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- Herausgeber: Muswell Press
- Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023
A very funny book packed with very funny stories, written by a very funny and often peculiar man Jonathan Ross. The Samuel Pepys of East London Maurice Gran. As the lead singer of Modern Romance he toured the world, as the screenwriter of Kinky Boots he conquered Hollywood, now comes Geoff Deane's latest act as a brilliant and witty ranconteur in this hilarious memoir. Geoff Deane has worked as a fly-pitcher selling out of a suitcase, and flogged suits on Brick Lane market in London's East End. He was the singer in a much-loved culty punk band the Leyton Buzzards, a floppy-haired pop star in Modern Romance, a songwriter, and record producer. He wrote a gay anthem for John Waters drag queen muse Divine, worked as journalist and restaurant critic for style magazines The Face and Arena, before becoming a successful writer and producer of TV comedy. And then he wrote a couple of films, one of which, Kinky Boots, became a Tony Award winning Broadway stage show. With a cast ranging from local oddballs to international celebrities, Geoff Deane's unique take on the world is only matched by his extraordinarily rich use of language, with a smattering of Cockney rhyming slang, Yiddish and Polari. A glossary is provided.
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FROM MOHAIR SUITS TO KINKY BOOTS
Geoff Deane
For the saucepan lids, Woody, Nelly and Otis. And my friends, Jacky and Bruno.
‘Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside of a dog it’s too dark to read.’
Groucho Marx
Contents
Glossary
86: to throw out
Adam and Eve: believe
Aris: from bottle and glass, arse. Shortened to bottle, rhyming with Aristotle, then shortened again to Aris
Barnet: from Barnet Fair – hair
Boat: from boat race – face
Brassic/boracic: from boracic lint - skint
Bristol: from Bristol City – titty/breast
Brown bread: dead
Bugle: nose
Bunny: from rabbit and pork - talk
Buntz: profit (Yiddish)
Claret: blood
Clobber: clothes
Cream crackered: knackered, tired
Crew: gang
Deuce and ace: face
Dog and bone: phone
Drum: abode, home
Farmer Giles: piles
Four-by-two: Jew
Full SP: from bookies’ starting prices - the whole situation
Gaff: building or premises
Gander: from Gander’s hook - look
Gary Glitter: shitter/toilet
Gooner: Gunner, Arsenal fan
Gornisht: nothing (Yiddish)
Gregory Peck: cheque, or neck
Half-inch: to pinch, steal
Hampsteads: from Hampstead Heath - teeth
Hampton: from Hampton Wick – prick
Handle: name
Hobson’s choice: voice
Hooky: dodgy, crooked
Irish goodbye: leaving a gathering without telling anyone
Jack and Danny: fanny
Jacksy: backside/bottom
Jim and Jack: back
Kenny Market: Kensington Market
Knocked off: stolen
Lallies: legs (Polari)
Larry Large/giving it Larry: giving it the big one. acting leary
Melt: someone soft, pathetic
Mince pie: eye
Moniker: name
Moody: false, fake
Nisht: nothing (Yiddish)
Old Bill: police
Pie-and-mash point: cash point
Povvo: poor
Radio rental: mental, crazy
Riddims: rhythm (Patois)
Rosy Lea: tea
Schlep: drag, carry (Yiddish)
Schmear: the spread on a beigel/bagel. Usually cream cheese (Yiddish)
Schmooze: sweet talk (Yiddish)
Schmuck: idiot (Yiddish)
Schmutter: clothes or fabric (Yiddish)
Schneid: fake (Yiddish)
Score, A: £20
Scotch pegs: legs
Septic tank: Yank
Sexton Blake: steak
Shades: sunglasses
Shechita: kosher slaughterhouse (Yiddish)
Sheitel: wig worn by Orthodox Jewish woman (Yiddish)
Sherbet: alcoholic drink
Skyrocket: pocket
Sort: attractive girl or woman
Spieler: gambler (Yiddish)
Spondulix: Cash
Squid: quid, i.e. £1.00
Strides: trousers
Syrup: from syrup of figs - wig
Tchotchke: small decorative object (Yiddish)
Titfer: from tit for tat – hat
Ton: hundred
Two and eight: a state
Wallah: a person concerned with a specified thing or business
Whistle: from whistle and flute - suit
Autobiographies are for people who have led truly extraordinary lives. Or those so famous you don’t notice they haven’t led truly extraordinary lives. I’m neither. So what we have here is a collection of musings and recollections that I hope will entertain. If anything you read should move you or provoke serious thought I am humbled. But all I really care about is the laughs.
geoff deane
Introduction
I am a mild and lazy guy, the kind of writer who likes making things up in the warmth of his spare room, rather than having experiences and writing about them. I suspect Geoff Deane is the opposite. He probably didn’t set out to be any kind of writer, but merely to have a hell of a life. I bet that from the moment his voice broke – probably at the age of nine – his plan was to have as much fun as possible every single day, to sing, dance, drink, smoke, snort, screw, laugh, love and repeat.
