During my Missouri-London Reporting Semester in Autumn 1981, someone – possibly the program’s moderator, John Whale, again, or my African-American roommate Calvin Lawrence – suggested Calvin and I take in a show starring the great R&B performer, and adoptive Brit, Bertice Reading. I thought it would be a great story, to interview this Ms. Reading, and a piece of cake to arrange.

At the time, I didn’t know that Ms. Reading had done (or perhaps would do) a song called ‘Sweet Goody,’ but John Whale’s wife, who acted in radio dramas as did he, was often called ‘Goody Whale.’ ‘Goody’ is an antique form of address for a married woman in Britain, especially a humble married woman, but is heard today onstage and in very selective uses offstage.

I believe this is the sequence of relevant events.

Calvin and I took in the show, a black musical, and either Ms. Reading’s part was done by an understudy that night, or she acted and sang her part, but would not allow us to visit her backstage. I believe I was given the phone number of her personal assistant, whom I phoned the next day.

An interview was arranged, to take place at the theatre during the day. I went to the theatre at the appointed time, and Ms. Reading was nowhere to be found. Neither was her assistant. I waited a half-hour past our appointment time, and then phoned the assistant. She said Ms. Reading had been held up by a medical emergency of some sort. That set me back a bit, but not significantly enough to make me give up the chase. So, we scheduled an interview for Ms. Reading’s residence.

I set out to visit her at that residence that Saturday toward dusk, but the address I was given was either non-existent or my taxi driver didn’t know it (I think it was on Raleigh Street, but I may be mistaken). I got out of the taxi, and phoned the number I had (either for Ms. Reading’s assistant, or, by now, possibly Ms. Reading’s direct number). I may have reached the assistant, who tried to give me directions, but as I walked in that area, I got more disoriented instead of closer to where Ms.Reading supposedly lived.

Eventually, perhaps after another phone call, I gave up and headed back to my flat. I tried to arrange another appointment, so we could meet at the theatre, but Ms. Reading was too busy by then.

Bertice Reading, it turns out, had a fairly active career until the late 1980s. She’d been born in 1933 in Chester, Pennsylvania, won an amateur talent contest in Philadelphia circa 1950, then won a recording contract, and eventually starred in ‘Requiem for a Nun.’ Her two-sided hits included her first 45rpm — ‘Tears of Joy’ and ‘I’m Alone’ — and later, ‘Little Things Mean a Lot’ (R&B Version)  and ‘I Wash My Hands.’ It all is ironic, I guess, for me, or possibly just a practical joke that someone or several people enjoyed in 1981.

Later in life, Ms. Reading married a psychologist thirty years her junior , or so the account I read goes — by that time, she was a British citizen. If ever chasing a trail suggested the services of a psychologist, it might have been for me, at least temporarily, for ‘losing’ the trail in London of Bertice Reading.

Ms. Reading apparently passed away in 1991. I guess we love you, Ms. Reading, wherever you are, or aren’t for that matter.