I suspect I am not the only man of my generation who, whenever he hears The Beatles sing She's Leaving Home, thinks fondly of his mother. My mother, Joan Fry, who has died aged 83, was one of those sharp, intelligent, good-looking girls who left their home towns in northern England in the middle of the 20th century to forge a new life and identity.
She was born Joan Lloyd – she and her younger brother Ted grew up in the toughest back streets of 1930s Liverpool, enduring hardship and illness, but within a loving family. With the death of her mother Elsie in 1946, Joan was left for several years taking care of Ted and her father, George.
She found work at Liverpool Playhouse, then a hothouse for exciting young acting talent, as secretary to the director, Bill Stoker, a job that marked a new direction in her life. She met and married a young actor from the Playhouse company, William Fry, and soon the couple headed for London where William worked as a jobbing actor and Joan in a variety of secretarial jobs. When I was born in 1959, they moved to the then deeply unfashionable backwater of Clapham in south-west London, with a view to raising a family. My brother John was born in 1962.
The end of Joan's marriage in the mid-60s forced her to go back to work in order to support her children. She took a part-time job as a secretary with Mentor, a young advertising agency specialising in the theatre. Joan soon climbed the ladder at the agency. As account executive at Mentor, she was behind advertising campaigns for many of the great theatres and events of the time – the National theatre's move to the South Bank, productions for the English National Opera and the Royal Court, early West End runs of Dame Edna Everage and many other West End hits of the 70s and 80s. She ran the campaign for Torville and Dean's blockbusting post-Olympics shows at Wembley. By the late 80s, she had become managing director of Mentor.
Retirement in 1990 to Southwold in Suffolk brought a slowing of pace but great contentment. She became a popular and highly recognisable resident of the seaside town, getting about on a tricycle, often with a couple of her much loved yorkshire terriers coming along for the ride in a basket behind the saddle.
She is survived by John and me, Ted, and four grandchildren, Eleanor, Nancy, Max and Sophia.