend of Spike's for
more than 30 years. She first met him around 1965 in Australia,
just after her son was born.
"I was Secretary of the Central Coast Civic Trust and he
was up there to help. He was always saving everything and
so he'd come up to talk and I had to get up and introduce
him. I got up and I got a mental block and I thought, 'Oh,
what's his name again? What's his name?' because I didn't
know him. Anyway I introduced him as Mickey Spillane. Well
he broke up and everybody else gave me the most awful looks,
I don't think I was Secretary after that, and he said, 'Well
I wish I was Mickey Spillane... and made as much money as
him'."
When Spike first invited Beverley to join him on an outing,
he asked her to pick him up from his mother's in Woy Woy.
When she arrived, Spike's mum was in the front garden...
"You should have seen the look on her face, it just dropped
and she started fingering her Rosary beads and I came up
the path, of course, with my baby in the basket, in a rush
basket, and she said, 'My son, my son, what have you done?'
and she's saying, 'Hail Mary, full of grace' ... and the
whole bit and she's looking at me and running round, "What
have you done? What have you done?" Anyway Spike started
roaring with laughter and said, 'It's not mine!'"
|
|
 |
