Joy Laurey – The Girl who pulled the strings

Ted Coney, life-long fan of Mr Turnip, originally met Joy and Mr Turnip when he was a child. Seeing her perform on stage in Scarborough, Ted recalled how glamorous Joy was. He met her again while she was demonstrating the Pelham Puppet version of Mr Turnip at a department store, also in Scarborough, to which Mr Coney was the only person to attend.

A recornised artsist and the Head of Art and Design at a Cambridge Sixth Form College, Coney wanted to use the image of his favourite puppet chracter for a painting representing his childhood.

He decided to track down who currently owned the Mr Turnip puppet and found he was still with his creator Joy. Coney vividly remembers the first telephone conversation he had with Joy:

“she had a very young voice, you would have though she was a young woman in her 20s”.

Joy invoted Coney to lunch where she was very welcoming and accomodating. The famous Mr Turnip was always kept safely in a bag and stored inside an old hard tennis case. Joy kindly allowed Coney to make drawings and take photographs of her puppet to use for his painting.

Captivated, he fondly remembers seeing his childhood hero being manipulated by Joy:

“She moved him so beautifully, it was a power she had in her hands. Joy said she could just ‘feel it'”.

The pair met many more times over the years and a real friendship formed. Joy would visit and entertain Coney’s young children with their own private Mr Turnip shows, and she also unveiled his painting entitled ‘Diamonds’. This painting, featuring rednderings of his favourite puppet is based on his parents leaving the family home after sixty years. Mr Turnip presents Coney and was painted having a last look around rooms within his childhood home. Coney always had the feeling of being a child when at that house which he felt could never be replicated elsewhere.

When Coney showed Joy some of his working paintings she said, “why are you doing him in colour when you only ever saw him in black and white?”. Joy’s feedback gave him the inspiration to alternate the background and Mr Turnip in either colour or black and white.

I met Ted Coney recently when conducting research for this book, and he has such fond memories of the time he spent with Joy and Mr Turnip. Listening to him recall his experiences so vividly and with such passion is a testament to the significance Joy and her vegetable pal has on his life and indeed the lives of anyone that had the honour of meeting them. Over the years, they exchanged many letters and cards with Joy often sending clips of her own performing past, all of which have been invaluable to me and this book.

I am the produ owner of Mimi Melon, another of Joy’s creations who was seen with Mr Tunrip on Whirligig, and I took her with me to meet Coney at his home and gallery in Ely, Cambridge, where you can see his work on display. He remembers Mimi on TV performing in an Opera sketrch whilst Mr Turnip played the piano and remarked that the camera panned up from Mimi to Joy manipulating her, which was very rare for the show.

Joy also gave Coney a copy of her interview on ‘Pebble Mill – Puppet Special’ from 1983, which featured many well-known puppets, puppeteers, voiceover actors and presenters. It was in fact the first time Joy and HL has seen each other in over thirty years.

In the interview,  HL discussed his time in Whirligig:

“My role was to be the children and have fun, and I was always covered in muck[…] Mr Turnip, although twenty-two inches high, was a very strict disciplinarian, he kept me in tow.”

Watching the interview now, it is strange to view as HL has aged yet Mr Turnip did not look any different. SAdly, Humphrey Lestocq died shortly after folming, but it’s nice to think those two old friends has one last reunion.