Town’s oldest masseur dies from complications ...

Eileen ‘Madam’ Lovelock, Otley’s much-loved masseur and provider of personal services, died in her sleep yesterday at her home in Back Alley. Ms. Lovelock, who helped ease the pain of Otley’s gentlemen folk for more than 60 years, had been suffering from a repetitive wrist injury and severe sore throat.

 

Over recent years, Ms Lovelock was forced to accept only callers to her home, as she suffered from increasingly arthritic knees. However in the past, her ‘on call’ service was widely renowned as one of the best in the area.

 

‘I can’t believe she’s gone,’ said loyal customer Lyall Down. ‘I don’t know what I’ll do now, she was more like a friend than anything. I used to visit every Sunday after church for more than 20 years. Her prices went up when her teeth fell out, but it was still worth paying’.

 

Elmer Feelgod echoed similar thoughts. ‘I’ll never forget the first time I met her. I was 15, and my dad had just caught me with Maisie the cow. He said, ‘You’re not getting into that, my lad. It’s time you saw the Madam’. And she was round like a shot. She’ll surely be missed sorely.”

 

Ms Lovelock was rumoured to have started her career in the celebrated streets of Paris’s Pigalle, under tutelage from world-famous double-jointed masseur Valeria Knuckle. Yet coming from Abroad didn’t hamper her career when she arrived in Otley in 1957, and only the most foolhardy would have called her a Foreigner.

 

Ms Lovelock’s funeral is on Wednesday at 3pm. She is to be buried in Otley churchyard, on top of her brother, who passed two years ago.

 

‘She was loved by all,’ continued Mr Down. ‘When she goes down for the final time, there’ll be a lot of tears shed’.