Too good to be forgotten

Yvonne Hanley and Annie Ruddock were inseparable as children, but marriage for dental nurse Yvonne, of Meredith Street, Nelson, and pop stardom for Annie led them to lose touch.

Annie was a member of 80's chart toppers Amazulu - who had hits including Montego Bay and their number one Excitable.

The title of one smash, Too Good to Be Forgotten, sums up the girls' friendship which began when they were toddlers.

They became best friends on the first day they walked into the reception class at school in London.

The girls were convinced they were sisters, even though they were different colours, and as teenagers they both endured racial taunts because of their friendship.

After they went their separate ways neither friend knew they were searching for each other.

At one stage Yvonne even took a job with Annie's record label, Island, to see if she could track her down.

Now 36, Yvonne settled in Nelson and has two children, Dean, aged 10 and Roxanne, eight.

They were going to write to Cilla Black to see if she could arrange a reunion on Surprise, Surprise because they had heard so much over the years about Annie .

Fate stepped in to Yvonne and Annie's search last week and led to the marathon phone call and the promise to meet very soon.

Yvonne said: "It was so wonderful, I just couldn't believe it. I was so frightened she had died. We had been searching for each other but neither of us knew, and we had both changed our surnames.

"At first neither of us could speak for excitement, but once we got going there was no stopping us.

"We are like sisters and there is so much in our lives that have co-incided."

The re-union came about after Annie's grandmother, who now lives in Fulham, started to go to a day centre for the elderly. The centre is across the road from where she remembered Yvonne lived in the White City, and she asked one of the staff to push a note through the door.

Yvonne's mum still lives at the house and as soon as she read the note she rang her daughter.

Laughed Yvonne: "I was a bit scared of ringing because I wondered what she'd say. It was about 7pm when I went on the phone, and all the doors were open. They were still open when the neighbours came round at 10 o'clock because they were worried I'd been burgled.

"Heaven knows what the 'phone bill is going to be!"

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.