Zeb Soanes, Jax King, Ben Onwukwe, Sara Kestelman and Cecilia Darker

THE “Actors’ Church” in Covent Garden was packed to the rafters with people, some who had travelled from Australia, to celebrate the life of the “luminous” actor, singer and playwright Cleo Sylvestre.

Ms Sylvestre died from a stroke last year, aged 79, after a varied career across the arts, having grown up on the Regent’s Park Estate.

She befriended Mick Jagger – who attended her private funeral – while still a teenager and became the first female vocalist to sing with the Rolling Stones.

More recently she was co-artistic director of the Rosemary Branch Theatre in Islington from 1996 to 2016, where she later played in a blues band called Honey B Mama and Friends.

Family, friends, and colleagues gathered at the “Actors’ Church”, St Paul’s, in Covent Garden on Friday afternoon for a public memorial filled with tributes, songs from her blues band, perfor­mances and laughter, to raise a glass to Ms Sylvestre.

Actor Sara Kestelman said: “She was a very serious and dedicated student, extraordinarily beautiful, extremely hardworking, and extremely bright, always delightful, soft spoken, calm, respectful, and polite.

“So it came to my surprise when we found out that she was bold and brave enough to bunk off school and head up to Eel Pie Island where she famously met Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones and was later to record with them.”

Cleo’s children, Lucy, Rupert and Zoë Palmer

Ms Kestelman added that, at just age 16, Ms Sylvestre was “impressively self- possessed” and enjoyed fame with “remarkable maturity without it ever going to her head”.

She added: “Cleo was a brilliant reader and a unique listener. Her patience and supreme kindness and humour helped many to recover. It was a cruel irony that she herself would suffer several strokes.

“I was so moved, though, not surprised to hear from [her daughter] Zoë how determined Cleo was to engage and some­how managed to smile and wave. I can see her waving. How incredibly lucky we all were to know her. She was luminous.”

Cecilia Darker, who worked alongside Ms Sylvestre at the Rosemary Branch Theatre, recalled how they worked to get the theatre recognised in the early days.

She said: “Now at that time we were on the outer wastelands of Islington, Hackney and Shoreditch, no mobile phones, laptops or social media, so we had to work quite hard. But Cleo could make just about anything fun.

“And many people, quite a lot of you here, came just to see her in action, both on stage but also front of house, which was the same thing really.

“She has created the Cleo Sylvestre Trailblazer award, which gives £1,000 to help young people on their creative paths, as a way to mark her legacy and history of supporting young talent.”

Jax King said that in their 44 years of friendship, she never met up with Ms Sylvestre without her bumping into someone she knew.

Cleo Sylvestre [Al Simmons]

“She knew everyone,” Ms King said, “as witnessed today.”

The pair met in 1983 while working on a production of Much Ado About Nothing and Ms Sylvestre became her mentor.

She said: “She was brilliant, she gently pushed me and pulled me and saw me through my professional journey. We continued to share a dressing room for the rest of the season and our friendship was launched.

“Everyone knows how deliciously rude and un-PC and hilarious Cleo could be. I found out later in life that she always felt she had to behave at the expense of fun as she was constantly the only black person in the room and felt the weight of that responsibility.”

Radio presenter Zeb Soanes said: “Her drive was impressive. If she wanted to do something, she found a way to do it, whether it was acting, singing, writing her one woman show The Marvellous Adventures of Mary Seacole, which was then published, of which she was incredibly proud.”

He finished his tribute with a poem he had written about Cleo:

There was a young Cleo from Camden
Who lived her life with abandon.
On stage and in song she trailblazed along,
Excelling in all she had hand in.