When Joanne Rosenthal was a kid in Manchester, gatherings of her religious Jewish family were enlivened by the presence of her uncle’s eccentric wife. “Mad eye makeup; larger than life. You’d say to her: ‘Auntie Avril, can I give you some more chicken?’ And she’d say: ‘Go on, Joanne, my punters love me with a bit of meat on.’ Hang on, what are you talking about, your punters?”
There would be other “tantalising references to her career on stage” besides, but no further info. “Everyone’s sitting there at Passover or Jewish New Year and no one asks any follow-up questions!” Rosenthal continues. “It’s like everyone accepts that Auntie Avril is this subversive presence. When I told her I was getting into music, she said: ‘Quit school, join a band, get on the road, never look back – you won’t regret it.’ It was a very humdrum, suburban, conformist, normative environment and she kept … going off script.”
