Post 372 - Little Nell Collection

"Little" Nell Campbell was born Laura Elizabeth Campbell on the 24th May 1953. She was born in Sydney, to Ruth and Ross Campbell, a writer, who called her "Little Nell" (after a character in Charles Dickens' The Old Curiosity Shop) in his family life column in the Sydney Daily Telegraph. She has three siblings, two sisters and a brother. She began dancing at the age of 10, after being diagnosed with Hepatitis A, to keep healthy. She attended high school at the Abbotsleigh School for Girls in Sydney. Campbell decided to use the name "Little Nell" as a stage name after her arrival in Britain in the early 1970s with her family. She sold clothes at Kensington Market; her stall was next to Freddie Mercury's. She also worked as a busker and her tap dancing is often noted as the reason why she was cast as Columbia in the original production of The Rocky Horror Show. She reprised the role in The Rocky Horror Picture Show, released in 1975, and starred as Nurse Ansalong in the 1981 sequel, Shock Treatment. From the mid-1980s to 1998, Campbell owned three nightclubs in New York: Kiosk, E&O, and most famously Nell's. Nell's was sold in 1998, right before she gave birth to daughter Matilda Violet in June 1998 to ex-boyfriend and business partner Eamonn Roche. She recorded a hand full of singles between '76 & '80 all here for you to download, they are from 1975 "The Musical World Of Little Nell EP (AMS-7351) which came out on red vinyl, from 1978 "Fever" b/w "See You Round Like A Record" (AMS-7374) and from 1980 "Beauty Queen" b/w "Beauty Queen (slow version) (PRE-004). The first two single were released on A&M Records and the last single on PRE Records. Also we have included the 12” Disco version of “Fever” (SP-12031) on A&M. Campbell has written several magazine articles, including regular segments called "Mama Talks" and "First Look" in the now defunct "Talk magazine". She returned to Australia after selling her Boerum Hill house in Brooklyn in December 2005, and is now retired and living with her daughter in the Northern suburbs of Sydney.