Category: nostalgia

I wanted to be Joe Davis when I was growing up; the five-foot folding snooker table, which took up 90% of my bedroom, was the investment I needed to help this dream materialise; I already had comedy glasses.

As I grew older, and was allowed out of my bedroom unaccompanied, I discovered, during the 60s and 70s, there were as many snooker halls then as there are Prets and Costas now!

Many were above Burton’s, meaning you could buy a suit and get a century break (Ok, eight) within the same building.

Many halls were temperance; the strongest drink you could get was black coffee – unless you included WD40 for the squeaky doors – although this doesn’t mix too well with Bovril.

The greatest expense, aside from the table hire, were pieces of chalk. I’d always forget my chalk and collected over 100 small, used-only-once, blue cubes;  I finally ground them down and gave them to my mother stating they were the new, exotic range of Bronnley bath salts.

Snooker was made popular in July 1969 with the introduction of Pot Black.  The thrill of this game was somewhat negated as a majority of UK TVs in 1969 were still black and white; thus meaning the grey ball scored one as well as seven – given the vertical hold on the TV was always on the blink in my flat, I always thought snooker was played at sea during a force ten gale.

My favourite player, once colour TV was more prevalent, was Perrie Mans; he, like me, had clearly made his waistcoats out of discarded curtains! Although, being professional, he’d have removed the hooks!

Due to a pathological fear of cheese, I’d have never have made it as a chef

Having failed a vast majority of my O-levels in 1973, my father took me to an industrial psychologist in Gloucester Place to establish which career I should pursue: Astronaut was out due to a morbid dread of flying; postman was never an option due to a teenage propensity to getting verrucae and the role of Prime Minister was already taken by Ted Heath – although I did hoard candles – handy during the three-day week power cuts.

At the psychologists I was given a series of tests: one was a list of hundred potential occupations, grouped in pairs. I had to choose one of the two.  One couple was bishop or miner?  This was a no-brainer as I don’t like getting dirty and as a choir-boy looked quite charming in cassock and surplice.

Lastly, I had an interview with the psychologist who, having analysed the results, and me assuming I’d be a shoo-in for the next Archbishop of Canterbury, suggested a career in hotel & catering.

I had immediate visions of running a hotel but suddenly realised I’d have to start at the bottom and wouldn’t have suited being dressed as a chambermaid – I haven’t got the legs.

And so, went into advertising – where you don’t have to wear a pinny – unless the client is particularly demanding.

So, what was room service’s loss became the world of conning people into buying something they really don’t want’s gain!

You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave! Unless you don’t want your ten-bob deposit back!

In the 60s, my mum took me twice to the Streatham Odeon: once to see Mary Poppins and once to see The Supremes.

I saw them both in quick succession and wondered, halfway through Love Child, why Julie Andrews wasn’t in the line-up?  And why they ended the concert singing Baby Love and not A spoonful of sugar?

When I saw The Supremes, Diana Ross had left the group to commence a career starting World Cup Finals and I thought I was well within my rights to expect the expert nanny, together with her magical umbrella to be on the stage singing You can’t hurry love. (This song was originally written for the 1937 Cockney musical, Me and My Girl and the version was to have been called, You can’t hurry, love.)

I’m thrilled, however, that the Streatham Odeon is still functioning as a cinema; the Balham Odeon is now a Majestic Wine House – not so much Kia Ora more a fine Beaujolais and the Mayfair Tooting is now a bank (via, in the 70s, an upmarket snooker hall – which, of course, in Tooting, is oxymoronic) and will probably end up being a pub – as most old banks do.

I suppose there is a link, as the grocer where Mary Poppins bought her sugar was called Nathan Jones.

In September 1968, after a series of exams and interviews, and having gained a place at my Tooting grammar school, I was amazed that the first set of homework was to cover our text books.

I was anticipating, in my first week to have gone home to split the atom; remembered the dates of the reigns of all the Anglo-Saxon monarchs or knowing that in binary 01000101 is 69 (which, when you’re 11, is just another number).

Over the next few days we would all come back to our school rooms with our books adorned in whatever material our parents had left lying around our houses.

Most had used brown paper, one or two had gone down the wallpaper remnant route, with one boy coming in with his books covered with red, flock wallpaper which looked suspiciously like the same wallpaper which decorated the Granada Tooting; I never went to tea at this boy’s house but I’d have bet his carpet would have had the word GRANADA inscribed into the weaving.

Another lad came in with his books bedecked in Thunderbirds wallpaper; sadly, for him, in the teachers’ eyes, Thunderbirds were not “GO” and he consequently got a detention – even Virgil Tracy couldn’t rescue him from that!

The homework did get harder: the toughest assignment being charged with looking after the class amoeba (this was a grammar school, so no run-of-the-mill hamster) for an entire weekend, making sure it didn’t die or get impregnated by other organisms.