Starways: When Liverpool Ruled the Skies by Patsy Leigh

Starways: When Liverpool Ruled the Skies by Patsy Leigh

SPECIAL OFER FROM THE PUBLISHERS: PRICE REDUCED BY ONE POUND, ONE DOLAR, ONE EURO IN BRITAIN, USA, EU RESPECTIVELY. OFER ENDS: JAN 31, 2018. Starways was the airline the world forgot. Now, 50 years on, a former air hostess tells her story. Patsy Leigh left school at just thirteen but that has not deterred her from writing this remarkable book: a vivid, affectionate and humorous account of her years flying high with Starways, Liverpool's much-loved former airline from the 1960s. Now in her early 80s, Patsy recalls the bad times as well as the good; the poor pay and the long hours; the turbulence on the ground as well as in the air. But there was fun aplenty too, as she mingled with the stars. We learn how Ken Dodd used to pull her leg and that Paul McCartney howled with laughter when Patsy admitted never listening to the Beatles. She kept her cool when a passenger died mid-flight alongside his frantic mistress. There was the time an engine leaked oil, forcing a landing in Nigeria just as independence celebrations were turning nasty. And let's not forget the skirmishes with Customs officers who didn't take kindly to spirits and cigarettes being smuggled beneath hats and uniforms. Captain George Leigh, pilot and senior manager, often took a dim view of his air hostesses' antics. At times, they feared for their jobs. But Patsy need not have worried. She didn't realise it, but Captain Leigh was starting to fall in love with her . . . The books is illustrated throughout with some two dozen archive photographs which Patsy kept from her time with Starways.

Patsy Leigh was an Air Hostess for Liverpool's Starways airline from 1960 to 1964. Patricia Collins, as she was then, was born in 1934 in Wormley, Hertfordshire, and grew up during the Second World War. Her father died in 1943 and her mother, aged 27, was left with four children and a rented house which they had to leave. Patsy attended eleven schools from five years old until one month before her 14th birthday, after which her mother needed her to work. Patsy worked in Garners, a London restaurant, for almost seven years, before training with Revlon as a manicurist and beautician, working at hairdresser Henry da Costa's salon, Number 9, New Bond Street, and next door to a very young and broke Vidal Sassoon. After that she moved to Norton's in Duke Street, St James, where her clients included actors Sir Alec Guinness, Trevor Howard and Leo Genn. It was in part due to Patsy's brother-in-law Laird Kennedy, himself a pilot, that she first took to the skies. Patsy now lives in West Sussex.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780995499607
ISBN 10	0995499608
Title	Starways: When Liverpool Ruled the Skies
Author	Patsy Leigh
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Bramblewood Publishing
Year published	2016-07-15
Number of pages	150
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.