Category: Comedy

Living on the fourth floor of a block of flats as a kid didn’t exactly get you at one with nature. There were two breeds of birds which would circulate around the courtyard of my Balham block of flats: pigeons and sparrows.  I established (with the help of my Observer Book of Birds) that pigeons were the larger of the two species.  Anything else which might have inadvertently flown into my courtyard were regarded by me as smaller or larger pigeons.  A kite, would be a pigeon with a large wing-span, a pterodactyl would be regarded simply as unlucky for the other tenants if it chose to land on their Grobag.

Even with Tooting, Clapham and Wandsworth commons all nearby, I still had no tuition, and therefore comprehension, of the difference between trees. I remain incapable of determining between an oak and a Rocky Mountain Subalpine Fir (although, I seem to recall, there weren’t many of those springing up to great heights in Balham during the 60s and 70s thus emulating a Canadian skyline).

My most immediate access to nature was the communal pond in the front gardens of Du Cane Court where I lived; inside the pond swam very large goldfish. It was rumoured they weren’t actually goldfish, but coelacanths.  This would figure as, in my child opinion, many of the flats’ residents were like the walking dead, so having prehistoric fish in the ponds was logical.

My awareness of flowers is not dissimilar on a knowledge scale. I know what a daffodil and hyacinth look like as we had to grow them at primary school (I only once got a coloured certificate for first prize when I delegated the growing to a green-fingered uncle, I still can’t go past a garden centre without feeling guilty).  Living in near Epsom racecourse these days means I know what heather looks like.  I also know it has a smell similar to that of having peed yourself a week ago (not that that is a habit of mine), although this could be the people selling it in clumps?  (I assume the smell is the people selling it as you wouldn’t buy some given the lingering odour, and also, why would it be given the epithet “lucky”!?).

But it is birds where I most struggle and wish I had a greater knowledge. My “I-Spy Garden Birds” is still in pristine, almost virgin state.   I do have a garden now and have a bird table with many seed-filled containers hanging off it.  Whilst I know what a robin looks like (years of growing up watching Batman) I am still blissfully unware of the difference between a goldfinch and a collared dove; although I did see some tits once, but that’s only because the woman opposite can’t afford decent net curtains!

Aged 60, I’m glad I don’t need my mum taking me shopping.

Aside from flirting with most shopkeepers along Balham High Road, mum would take me to buy clothes, get my haircut and purchase shoes.

Last week I was set to buy a pair of shoes and was reminded about the many pairs we’d buy in the Clark’s near Tooting Bec Station.

I loved the exact way they measured the length and width of your feet – one of the measuring instruments tickled; I can fully understand how people develop foot fetishes.  I never did, as my mum told me this was a guaranteed way of catching Athlete’s Foot (or was it VD? Either way, it’s why she never made it to be Surgeon General).

The thing which most fascinated me about this shop was the pneumatic system which ferried money around . There was a complex system of tubing which went around the shop.  Mum would buy my shoes (invariably brown sandals – how I was never bullied at school never ceases to amaze me) and in doing so handed over the money.  This was placed in a tube and sent, ostensibly at twice the speed of sound, around the shop to a cashier, hidden from sight (probably had corns and therefore not a good advertisement for the shop).  Any change, and a receipt, returned, as fast, through this magic system.

Last week I went to buy a pair of shoes (without my mum, I hasten to add). I found a pair I liked and asked, “Have you these in an eight?”

“I shall go and look,” replied the small, Scottish female assistant, who had the demeanour of having several unsatisfied customers out the back in a cauldron.

After a few minutes, she returned.

“We haven’t got these in an eight, but we have them in a seven-and-a-half?”

I can only assume she was expecting replies such as: “Oh, that’s fine, I was thinking of chopping half an inch of several toes” or “That’s OK, I never fully put my heel into the show anyway” or “Fantastic, that could immediately solve my verruca problem!”

I left the shop barefoot. It could have been worse, she could have replied: “An eight?  I assume you have a small penis?”

I never smoked when younger; consequently I am over seven-feet tall. Well, I smoked for about a fortnight when was 14, and because my growth was dramatically stunted, I now stand at six-foot (when not slouching and sporting Cuban heels).

My mother smoked about forty JPS a day, my father 50% more in Senior Service, my maternal grandmother smoked Weights and her sister was seemingly sponsored by Embassy (for interesting facts about collecting Embassy coupons, please see https://wordpress.com/post/mikerichards.blog/54 – new readers start here!).

