Barbara Speake, who has died aged 95, sowed the seeds of her stage school for budding child performers towards the end of the Second World War; after beginning with just dance classes, she moulded stars including Naomi Campbell, Phil Collins, Keith Chegwin and Brian Conley.
Not only were pupils – at ages from three-and-a-half to 16 – given skills in a wide range of showbiz talents, but they also received a traditional academic education.
Discipline was a core lesson at the Barbara Speake Stage School and, although Naomi Campbell later made headlines with her addictions as well as convictions for assault, her one-time principal recalled her as “quiet and never naughty or rude”.
Naomi Campbell enrolled at three with the idea of becoming a dancer, but instead found fame as a supermodel. The realisation that a career on the world’s catwalks was where the young girl’s future lay came to Barbara Speake during a fundraising campaign.
“We had second-hand clothes in and did a modelling show to try and sell them and raise money,” she told The Stage in 2007. “That’s when I discovered that she could put anything on and look great in it.”
Phil Collins, meanwhile, was initially taken to the agency by his mother June to learn elocution. “I didn’t do him a lot of good!” Barbara Speake joked. Although a brief acting career followed – including playing the Artful Dodger in the West End production of Oliver! – Collins made his mark as a drummer and singer in the group Genesis, then as a soloist.
His mother had by then become an important part of the stage school. When, in 1961, a pupil wanted to do professional work, Barbara Speake set up the agency side of the business, with June Collins running it.
They became lifelong friends and, following the death of Phil’s father in 1972, lived together until June Collins died in 2011.
Another of the school’s successes, Brian Conley, asked Barbara Speake for private lessons. “He didn’t know how to link his comedy songs,” she recalled, “so I said, ‘All right, but it’ll cost you – five pounds for half an hour.’ ”
Among others who forged careers in entertainment were Keith Chegwin, who followed screen and stage acting roles, as well as a brief excursion into pop music, by becoming a TV presenter, Kwame Kwei-Armah, an actor and playwright, and Michelle Gayle and Paul Medford, both EastEnders cast members during the soap’s first decade.
Jack Wild also passed through the school after June Collins spotted his charisma while playing football. He played one of fa*gin’s gang of pickpockets in Oliver! on stage before taking the role of the Artful Dodger in the 1968 film version.
Despite many of her pupils going on to perform professionally, Barbara Speake insisted that her charges hitting the big time was not the top priority: a good education and upbringing came first.
Phil Collins, in the foreword to her 2009 autobiography, Angels in the Wings, wrote: “She is stubborn yet can be soft, bloody-minded yet considerate, kind yet ruthless, thoughtful yet selfish, hard-working yet frugal.”
Barbara Mary Speake was born in Hammersmith, London, on August 25 1928 to Ida, née Sturgeon, and Richard Speake, a window dresser, who opened his own draper’s shop in East Acton the following year. Barbara attended ballet and tap classes from the age of six at St Dunstan’s Church hall.
Ten years later, after leaving school and working in her father’s shop, she booked a room at the back of the same hall for two shillings and sixpence (121/2p) to give a dancing lesson. Eight friends each paid 1s6d and, within a year, she was running 20 classes a week.
By the age of 23, Barbara Speake was the youngest dancer to gain the advanced teacher’s certificate from the Royal Academy of Dancing.
She extended her tuition to acting and singing, and in 1963 the Barbara Speake Stage School became a full-time educational establishment with an academic curriculum.
It had 17 children in West End productions a year later and provided many others to the Children’s Film Foundation and, on its inception in 1978, the television series Grange Hill.
In 1971, Barbara Speake offered a free scholarship worth £200 a year to Martin Woodhams, a 13-year-old who refused to be caned by the head of a Croydon school for writing a “flippant” essay. June Collins recognised his outgoing personality on a television news programme.
Woodhams won a small role in the 1971 Frankie Howerd film comedy Up the Chastity Belt, but then returned to his original school and left behind any showbusiness ambitions.
Alongside commercials, films and dozens of TV programmes, West End productions to feature pupils from the Barbara Speake Stage School included Bugsy Malone, Les Misérables, The Lion King and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.
Barbara Speake was appointed MBE in 2007. The school finally closed in 2020.
She is survived by her nephew, David Speake, who was the school’s headteacher for many years.
Barbara Speake, born August 25 1928, died August 1 2024
