Joyce at home ahead of her birthday

A LEGENDARY wartime singer celebrated her 100th birthday on Wednesday surrounded by friends and family.

Joyce Terry, a familiar face who lived in the West End many years, was a teenager when she joined the Ivy Benson All Girls Band that warmed the hearts of Allied troops across war-torn Europe between 1943 to 1946.

She was sent with the band to Berlin in 1945 and Ms Terry still recalls seeing the flattened city and understanding for the first time how most Germans were just like ordinary people desperately wanting the fighting to end.

Aged 99, she was ringing up Harrington this week to promote a production with her old friend, singer Peter Straker, himself a legend of the West End stage. So what’s the secret of her longevity? “Show business,” she said ahead of her big day.

Ms Terry – who lives entirely independently – said she was not bothered about receiving a 100th birthday letter from King Charles.

“I don’t really want the letter. I’ve done a lot of work in the war, and a lot of charity work. I think if he’s not going to come and see me, I’m not so interested in a letter,” she said. “We were the first women into Berlin after the war ended. We did the first Christmas day performance there.

“I remember we were told we mustn’t go to the Brandenburg Gate – but of course, that’s where we went straight away. It was packed with Russian and American soldiers.

“They had a load of watches down their arms, they had taken them from the Germans in exchange for a bag of sugar or something. I thought that was disgusting.

Joyce in 2011 dropping in on a musical about the Ivy Benson Band with one of the original band members

“We came in in coaches, and I remember on the way we were pulling our tongues out at the Germans. We had been brainwashed that they were all Hitler, but they were just families like us who wanted the war over.

“We thought London was bad with the bombing, but Berlin was flat – just rubble. We were put into a hostel with rubble and no windows. I was only 16 – it didn’t really mean much to me then. But now I think, ‘god I was there at such a historic time’.”

Born in Manchester, she had started performing aged 14 as the Fairy Queen in a pantomine at the Palladium and would go on to perform with some of the greats of stage and screen.

She said: “Ivy Benson came to see me when I was singing at a club in Southport. The American officers were allowed to do 18 bombing raids – and after nine they had to come away for what they called ‘flak leave’. They would have two weeks in Southport, and then go back to do another nine raids. I would be entertaining them. They had a lot of money, they used to buy me flowers – they used to organise for florists to send me flowers when they were bombing away. Ivy came and wanted me to join her band.” It was a time when orchestras and bands were almost entirely made of men.

“We were the first Girl Power,” she said. “In the war, Vera Lynn was the biggest and best remembered – but after her it was the Ivy Benson Band next. If you spoke to the troops, it was us not Vera they were more interested in.”

Ms Terry worked in television, notably performing on Noele Gordon’s flagship Lunchbox show on the BBC for four years. She lived in Portman Square, Marylebone, before moving to Belsize Park in 1979 with her husband Sidney Terry.

“He was my third husband actually. I was introduced to him by Sir Matt Busby, Matt and I became very close. He’s Scottish and at every party when he got drunk he’d always say ‘Joyce, sing Bonnie Mary of Argyle’, and he’d sit there with tears streaming down his face.” She counted Bob Monkhouse as her best friend but added most of her contemporaries were now long gone.

“A lot of things make me angry, but I try to look on the fun side of things,” she said, explaining that she still felt young inside.

“Who wants to know someone who is miserable? It’s show business of course – that’s what kept me young.”