10 Things You Didn't Know About Fae Ellington

Fae Ellington is a revered Jamaican personality whose career has encompassed broadcasting, teaching, acting and play-acting, a path which has made hers a household name in some quarters. And so, naturally, a legend around which many amusing tales have sprung, all testifying to her Jamaicaness and unique role in the minds and hearts of the people who bonded with her over the years through her work in media and/or exploits on the stage.

In an era when there are few home-grown role models, as our young look overseas for inspiration, Fae Ellington is a pioneering inspirational success story who now seeks to give back by teaching. Today, Outlook Magazine shares 10 nuggets from the life of this outstanding broadcaster and media doyenne, with you, our readers.

1. First off, her first name is spelt Fae, as her mother used her initials F. A. E. to spell her first name. So she is Fae Audrey Ellington.

2. Had she not developed asthma, she would quite likely not have been sent to Kingston; to a warmer climate.

3. She has voiced and appeared in countless commercials for radio and television. But it all started while she was in third form at St Hugh's High School. Adrian Robinson, formerly of CGR, now the principal of Marketing Counsellors, arrived at St Hugh's talent scouting. He chose four voices from the choir, she was one. Canada Dry was the commercial and she was paid three guineas. She bought a pair of patent leather shoes from Morin's shoe store which was located in Cross Roads, across from the Carib theatre, then took the remainder of the money to her mother and grandmother.

4. She worked with Barclays Bank. Clearly thinks she couldn't have lasted in banking! However, she was pretty good at finding and balancing those persons' accounts that just couldn't balance. Those days, it was the use of the eye and the brain, not the computer. It was at Barclays that she saw her first computer main frame. It fitted in an entire room and had less power than a smartphone in 2014. By the way, her annual salary as a clerk at Barclays was a whopping J$830.

5. She has spent time in prison. (In a manner of speaking) as she has worked in the six prisons - (now correctional centres) of Jamaica as a cultural officer with the resource unit at the Social Development Commission 1973-74. Her supervisor was the late Dr Olive Lewin.

6. September 2014 will see her celebrating four decades in broadcasting and 40 years in media, as she joined the Jamaica Broadcasting Corporation on September 16, 1974. Now she was in the big time with remuneration, as her appointment letter read in part, "You will be paid a salary monthly at the rate of $2,700 per annum."

7. She set eyes on her father for the first time when she was 21 years old and thinks she may have gotten some of his talents, as she was to learn that he was the MC of choice in Montego Bay in the '50s and early '60s.

8. She lost a front tooth while watching the Jamaicans run in the heats in the Olympics staged in Atlanta in 1996. She peeled with her teeth, chewed and swallowed along with the tooth and didn't even realise." I am in another zone when watching our athletes perform! I felt like a piece of cane trash was stuck to my tooth. Could not get it off. When I checked the mirror, to my surprise, a tooth I had intact minutes before was nowhere to be seen"

" What a crassiz! Ask dental surgeon, Dr André Foote. He had to 'build' me a substitute in order for me to fulfil an engagement for Jamaica National that very evening in Spanish Town".

9. She enjoys climbing trees. She fell out of her ackee tree in the 1990s and connected with the hard concrete below. While she was still down and almost out, she heard her faithful helper, Miss Shirley (Richards), say, "Lawd gad Miss Fae, dead now", which she followed with a mug of sweet sugar and water. Her friends have begged her to stop climbing. To appease them, she bought a ladder.

10. "Don't test me on the range. I am a good shot, thanks to my instructor and my friends", she says.

- C.F.J.