Countless local people will have fond memories of the Palladium in Midsomer Norton’s High Street, whether first-dates in the back row of double seats, running riot at the children’s matinees, or winning prizes at bingo sessions.

The man who made these memories possible — working at the cinema for 49 years in all — was Mr Ken Steel, who died recently at the age of 93.

Kenneth Robert Steel was born in 1929 in the East End of London, and so was only ten when the Blitz began. With his older brother Albert he was evacuated to several different country locations, but they would frequently run back home. Eventually, bombs falling one night on each end of their street led to most of his family deciding to escape London. One of his elder sisters, Ivy, was married to another Albert (Bigden), who was in the Army and had been billetted in Midsomer Norton. Temporary accommodation was soon arranged, and so Ken arrived in the West Country, living here for more than 80 years.

Having been moved around numerous secondary schools, Ken received little formal education. Leaving school for good at 14, he had various jobs before starting at the Palladium in 1944 as the rewind boy, charged with rewinding each reel of celluloid after it had been projected for the public, and many other tasks behind the scenes.

One of those tasks was swapping the records to be played before the films began and during intermissions. The local dealer in music was Parsons Newsagency in The Island, and this was how he met his future wife Shirley, whose parents ran the shop, she working behind the counter. He was 19, and she 17. They were wed a couple of years later, a marriage lasting 71 years.

Ken and Shirley had five children: Karen, Duncan, Melinda, Ashley and Russell. The next generation, of grandchildren, number ten; and so far there are nine great-grandchildren. His family was always the most important thing in Ken’s life.

As the family grew, more income was needed, and Ken worked several other jobs. Eventually he added dealing in second-hand caravans, and many readers will recall the Steel’s Caravans yard on Radstock Road. With Shirley, Ken also had other businesses such as Headlines hair salon in the High Street, now run by their daughter Melinda.

Back at the Palladium, over the decades Ken had progressed from being the assistant (and then the chief) projectionist, until he was appointed manager in the 1960s. In those days the movie business was on a downturn: as more people acquired cars, they would travel to Bath and Bristol to see new releases, rather than waiting months for these to reach the Palladium, at the bottom of the cinematic pecking-order. In consequence, in 1967 Ken instigated bingo nights, first on Tuesday evenings, then on Thursdays, and later on Saturday afternoons too.

This made it viable to keep the Palladium going. Ken said that it was wonderful to have a job that one really enjoys, and so it was with great sadness that the cinema needed to be closed in 1993. Video cassettes (later replaced themselves by DVDs, and now streaming) spelled the end for the Palladium in its guise as a cinema. Now, of course, it is a Wetherspoon’s pub, the Palladium Electric, where Ken jointly cut the ribbon on its opening.

Ken was also a community man, helping others in many different ways. Prior to the relief tunnel being bored under the town, taking the main flow of the River Somer, the brook in

Midsomer Norton’s town centre would regularly overflow, inundating the shops closest to the swelling stream. Ken would be the first to lend a hand.

As the waters rose even higher, several times the whole cinema was flooded with muddy water. However, Ken foiled one potential flood in 1973: realising that branches swept down the river were blocking the culvert where the brook disappears from the High Street, he jumped into chest-high water and cleared out the timber. Next day the front-page headline of the Bristol Evening Post read ‘Hero saves town from flooding’.

Apart from his family, cinema and caravans, Ken had three major interests.

One was football: he was born in Stratford, where the Olympic Stadium now stands, and where ‘his team’, West Ham United, now play their home games.

A second was golf, and he was often to be seen playing an early-morning round with his brother Albert at Fosseway Golf Club, of which Ken served as Secretary for many years.

The third was travel, and with Shirley he visited many spectacular places around the globe, their house being festooned with memorabilia from their forays far from home.

A range of health problems in recent years limited what Ken could do, and at Easter he suffered a stroke. He died peacefully on May 11th, surrounded by family members.