Newbury 100-year-old former model mingled with Eric Morecambe and Frankie Vaughn
'Pammy' Langsman talks on her centenary
IT’S been a wonderful life for a 100-year-old Newbury woman who worked as a model and mingled with the stars.
When Pamela Langsman was born on February 19, 1920, prohibition had come into effect in the US a month earlier and England’s World Cup-winning football manager Alf Ramsey was almost a month old.
Born in Baker Street, Mrs Langsman (née Coates) lived in London for 56 years, mainly in Cricklewood and Wembley, and moved to Newbury 13 years ago.
She was head girl at the Mora Road School and left aged 14 and-a-half.
She later attended the Lucie Clayton Charm Academy and became a catwalk and photographic model – appearing in Harper’s Bazaar and modelling Kitty Copeland in Drapers Record.
At the outbreak of the Second World War women were drafted in to help with the war effort and Mrs Langsman ended up switching the catwalk for a desk.
She said: “It was much easier than being on your feet all day and wearing high-heels,” she said.
“People think it’s glamorous being a model, but there’s hard work in it.
“It was quite hard work, tiring.
“When I had to sit in an office I thought it was delightful – mentally a bit more tiring, but a lot easier.”
Mrs Langsman’s daughter, Jasmine Flatters, said her mother won’t be seen without her penciled eyebrows and pink lipstick.
And although her modelling days are long behind her, Mrs Langsman could be appearing on Instagram after being made up by a Clinique beautician in Camp Hopson recently.
Mrs Langsman, known as ‘Pammy’, said she met her husband Jack by chance after a friend invited her to a dance at Woolwich Academy, where she had been set up on a blind date.
Despite saying she was fed-up with going out, Mrs Langsman went to the dance and was spotted by Jack who pretended to be her blind date.
The two married in 1947 and had three children, Bruce, Rex and Jasmine.
Mr Langsman was involved in the Sportsmans Aid Society, which frequently invited celebrities to their events.
Mrs Langsman said she had mingled with the likes of comedian Eric Morecambe and singer Frankie Vaughan – and has the pictures to prove it.
The Sultan of Brunei also dropped in to her London home.
Mrs Langsman’s brother Peter worked for Shell and was sent to Brunei and Borneo, where the Sultan was so enamoured with him that he offered him a job.
Then one day, Mrs Langsman said: “They suddenly phoned me up on a Sunday morning and said the Sultan will be with you soon.
“He came to my house, a very nice house in Wembley. They said they had never been in such a small place”.
She also visited her brother in Brunei, part of her love of flying after overcoming her fear.
She spent July 1969 in the US and watched the Apollo 11 Moon landings in a hotel room.
She also went to San Francisco during the height of the hippy movement.
Her love of air travel hit new heights when she took a flight on Concorde for her 80th birthday.
Mrs Langsman said she loved horseracing and would come to Newbury Racecourse when she lived in London.
The 1970s, 80s and 90s were spent looking after her children and grandchildren and she now has six great-grandchildren.
Mrs Flatters said that the 1980s was a decade of great happiness and sadness, as her four grandchildren were born, offset by the death her mother and husband three months later.
Mrs Flatters was appointed the MBE in 2014 for her services to triathlon.
She said that the support from her mother and husband had “enabled me to go off in the world of sport that culminated in me getting my MBE”.
When asked if there was a secret to her longevity, Mrs Langsman said: “There’s no secret.
“You just live as best you can day to day.
“And having good food and regular food, which people don’t do nowadays, which they should do.
“I have had a wonderful life, I can’t complain at all.”
Up until January 2019 Mrs Langsman was still active, but doctors decided to remove her artificial hip after it kept dislocating.
She said that “things have changed a lot, but you have to change with them”.
Mrs Langsman celebrated her centenary with a party at her home in Greenham on Saturday, which was attended by 100 people.
Closing her speech at the party, Mrs Flatters said: “What the future holds no one really knows but one thing is for sure, that Pammy will go on and on.”
Mrs Flatters described her mother as “feisty”.
She said : “She’s full of life, full of energy, she enjoys sweet things... she’s taught me everything I know. We are all chips off the old block.”