By Charles Hyatt, Contributor 
STARTING IN 1956 when I was given the 'Best Actor' trophy for my performance in Barry Reckord's Miss Unusual, the last quarter of the '50s saw me collecting awards left, right and centre.
The culmination came in 1958 when I was awarded an arts scholarship by the Arts Council, which was to take me to England in the spring of 1961. With that came a British Council Bursary that went a long way toward keeping the wolf from my door during my schooling period.
A sprig of spring onion escallion to you a raw carrot, some watercress, a piece of cheese, a hard-boiled egg and a glass of milk was the banquet fare as the main meal Monday to Thursday.
Friday and Saturday belonged to a portion of newspaper-wrapped fish and chips. On Sunday, if I was lucky, I would have manoeuvred an invitation to someone's home for roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, or otherwise a couple of pork pies and a 'pinta bitter' in the pub.
I lost weight rapidly.
The brand new suit in which I arrived in England hung like a tent on me after only three months in school at the Theatre Royal in Windsor.
The occasion was one of the rare visits by the Queen to the theatre which was situated, by the way, just across the road from her royal summer residence, the Windsor Castle. The production was a musical version of Jane Eyre which it was hoped would be transferred into the West End.
Good as it was, it never made it. After the final curtain, the cast and the crew, as was customary, were presented to the Royal party on-stage. Yours truly was the only black in the line-up.
MUCH FAME
I got a smile and a handshake from Her Majesty and Prince Phillip and had words with Princess Margaret, who was big in the family way, and Lord Snowdown, her husband.
What more could one ask? Especially as there were heaping silver trays of little cucumber sandwiches strategically placed in the Queen's path, that I knew she wasn't going to touch. A bottle of milk from the theatre fridge and a few handfuls of those and this boy would be well away for the night.
In the picture that made the front page the next day, the black stood out smiling in sharp focus. That photograph brought me much fame all the way to Slough for the duration of my stay in Windsor.
After passing out I took the decision to test my wings as an actor in British society as I put it at the time to find out if I could demonstrate satisfactorily anything I had learnt in my tuition.
I travelled to London in search of my friends who had immigrated before I left home, found them, moved in with them in a basement in Stockwell in south west London and started on my hunt for thespian glory in my new home.
Now there's a Catch 22 situation in the theatre world. One needs to have an agent if one hopes to get work, but needs to be in work in order to be seen by would-be agents.
Well, upon the recommendation of a colleague, his agent decided to get me a 'free work' by way of an audition. It was a Wednesday amateur night and I was to do a stand-up comic turn in a pub in Lewisham in south east London. The name of the pub was 'The Brown Bull'.
I entered on-stage singing Roll Out The Barrel, while rolling out a beer barrel, and proceeded to declare in a very inebriated manner that at last someone has the good sense to name a pub after me.
After that, for the next 30 minutes I could do no wrong. When I got off the stage the agent handed me a contract and his pen.
What that agent had in mind for me is not what I wanted. It wasn't my ambition to be a 'stand-up' comic for white people. That was not what I went to England to achieve. After all, it was 'Black Power' time. I was not in any frame of mind to make white people laugh. To make them cry, yes! But not laugh.
I was not ready for that yet. He was disappointed, but maybe he understood.
Anyway, through his agency I got quite a lot of work, starting with The Day of the Fox, when I met Sammy Davis Jr. It was during that production that Sammy discovered West Indian talent and he was quite impressed by it. He suggested that the working group that he had come to know should stick together, write our own plays and have them produced on the TV.
We acted upon his advice and stick together we did. We eventually elected to adapt Euripides' Alsestis and make a black story out of it. The result of that endeavour is for another column.
A STAR
A few weeks into this occupation I got a call from Jamaica inviting me home as a guest artiste to perform at our inaugural celebrations of Independence. The call came from JBC Radio; there was no television yet.
The invitation was under the auspices of the JBC, on which station I would perform, British Overseas Airways Corporation BOAC which would fly me return, John Crook Ltd., which would provide ground transportation for the period of two weeks while I was in the island, and the Sheraton Hotel, where I would be staying.
I was a star!
Being a star can have some hazardous pitfalls y'know. On the flight home we stopped in Nassau, as in those days turbo prop aircrafts had to be refuelled to complete the Atlantic crossing.
When I reached the plane door and looked in the distance there were what seemed to me to be people on the terminal building's waving gallery. White handkerchiefs were fluttering in out stretched hands. I thought 'My goodness y'mean the news reach here that I'm coming home?'
So I took out my handkerchief and waved back to the crowd as I approached the building. By the time I got near I realised that the people were not waving at me, but in fact were fanning mosquitoes and sand flies that infested the place. The nearer I got, the more I found myself doing the same thing.
Shame!? Embarrassed!?
The reaction at Palisadoes airport, as it was known then, made up for everything. There was a spanking new silver grey chauffeur-driven Austin Westminster 110 awaiting me, flashbulbs lent brightness to the waning sun and perspiration of excitement was running down into my shoes.
There were actually fans there that had come to welcome me home. And I thought 'So this is what it really feels like to be a star. God help me to be able to live up to their expectations'.
I was told that night that Sammy Davis was also on the invited list of guests coming to perform at our Independence celebrations. I was elated. "I just finished working with the man. I know him well!" I said.
Up went the eyebrows. "Y'kno Sammy?? Yu work wid him?!" The affirmative, I guess, elevated me to a higher echelon.
My performance was the next night at the State Theatre in Cross Roads in St. Andrew. It was going to be the first time that I would be seen live doing a 'Here Comes Charlie'.
I hit the bullseye dead on. The whole show was broadcast live of course. The audience in the theatre was still laughing and applauding when I came off the stage.
Programme manager Adrian Robinson met me in the wings and said, in his own inimitable style, "I knew you could do it." That was enough for me.
The next day I was asked to join the party that was going to meet Mr. Sammy Davis Jr. that night. Things kept getting better by the minute.
At the airport I sort of held back because I knew that everyone else in the party would want to be seen in the photographer's lens in the company of the biggest name in show business. I also knew that mine would be the only face in the crowd that he would know.
Knowing him as I had come to, I watched politeness oozing out of every pore until he saw me.
"Charlie!" he shouted. We embraced and it was as if he was clinging on for dear life in relief.
Now the flashes went off. The photograph with our arms around each other is the one that made the front page the next day.
From the time we held on to each other that night at the airport he never let me go. I became his security blanket.
With me, he was on familiar ground, so much so that he demanded I ride with him in his limo.
On the way from the airport it happened, the greatest moment of my life up to that time.
Sammy Davis Jr. said to me: "Charlie I am going to say something and if you start crying I'm going to hit you." "Okay," I replied. "Would you introduce my show tomorrow night?" I didn't get hit, but I wasn't far from tears.
That night at Carib Theatre, when I was on the same stage as Sammy Davis Jr. in front of my home crowd, I was a star swinging on a star.
