Jamaican performer, Charles Hyatt, tells the audience about his father's ram, during Tellabration 2005, at Montego Bay Community College. - Photo by Claudine Housen

Sonny and Myrna Bradshaw

I never had a brother, and so when we met in Campbell Town, Charlie, known as 'Bully' had to play the part.

We 'tracts' together during those early periods sharing life from the days of Spanish Town with our mutual friend, Baba Motta, to the Kingston days on the road in his Morris Minor trying to sell Swift fire extinguishers, playing skittles at Eddie Suns' Champion House and Johnson's Drive Inn, both at Maxfield Avenue.

Architect and 'Chalk Talk' theatreman, Eric Coverley, spotted Charlie's theatre talent and planted the foundation.

We moved apart when he left for England and only got together again when we were both now on to our respective careers. The music thread kept us close enough as we joined up again at the Jamaica Broadcasting Corporation until its death, when Charlie tearfully took me to see what the new BBC genius, Mike Bucket, had done to all his years of work on tape thrown in a room as garbage among some of mine. We lost much of it, but later Charlie cheerfully forgave and forgot, moving on to better broadcasting days. We passed each other in Pantomimes, on stages, in new radio and his theatre productions.

And as Fae Ellington said, his timing was always good to the last. My brother is gone again waiting for our next meeting.

Barbara Makeda Blake Hannah

Please allow me to add my memories of Charles Hyatt, who finished his work on Earth recently, and whose contribution to our lives will not be forgotten.

Charlie Hyatt was a star in that wonderful group of Jamaicans who have a gift for being funny and delight in sharing their gift with us. Like the great Ranny Williams, the man who partnered Miss Lou hilariously in pantomimes and radio, Charlie brought his humour to the stage and the airwaves. He could make you laugh with just a walk, or a facial expression. What he said thereafter always doubled you up with laughter.

I met him as a teenager in pantomimes, where he delighted in teasing the girls with jokes and backstage antics, wearing the big skirt and blonde wig for the role he always played - the Dame. Of course, Charlie dressed as a woman, but never hiding the fact that he was a man, was a laugh in itself. He perfected the traditional stage role in a fashion never since repeated, a class act in itself and the main draw in each pantomime in which he starred.

We met again in 1964 on the Rio Bueno set of A High Wind In Jamaica, the Alexander McKendrick classic film starring Anthony Quinn, James Coburn and Charles Hyatt.

He was a featured actor in this comic-tragedy set in the time of piracy, and his presence on the set confirmed his status as Jamaica's leading character actor. I was a lowly extra and Charlie's funny, open personality was a bridge between the locals and the foreign crew, a smile ever on his face and the faces of those around him. But when the director shouted "Action!" Charlie became the professional, doing his part superbly and flawlessly.

Later, the film took both Charlie, me and a few other Jamaicans (including Beverly Anderson) to England to film the interior scenes. He went on to act in other films, TV and theatrical plays and during his years in England was considered the top Jamaican actor in town. His wide repute as a first class actor onstage, television and radio made the West Indian community proud and grateful for his accomplishments that reflected so well on us 'immigrants'. Digni-fied, yet full of the enjoyment of life, Charlie embodied the spirit of the post-Independence Jamaican man. He could do drama, as well as comedy, as he showed us in the performance of a lifetime in Old Story Time, showing his range of character.

My favourite memory of Charlie has to do with his book, When Me Was a Bwoy, an excellent collection of anecdotes about his growing up as a child in Jamaica, which my five-year-old son and I had read together. It was his first book written in the Jamaican way of speaking and set in a country he knew. He loved it, laughing uproariously at every story and begging me to read some over and over again. He finally met Charlie at a book fair and in fanlike awe, asked him to autograph a copy, telling him, "You're funnier than Charlie Chaplin." Charlie stopped laughing, and opened his eyes wide. "You know, young man, that's the best compliment I've ever had. Thank you."