Temptation was all around. Cigarettes were sold at the porter’s lodge within Du Cane Court where I lived; if you didn’t want either smoking-like-a-trooper parent catching you, there was a newsagent in Glenburnie Road in Tooting which would sell them individually (you’d have to go in the newsagents a great deal if you were collecting the coupons for sheets – or a new lung).

In the early 70s no one realised the inherent dangers of smoking – cigarette sponsorship was everywhere: I’m surprised my Auntie Vera wasn’t as good a snooker player as Alex Higgins although I did have another Aunt who had a similar physique to Jocky Wilson.  Cigarette ads were always on the back covers of men’s magazines.  Whenever I went to the barbers these magazines were always evident although before I was put on the bench and my mother explained to the barber in broken Greek (from whence the barbers had come) I’d never noticed the ads – I was too busy reading the thought-provoking articles which graced the likes of Penthouse and Men Only.

Luckily for me I never really ventured past sweet cigarettes (arguably worse for your teeth than actual fags were for your lungs) – I would pretend I was smoking, but never had the street cred for this to look realistic as I’d be constructing the Thunderbirds puzzle with the cards I’d collected.

Smoking saw off most of my aforementioned relatives; although my mum always maintained there was nothing more satisfying than sucking on an old Churchwarden!

I would have probably never made a good soldier: myopic; cunning implement to make it appear I’m flat-footed; never had a fight; not a massive fan of foreign food (so overseas posting would have been out) and I’d probably have an allergic reaction to the uniform. (I don’t suit brown).

Having swapped schools after the middle term of my fourth year from Bec to Emanuel, the only consistent was the regular activities of the CCF (Combined Cadet Force). A chance for teenagers to dress up in military uniform several sizes too big, be shouted out by masters more often (and louder than normal) and to brandish weapons considered obsolete before the outbreak of the Boer War.

A group of us travelled via or from Balham every day en route to Clapham Junction.  When it was CCF day travelling was like The Borrowers meets Dad’s Army.

CCF wasn’t compulsory at Emanuel, there were two alternatives: there was Scottish country dancing with the headmaster (not appealing in an all-boys school, although this was the man who was drunk during my entrance interview when he allowed me to join the school – it certainly wasn’t based on academic ability) or a thing called Taskforce.

Taskforce was organised by the Divinity master; it involved us pupils visiting old people near the school and doing good generally. Two of my classmates and I were sent to visit Mrs Tyler, who lived in a terrace house just off Lavender Hill, just past Clapham Junction Station.

Mrs Tyler was built like she was training to be England’s Strongest Woman, she was also the loveliest woman living in SW11 and a great sport.  She was visited, regularly, by her daughter, who would also do her shopping.  Our visit was, ostensibly, superfluous.

When we first arrived, she would get us to make a cup of tea – something three teenage boys could just about do in 1973 – and get the Custard Creams out her daughter had kindly supplied earlier.

Once settled, we would turn the TV on and watch the horse racing (at Mrs Tyler’s behest, I hasten to add) the entire afternoon.  Nowadays, whenever I watch Channel 4 Racing I also get a waft of Custard Creams.   And to think, we could have been running around the playing fields of Emanuel, face covered in dubbin and with a perpetual itching where you were never quite sure if it was the texture of the uniform or visitors from a previous occupant.

Mrs Tyler was so welcoming me and my mates visited her during our holidays. I even grew carrots for her in the ground outside my flat in Du Cane Court.  I felt she’d probably done this when she was my age so I hoped home-grown carrots brought back the memories of hating Hitler.

Even though my friends were playing soldiers, sailors and airmen on the Elysian fields of Emanuel, I look back and think there was probably more chance of being shot walking up Lavender Hill to Mrs Tyler’s house than if we’d been behind the chapel at Emanuel pretending the music master was Himmler.

If I had have done CCF, I think, if I’d made it to Field Marshall, I’d have had Arding & Hobbs as my HQ. At least the carpets would have been of high quality.

Brains never had NO string coming out of his torso.

This may, on the face of it, appear tautological; I was at the gym (I go for the provision of latte and selection of back copies of Woman’s Realm) and on the TV, facing the cross-dresser (or whatever the machine is called), was a new, horrifically-updated Thunderbirds.  And Brains had no strings!

I was brought up on a TV diet of Gerry & Sylvia Anderson puppets. As a second year at Bec Grammar, several of the fourth formers called me “Joe 90” – if only I’d had magic glasses, like my ostensible doppelgänger, I could have stunned them as if they were Russian spies trying to kidnap a leading British optician.

