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Jo started piano lessons at four and dancing when she was six. By the time she was 12, she had started teaching the piano, always managing to stay at least one lesson ahead of her students!

As a child, Jo appeared in two films with Hazel Ascot (the "English Shirley Temple"), Talking Feet and Stepping Toes.		  
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Before the war, Jo appeared in Pericles, Prince of Tyre and A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Regent's Park Open Air Theatre. She also started up a little dancing school - but after Dunkirk, the blitz started and one by one the children were evacuated.

In 1940, she auditioned for a job in Birmingham. She became one of The Tiller Girls in a production of Aladdin and was appointed second understudy to leading lady, Jessie Matthews. 		 
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40s Britain: Jo was deeply patriotic. She wasn't in the forces but she could sing and dance. She set her heart on getting into ENSA (Entertainments National Service Association) and, at just 20 years of age, she was sent to entertain the troops out East.

Jo travelled out on a Dutch cruise liner and started entertaining almost immediately. Invited to play the ship's grand piano, she played Chopin to a state room, packed full of soldiers and nurses on their way to war. A pianist since she was a toddler, this was the pay-off. How they cheered!		  
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When the war ended, Jo performed her solo act in variety and appeared in shows such as Scott Free and Pete Davis's Plastic Pantomime.

Jo married and - apart from a brief interlude modelling bathing caps at Olympia - appeared to settle down.

Then in 1950 she started up a dancing school in her front room and got back to writing songs, choreographing dance routines, and producing shows. 		 
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It was while working in panto that Jo met her dancing partner, Pauline Guy. They put together a song and dance act as José and Pauline Gaye and, with advice and support from Jessie Matthews, they got their costumes made, organised their band parts, and started rehearsing.

It was hard to find work in London, and they almost gave up. Then in 1942, they auditioned for ENSA and, sometimes as solos but mostly as a 'sister act', they toured all over the Middle East.		  
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Jo had always written songs to perform at the piano in her solo act, but in 1955 she set about writing a full length musical What Katy Did.

Katy was a success for the Bush Davis Dancing School and a triumph for its young cast, in particular Pat Goh as Katy. Songs such as Let's March to Paradise and Beneath that Stern Exterior are among Jo's best show tunes.

Celebrated though it was, Katy didn't transfer. Undeterred, Jo set to work on a new musical - set in a New Town.		  
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Jo has never really retired.

At 60, she composed and performed at the piano for the feminist soap opera, Wyre's Cross. She taught tap and composed music for RADA and for over a decade performed and MD'd for charity with The Entertainers.

A surprise party for Jo's 80th was attended by the brilliant and much missed Russell Churney, who treated guests to a medley of some of Jo's best numbers.

In the last few years, Jo has featured in a series of her own music videos on YouTube.