When I met Geoff, around 1990, he was knee-deep in life and loving every minute of it. He had already enjoyed one career as a singer with East London pop-punksters the Leyton Buzzards, and another salsa-ing around the globe with his next band, Modern Romance. They always seemed to be on Top of the Pops in the early eighties, having more fun than anyone in the studio with the possible exception of Jimmy Saville. When the band split up, Geoff became obsessed with situation comedy. Obsessions tend to come thick and fast with Mr Deane. He segued into comedy writing and joined the team on Birds of a Feather, the hit sitcom I co-created, about two Essex girls whose husbands had been sent to prison. Geoff took to the show like a duck to another, really cute, duck. He understood these characters: he’d grown up around them in the East End, he knew how they spoke, he knew how they thought, and he was funny with it.
After a couple of very successful years on Birds, Geoff buggered off and set up his own production company – in competition with mine, the cheeky sod – and started churning out sitcoms and movies. I moved out of London to the Cotswolds, while he went from the suburbs back into the East End, the week before Shoreditch supplanted Notting Hill; his timing was always impeccable. Our paths didn’t cross so often but now and again I’d run into him holding court at the Groucho or some cooler dive. He was always good company, and always seemed to be working on something exciting and glamorous. He told me about a film he was writing about a Drag Queen’s quest for the perfect shoe. That’ll never work I recall thinking. But I would allow myself the occasional twinge of envy. He was off to Hollywood. I was stuck in Borehamwood.
Then Covid came and all Geoff’s favourite clubs, pubs, dives and dens were closed down. What was he to do with himself? And suddenly, at least it seemed sudden to me, perfect little essays started to appear in Geoff’s Facebook feed (is that the right term? I’m quite old). Tales of first love and lust, dodgy jobs, nights out, punch-ups won, lost or narrowly avoided, and of how he and his bandmates conquered the Post Punk/New Romantic/Glamrock/Rude Boy pop scenes through force of character, and monumental quantities of chutzpah. Stories tall, short and wide. Stories I started to look out for, because to say Geoff has a way with words is to use a pallid cliché in praise of a true stylist. Geoff knows what he wants to say, and he knows how to say it. He’d had more adventures than seemed remotely possible, and now he was sharing them with us, his grateful locked-down followers.
If I had been braver, ballsier, taller, I could have grown up to be Geoff Deane. Instead, I was just one of many who enjoyed his irregular bulletins and urged, begged and pleaded with him to expand them into a book. Finally Geoff succumbed to our flattery. I was thrilled until he asked me if I would write an introduction. Obviously I had to say yes: after all, he wouldn’t have written the damn thing if I hadn’t nagged him.
I happened to be on the train to Liverpool when I opened my laptop and began working my way through a file of Geoff’s stories. Very quickly I was unable to prevent snorts, chuckles and guffaws from forcing their way out of nose and mouth. Soon I was helpless, laughing out loud. Not many books can do that. One or two fellow passengers gave me the sort of glare that says, ‘This is supposed to be the quiet carriage and if I wasn’t English, I’d call the guard.’
I couldn’t help it. Geoff’s lust for life and his eye for detail combine repeatedly to deadly effect. He has adventures where other people don’t even have experiences, and the folks he meets – some ‘normal’, others extraordinary, he renders effortlessly into the sort of characters you’d be delighted to encounter in a damn good road movie.
At this stage in the proceedings I think I’m expected to extract from the text, for your edification and entertainment, a bouquet of bons mots, a clutch of witticisms, a jar of jokes and a gaggle of gags. But you’ve got the bloody book in your hands, read it already!
maurice gran, June 2023
Straight Outta Hackney
In late 1969 we moved away from the council flats in Amhurst Road, Hackney. A place I loved and the only home I had ever known. My dad had got a better job, which allowed my parents to take out their first mortgage. The new flat in leafy North Chingford had cost the princely sum of £5,400. I can still recall the family’s trepidation at taking on such a fearful financial responsibility.
In truth, it was a good time to move. Most of the people we knew were being rehoused in newly built tower blocks. Ominous-looking monoliths that cast their brutalist shadow over the neighbourhood. This simple switch from living horizontally to vertically would kill a community’s life force at the stroke of some authority planner’s biro. Mums who had once stood out on balconies having a natter with ‘her next door’ while they kept an eye on the kids playing below would now not see their neighbours from one month to the next.