As a younger kid, pre-Supercar, Stingray and Thunderbirds (I’m too young to remember Torchy the Battery Boy) I would (literally) watch Watch with Mother with mother.  I have a theory that childrens’ eyes cannot discern string until well into adolescence.   Bill, Ben and Little Weed would have been inanimate objects if it wasn’t for the wonder of string (a girl who lived in Du Cane Court with me wasn’t allowed to watch it, lest it affected her diction – because so many people from Balham & Tooting have gone on to be members of the Royal Family!).  Without string no one from the Tracy family would have been able to rescue anyone locally, let alone internationally.

This was an age of innocence, although this didn’t stop my Guinness-fuelled mother trying to suggest a ménage-à-trois between Spotty Dog, Mrs Scrubbit and Mr Woodentop!  Barbara Woodhouse would have wanted that banned.

Being an advertising man, I was always surprised they never used Captain Black and Captain Scarlet in Oli of Ulay ads – showing before and after; the Mysterons clearly worked Captain Black very hard.

I think string should make a come-back on TV and would welcome Britain’s Got String; Ant ‘n’ Dec’s Saturday Night String and String Come Dancing.

And Muffin the Mule is finally legalised.

Unless you liked to sing along to Songs of Praise, Sunday evenings in the late sixties and early seventies, were interminably dull.

It didn’t help that homework had to be done: Latin words learned (expugnare – to take by storm, being one of the few I can remember – because you’re always using the phrase “to take by storm”!!); ox-bow lakes to be drawn and trying to remember 101 uses for a pipette with a 102^nd being you use it to hold chemicals in.  For me, the evenings were even deadlier because Sunday afternoon had gone the way of all flesh.

Sunday afternoons were fun. My dad and I would walk from our flat in Du Cane Court, with our football (me in my Peter Osgood kit (Thomas Müller hadn’t been born, so Peter Osgood it was)) via my mate’s house in Oakmead Road to Tooting Bec Common.  There were lots of kids involved and with them came their respective dads.  One of the dads was a basketball referee and tended to take Sunday-afternoon-up-the-park- football quite seriously and was disturbingly honest in his decision-making.  Many a time the game would come to an abrupt halt as this man would say, “Oh, Simon, you’ve played me offside!” .  He clearly didn’t know the local rule that there was no offside unless a dog, larger than a spaniel, had peed on someone’s anorak, which doubled as a goal, and still stood between keeper and striker.

The trudge back with Simon’s dad still disputing an offside goal was the start of people petitioning for video refereeing. It also meant Sunday evening was looming and deciding what to have with my spam sandwiches and glass of milk.

I have, in previous posts, alluded to my parents’ insistence of me going to bed early https://mikerichards.blog/?s=bayern ; Sunday evenings were the worst.  However, one Sunday evening, 5^th October 1969, my dad announced that I could stay up late as there was a new show on the TV which I may like.  It could have been the testcard, I’d have been happy staying up late.

I was 12 and at 10.55 PM, the time, in my mind, when milkmen were probably getting up, the programme started; it wasn’t the test card, it was called Monty Python’s Flying Circus.  It had a massive influence in my life.  The show moved to midweek early on in the series and me and most of the entire class of 30 in my form at Bec would re-enact the sketches throughout the day the next day.

I didn’t know anything about the Spanish Inquisition nor Marcel Proust (and how to summarise his works in fifteen seconds) what we did know it was funny. Our favourite re-enactment was the man at the start of the programme staggering, out of breath, as he moved towards the camera and would only get to say “It’s…”.

We would stagger up the stairs of the 155 taking us back to Balham High Road from school doing this. Bet the conductor (not to mention the other passengers) must have loved it!  We would cough and wheeze and once at the top of the bus shout “It’s”.  But when you had a Red Rover, you were a king.

I don’t suit Lycra. I’ve not got the legs for it and a penchant for Twix and Picnic means I don’t possess the correct-sized stomach for it either.

I still commute to work. Last week I boarded the Tube at Morden; by the time I got to Clapham South I was surrounded by people clad in Lycra.  On board, not only was I the only person wearing a tie, I was the only person not sporting garish-coloured trainers.

I began work in 1974. I lived in Carshalton and would ride a series of mopeds and motorcycles to my great aunt’s flat in Flowersmead on Balham High Road.   I would ride down Huron Road and whilst stopped at the lights at the bottom of Ritherdon Road my great aunt would see me and wave from her kitchen window.  I would park my bike and drop off my protective clothing.  I was an only great nephew and my great aunt’s self-appointed task was to fatten me up as you would a goose for the production of foie gras. She would prepare a selection of breakfasts which would rival those on the menu at Simpsons-in-the-Strand.

