WALTHAMSTOW: Meet the serenading seaford seller

5:18pm Thursday 17th April 2008

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THE seafood seller in the Irish folk song Cockles and Mussels sang her way around Dublin but if you go down to Walthamstow Market you can be serenaded too.

Buy a claw of lobster and or some jellied eels from Tubby Isaacs seafood stall and 84-year-old John Kean may just burst into song.

John's talents have led to him recording a track with the Sugababes and starring in yoghurt advertising.

"I love entertaining people I love the smiles on their faces," he explains.

"I sing nursery rhymes to the children and you should see the way they grin when I do the actions."

The Second World War veteran, of Rowden Park Gardens, Chingford, speaks five languages, learnt during five years serving with the Royal Fusiliers Neighbouring stallholder, Tony Foxx, said he once asked John to mind his stall only to return to find him babbling away in Polish.

But he only started his showbiz career in 2006, aged 82.

"I always fancied myself as a singer but everyone used to say I was tone deaf," he said.

"Then I met a lady on the train who was reading opera. I sang her my favourite song and she said "John, you should be on the stage with me."

Then his actor son, Sydney, noticed an ad looking for an older gentleman to sing with the Sugababes "That was brilliant, he said. "They sent a taxi to take me to the recording studio and I sang a Jim Reeves song with them. I was there for three hours and they gave me £600.

"And they were pretty."

Starring in the "Lick the Lid of Life" campaign for Muller was also a lot of fun, according to smoothie John.

After the army he worked as a bus conductor, singing of course, and now loves to cheer up customers who come to the stall, where he helps out twice a week.

His favourite music is opera, which he discovered during a tour of Italy, along with his wife, Bettina, who he met and married in Sorrento in 1946.

They had two children and moved to Chingford in 1984, and John named his house Casa Bettina, after his beloved.

He said: "I saw Bettina and married her before anyone else got her beady eyes on her. I had her for 42 years and she died in my arms.

"I love the ladies but if I went round the world again I'd never find a woman better than her."