A fond farewell to Cleo Sylvestre - the real ‘Honey'

Cleo Sylvestre, the actor who inspired the character of Honey in the Gaspard the Fox stories, has sadly died, aged 79. Zeb reveals why she made the perfect muse.

Cleo was more than a friend and neighbour, she was my ‘Hackney Mum.’ She lived a few streets away, firmly embedded in the local community that forms the backdrop to Gaspard’s adventures. Cleo’s trailblazing achievements as an actor and singer are well documented: she was the first black woman ever to play a leading role at the National Theatre in London, she was one of the first black actors to have a recurring role in a British soap-opera and when she released her single To Know Him is to Love Him, in 1964, The Rolling Stones were her backing singers — not bad, eh? In 2023 she was awarded an MBE for services to charity and drama.

In Gaspard Best in Show, I wanted to introduce a new character — the owner of Finty the dog. As a child I always had much older friends who encouraged me and so I wanted Finty’s owner to be older than a parent, yet young at heart. The character needed to be well known and regarded in the community and yet a bit of an outsider, who could serve as a bridge between the world of the animals and humans — and she needed an eventful back story that I could draw upon. I realised this person already existed in the form of Cleo.

Cleo was thrilled to be immortalised in James Mayhew’s beautiful illustrations and in Jonathan Dove’s concert versions of the stories. On the last Friday of each month, Cleo sang with her blues band at our local pub-theatre, The Rosemary Branch, in the guise of her alter ego ‘Honey B Mama’ … hence Honey. Cleo’s daughter Zoë also happened to keep bees, so, neatly, they too made their way into the stories.

In real life Cleo didn’t make honey, but each January she produced a limited quantity of delicious home-made marmalade. I have a sticky jar of her ‘2024’ in my kitchen cupboard that I intend to make last.

Cleo Sylvestre MBE

19 April 1945 - 20 September 2024

During the Coronavirus lockdown Cleo gamely appeared in episodes of the YouTube series Gaspard’s Den - revisiting her brief time as a Playschool presenter. Here we remember her as the ‘groovy granny’ she most certainly was.