I was invariably late arriving in Tooting and after being force-fed breakfast, by the time I got to Balham Station to get the Tube to Charing Cross where I worked, I was hoping against hope that the Northern Line had been replaced by the Japanese Bullet Train.

In 1974, as I travelled to work, I, along with virtually every other male commuter, had a suit on. My first suit was purple –  I looked more like a Bishop than an advertising agency messenger.  (I once confirmed several people innocently standing on Stockwell Station).

In 1974 smoking carriages were still in operation. A Tube train would arrive at Balham and you thought you’d got lucky as one was more empty than others.  By the time you got to Clapham South, you’d found out why.  I was never a smoker; the only cigarettes I bought had a card inside depicting one of the Thunderbirds characters   They don’t exist anymore and travelling up to town, it would appear people wearing suits don’t either.

Gyms are clearly open early in the City, either that or these fellow passengers are all competing in the Tour de France and have got horribly lost.  These days “dress down” abounds.  Most men can’t cope with “dress down” and to them, this is not wearing a tie.  On the busy Northern Line, people dressed in Lycra and wearing trainers are never going to offered a seat – they are all far too fit and unneeding.  In an effort to getting a seat on the Tube, I have started wearing a selection of badges: “I have a hernia” was one of the more successful.  I’ve toyed with “Baby on board” except I was found out when a pregnant woman suggested I’d simply eaten too many Picnics.

The couple living in the third-floor flat below my fourth-floor flat in Du Cane Court often came to complain to my parents about the noise I made. They had no children, but they were massive golf enthusiasts (and with hearing like bats as far as I was concerned). One day, rather than listen to me re-enact the Cassius Clay/Henry Cooper 1966 fight, they invited me to go, with them, to the driving range at Addiscombe.

I loved it and was hooked.

During the summer holidays my friends and I would walk to Balham Station and get the Tube to Morden (several of my fellow-travellers believed, once we exited the station, we’d fall off the end of the world. After several trips, there was more chance of being invited to drive a trolley-bus down Balham High Road) to play the championship course which was Morden Pitch ‘n’ Putt.

Whenever I visit other golf clubs and am asked to enter my club’s name, I still write “Morden Pitch and Putt GC” – probably one of many reasons I’ve never been invited to be a member of the R&A.

Having bought a putter and a sleeve of Dunlop 65 balls from Balham Woolworth’s, I practiced for hours in my bedroom.

In between pulling down the big, old houses on Balham Park Road and erecting the new houses, thus creating Hunter Close, there lay a building site. This was, for a very brief period, to be our Augusta.

As a teenager, and having mastered my putting rather than doing my geography homework and having bought a selection of second-hand clubs from the second-hand shop on Balham High Road near the Duke of Devonshire (I think it may have been called Décor), we were all set for the Balham Masters.

We played one Thursday evening and, even though I say so myself, hit the ball quite well.  It wasn’t until the following day, that the Police informed me of exactly how well I’d hit it.  Unbeknownst to me I’d smashed one of the windows of one of the Du Cane Court flats; equally ignominiously, the window belonged to one of Du Cane Court’s minor celebrities: Harry Leader.

Harry Leader was the front man of the highly originally-named band Harry Leader and his Band.  He had appeared on the radio and briefly, as he’d discovered Matt Monro, in the popular weekly TV programme This is your life. This fateful evening I had a local bobby tell me: “This is your golf ball!”

Our cause wasn’t helped as the Police refused to believe the answer “choir practice” to the question, “Where have you been this evening?” and then, as all of us thought we were heading for a ten-stretch at Albany High Security Prison (we were only 16 and horribly naïve) they found a book one of my fellow-golfers had purloined: Boys and Sex.  Because the book was confiscated, many of us within the group didn’t discover masturbation until well into our twenties. (Luckily my eyesight was already dreadful and this possibly ensured its arresting).

I still play golf, but have this dread, whenever playing at a course where you’re playing near a clubhouse, that, if I were to break another window, the Sweeney will arrive before you can say “get your trousers on – you’re nicked”. FORE!!!!

 

Whilst there was plenty of mischief to be had growing up in Balham and Tooting, I was fully occupied during most evenings as I sang in two choirs (they met Tuesdays andridays and because of some event on Mount Sinai some years before, twice on Sundays – although you did get wine) and attended an amateur dramatics group Mondays and Thursdays. I knew all the words to Hello Dolly by the age of sixteen, but ironically went on to have three children.

