Category: Comedy

In 1969 I was destined to be the next Eric Bristow as I won the darts tournament at my local youth club.

Sadly, the promise of being the successor to the Crafty Cockney (I didn’t attend elocution lessons, so was halfway there) was never to be; although my 14.3% O-level pass rate suggests that a misspent youth was evident.

My auntie Vera trained me, from an early age, to regularly hit double top – she’d tried to teach me piano on her Blüthner piano, but realised early on I’d be less Liberace, more Lazarenko. I was a dart prodigy; what Mozart was to symphonies, I was to 160 check-outs.

The youth club met in the hall of my old primary school in Balham. It did seem odd, as a twelve-year-old, a. going back there not singing Hill of the North, rejoice (which we seemed to sing every week during assembly) b. no sight of a recorder or Glockenspiel and c. it was dark outside.

We were fed copious amounts of orange squash in the days when people didn’t realise the dangers of E-numbers – it’s a curious sight, watching a group of pumped-up teenagers trying to play table-tennis as if killing a large rodent.

We’d also play snooker – well, I say snooker – the tables were the size if Fred and Joe Davis had been three-foot midgets, with less felt on the table than a very tiny piece of Fuzzy Felt.  However, it was an escape from parents, homework and Glockenspiels.

The evening of the darts final arrived – which I’d breezed through to, beating several eleven-year-old girls in the process. I’d been practising trickier check-outs with my aunt the previous night only for the other finalist to have succumbed to Scarlet Fever (not brought on (as we all believed) from watching too may episodes of Captain Scarlet).  So, by default, I won.

Although, to this day, I still think oche is something played at posh schools.

 

During the 60s and 70s, petrol stations started offering gifts when purchasing fuel; this was a relief for those into collecting memorabilia, but living somewhere where a vintage petrol pump might dominate the lounge.

The advantage being that 1970 World Cup coins were smaller than the actual pumps.

(I wrote about the advent of loyalty points last week at https://mikerichards.blog/2018/02/10/stamps-of-authority/)

There was an Esso garage on Balham High Road where my parents would fill up our Ford Poplar. I would as, a thirteen-year-old football fanatic, insist on visiting this garage; it was the only way we’d ever get Peter Bonetti into our flat!

As the years progressed (and you were prepared to queue for days during the 1973 oil crisis) you could collect glasses. I can only assume the principals at Standard Oil and British Petroleum believed that people in the UK, whilst owning cars, failed to possess a drinking receptible and were visiting tributaries of the Thames to drink water with their hands.

Soon many houses I visited had sets of glasses out of which you’d drink your squash; although always mildly tainted with the taste of four-star.

Some garages offered a dream, rather than faux cut-glass beakers, with the gratification of manifold sets of Green Shield Stamps; my parents would drive for miles looking for the biggest multiple.

Although, you’d easily swap several tigers in your tank for quintuple Green Shield Stamps.

 

 

Although a fan of the output of Gerry & Sylvia Anderson, I’ll never forgive them for introducing the UK public, in September 1968, to my Doppelgänger, Joe 90.

This was the month (and year) I started secondary school at Bec Grammar in Tooting; it was not the thing to have such a lookey-likey.

Being in the first-year was tough enough with the older boys insistent on demonstrating the inner workings of the school toilet system or nicking your tuck shop-bought iced bun, without looking horribly like the latest ITV puppet incarnation.

Both Joe 90 and I had blond hair and glasses (although I didn’t work for the Secret Service), however, the difference being Joe’s glasses could make him speak Russian fluently, whereas mine couldn’t even help me conjugate the simplest of Latin verbs!

I think it’s usually a term of endearment, being given a nickname at school, and Joe 90 stuck for several terms; I would have preferred to have looked more like Captain Black, Troy Tempest or even The Hood.

I guess, given it was an all-boys school, it could have been worse: I could have had a passing resemblance to Lady Penelope.

“Home, Parker?”

“Sorry, m’lady, I have a PE lesson!”

You never see broken biscuits anymore!

There is nothing better than a box (preferably a large tin) of M&S chocolate biscuits. However, growing up in the 50s and 60s, such opulence was found only in the houses of film stars and sultans of Brunei.

On Balham High Road there was a grocer (Battershill’s) where my mum and my nan would buy their groceries. As a treat, they’d occasionally purchase a packet of broken biscuits.  These weren’t packets of proper biscuits which some maniac had attacked with a mallet; these were an assortment of reject biscuits all thrown together into one bag.  I can still smell them – bit like Virol and banana-flavoured penicillin – these things, like a top song (or an awful song like Mother of Mine by Neil Reid), stick in your sense memory.

The problem with these biscuits, by default, was that there was a more-than-average amount of crumbs in the bag. A consequence of eating said biscuits was that, whilst watching Alexandra Bastedo in The Champions, you’d get enough crumbs over your lap and that week’s Beano to make a base for a cheesecake.

Is there honey still for tea? No, but I’ve got half a bourbon!

I only won one prize at school, in 1967; I was ten and got the RE prize because the new vicar of our local church was from Australia and I knew who Don Bradman was. The prize would have been more deserved if I’d have known that St Michael (no relation) was the head of all the angels rather than a brand of clothing.

The prizes were given out at a ceremony in Brierly Hall, attached to Balham Congregational Church. My father, proud of this achievement and secretly hoping I might join a monastery, therefore reducing the family food-bill, decided we would celebrate.

An 88 bus was hailed and we ventured towards the Windmill on Clapham Common.

This was the first time I got to sit outside a pub with a Coke and a packet of crisps whilst my father remained inside, no doubt regaling the regulars inside that his son was to be the next Billy Graham (dad harboured thoughts I’d be the next George Graham).

I would go on to sit outside many other south-west London pubs as dad played cricket locally; I’ve had Cokes and whole potato fields’ worth of crisps outside the Hope; Surrey Tavern and County Arms – and I wonder why I have high cholesterol?

Still, at least I know there are nine commandments. More lager, Vicar?

When I was nine my New Years’ resolution for 1967 was to give up Class A drugs.

My mum would force-feed me Virol and Haliborange tablets to ward off flu, consumption and, because of the 1965 scare, small pox.  Because of these theories, my mother never made it as a GP.

Having missed a Haliborange tablet one day, one day I took two; I feared I would never leave our communal bathroom, such was the ferocity of the Vitamin C overload.

It was apparent: if I couldn’t handle Haliborange tablets, tolerating heroin, cocaine or Skittles (which has the effect of what I assume LSD is like) was always going to be a no-no.

Because fitness is today is what small pox was in the mid-sixties, I will see new people at my gym within the next week. They will come until they give up going to the gym for Lent.

But beware anyone coming to my gym as there are protocols: at the weekend the cross-trainer is reserved for my mates who, for several decades, have been menacing in the Shed end at Stamford Bridge. The free weight area is not open to people who are heavily tattooed, think they can lift six times their own body weight or are incapable of training alone. This area is for people discussing the various footballing merits of Palace, Sutton United and AFC Wimbledon.  The armchairs are not in this area for aesthetic reasons.

There will be people, for two months only, believing they are potential Olympic rowers; their action betrays them demonstrating they are not so much Steve Redgrave, more Vanessa. There will be others doing a spin class for the first time and would not have witnessed nausea quite like it since they went on the decrepit Soviet-run rides within Sokolniki Park, Moscow.

My New Years’ resolution will be to drink less Absinthe; it may have worked for Picasso, but then I’ve always been rubbish at drawing women with three ears and a nose on the top of their heads.

Happy New Year – keep off that cross-trainer. And the Absinthe.