Every year the Am Dram society to which I belonged would perform a pantomime or musical once a year as these would create the biggest interest to the not-too-discerning musical public of SW12/7.

My first thespian part was as the man servant in Me and My Girl. I had one line, “This way, Mr Snibson” as I ushered the star of the show into the front room for him to introduce the upper classes to The Lambeth Walk.  It took me several weeks to master the line and to decide the correct inflection on each word:  “THIS way, Mr Snibson”, “This WAY, Mr Snibson”.  I even contemplated method acting and becoming a man servant for a year, but the play was set sixty years’ prior as manservants were fast becoming a thing of the past.

From this, I slowly progressed and, because I could sing, was given the part of Buttons.  Luckily it was Cinderella. A mate of mine was also in the group, but not a good an actor; he got given the part of Pontius Pilate.  It took him until the end of the final show to realise this wasn’t the biggest part he could have got.

 

One of the songs I had to sing was “The Ugly Duckling” famously performed (and written) by Danny Kaye and latterly Mike Reid. It was in the style of Mike Reid – bringing Danish folklore into Cockney reality – was what the producer expected of me.  Because I could read music, I sang the song using all the notation suggested on the sheet.  After I’d sung the song the producer complimented me and said I’d sung it wonderfully.  Sadly, he added, I’d made it sound like a church motet.  Think Chas ‘n’ Dave singing the Mozart Requiem only in reverse.

One of the disadvantages of Am Dram was having to wear make-up (I was never allowed to use my own) which showed up under strong lights. The smell still lingers (like Virol or calamine lotion, which was liberally applied when you had chicken pox) as did the make-up itself if you were mid-teens and hadn’t quite discovered washing (or girls).  During show week and after every performance I’d go into school the next day.  I think I was the only person at Bec Grammar ever to play an entire house rugby match wearing full stage make-up.

The zenith of my amateur thespian career came when I was given the part of John/Ernest Worthing in Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest”.  Luckily there were no songs to sing inappropriately, but there were many lines to be learned.  However, and not for the first (or last) time in my life, work got in the way and a consequence of me having to be on some advertising course and missing several dress rehearsals, the play never went ahead.  Oh well, that’s showbiz, I guess. Plus, I never got to say the words, “This way, Lady Bracknell”!

 

 

People of a certain age (mine or older) will always remember where they were when they heard President Kennedy had been shot.
I was in the corridor on the third floor of Du Cane Court, where I lived in the flats on Balham High Road. I was six-and-a-half and I had just left my nan’s flat as she escorted me up one floor to my parents’ flat.

I spent more time with my nan than I did with either parent. In the mornings I would go there for bacon and eggs (I blame her for my subsequent high cholesterol) and I’d read her Daily Mirror; I think my nan was a communist and her Russian controller was Andy Capp).  I also spent evenings there and watch Double your money and Take your pick with her.  Or I’d play whilst she watched Coronation Street.

On this particular Friday in November 1963 we had left my nan’s flat and suddenly, ubiquitous Embassy in mouth, came my Auntie Vera out from her flat: “Kennedy’s been shot” reported Auntie Vera. This meant nothing to me being relatively oblivious to US politics and assumed it was another character from Coronation Street being killed off; although it did strike me as being quite soon after the tragedy of Martha Longhurst’s “death” under the collapsed viaduct.

Five years later I was playing at a friend’s house in Oakmead Road, near Balham Station, when his mother entered the room where we were trying hard not to take one another’s eyes out with his new Johnny Seven (multi-action) gun.  “Kennedy’s been shot” she said.  I thought, ‘Either this woman is very behind with the news or another character has fallen off his mortal thespian coil from Corrie’.

Similar to my mother wishing to pursue the half-human/half-porpoise family and introduce me to swimming, my friend’s mother and teller of grave (albeit slightly outdated) news had just started sending her son to elocution lessons. That academic year he was due to start at Emanuel and his mother had decided that a futile gesture was needed.   He was to attend classes to make him more articulate through learning poetry.

These lessons took place in a semi-detached house in Tooting.

Because the problem with having elocutions in Tooting is that there is a danger that you may come out speaking worse after the course, than when you originally started.

People living in Tooting in the late eighties believed consonants were Asia and Africa; a vowel was a very small rodent and a semi-colon was what posh people in Fulham had irrigated.

I met him years later when we were in our early twenties. The lessons hadn’t worked as he sounded more like Eliza Doolittle, only with a deeper voice; but he did know every Philip Larkin poem off by heart. Really handy working in a hospital.