When they did, it was usually in a lift that stank of piss.
But hey, the flats had central heating. Yay.
So I was pleased to swerve them but broken-hearted about leaving the flats. Living there would always remain amongst my happiest memories. There was so much I would miss about them, not least my family, most of whom seemed to reside there.
Beneath us was my Uncle Sid and his four boys. Known locally as ‘Joe Cunt’, Sid was a taxi driver and streetfighter who also minded the door at the notorious Regency Club, just down the road. Being a somewhat chippy geezer, my uncle always thought people were taking liberties with him. On such occasions he was often heard to utter the phrase, ‘Do I look like my name’s Joe Cunt?’ At some point everyone in the community decided the answer to that was a resounding ‘yes’, and the nickname stuck. Even his missus, my Auntie Milly, called him Joe Cunt.
Opposite us was my Auntie Bessy, who weighed in at a healthy thirty-four stone. She was apparently a good-looking woman in her day, though no one could tell me exactly when that day was. Her husband was a bald little bloke named Will whom she always affectionately referred to as ‘shithouse’. The only thing these two had in common was that his weight went into hers exactly four times. A few doors along the balcony from us lived my nan and grandad. My nan’s sister, Auntie Jinny, also lived with them. Today we would say that she had special needs. In those days descriptions were less generous. Jinny used to keep budgies that spoke in a chirpy imitation of her own rather strange voice.
She once said to me, ‘I had three budgies. But they both died.’
If you think my family was some kind of oddball anomaly, then think again. That block of flats was like the Twin Peaks of East London.
There was one chap who rejoiced in the handle Ol’ Bollock Neck. Okay, ‘rejoiced’ may be pushing it. I expect he hated said moniker. But that is what everyone called him, either way. If you have a spare moment or two, I’d like to tell you about him, because if I don’t, no one else will.
His given name was Reuben. He must have had a second name, but I never stumbled across it. I only knew he was Reuben because my mum, a woman of some natural refinement, refused to say the word ‘bollock’. She said a lot of other things, but a bollock never crossed her lips.
Now Reuben was an unusual-looking chap, to be sure. Rotund and walking with a cane, he boasted the kind of bright-scarlet complexion that I now know indicates high blood pressure. Back then I just thought his head was about to explode. On top of that was a shiny bald pate on which sat three different-sized growths in close proximity to one another. From an aerial view, his dome must have resembled a small map of the Galápagos Islands. Such bumps on the nut were not uncommon back in the day. My dad’s sister Eva had a couple we used to see every Christmas when we dropped off the presents. Having an – albeit thinnish – head of hair in which to conceal them gave Auntie Eva the drop on Reuben. But us kids would stay amused for hours trying to catch the occasional glimpse of one through her wispy backcombed barnet.
Good times.
Now, any or all of these physical attributes might have warranted the issuing of a nickname. But none were responsible for Reuben’s. That, you may not be surprised to learn, was down to a goitre on his neck. And what a goitre it was. It hung down on his shirt collar like a honeydew melon ensconced in an XXL scrotal sack. The bastard thing was enormous.
Every time Reuben walked through the flats some budding cockney Oscar Wilde would shout out, ‘Oy, Bollock Neck’ in his general direction. For years his response would be to raise his cane in anger. Later, like a stone floor worn down by the passage of time, the same gesture became more of a tired acknowledgement.
Now I would never see Reuben or his bollock neck again.
There were others. Ginger Sadie on the ground floor, who had the misfortune to own a front room whose outside wall was the perfect size and location to serve as goal during our not infrequent kickabouts. The endless pounding of ball against brick must have driven her insane. The game would stop as she came out screaming the odds at us. Then resume again the second she walked back in. The sheer repetition of this scenario playing out was a comfort I would miss. Though I doubt Ginger Sadie felt the same.
And let’s not forget Roughy Brian, the wiry teenage bully with perhaps the campest nickname in all East London. As an eleven-year-old, I had grown tired of him always pushing us around and finally decided to fight back. During the set-to that ensued, I bit him hard on the ear and pushed him down a flight of stairs. I became hero for a day and brought proof to the old adage about standing up to bullies. The day after that, Brian got an older mate of his to kick the crap out of me, and normal service was resumed. I never trusted an adage again from that day to this.
Now it was on to pastures new. And pastures there certainly were. Despite its East London postcode, North Chingford was remarkably rural, the more so to an inner-city slicker like my good self. There were fields and forests, a village green and cows that wandered freely in the streets. I used to tell my kids that the first time I set eyes on a cow I thought it was the biggest dog I’d ever seen. This was a joke. I’d seen pictures of them in books, obviously.
The main thing that struck me about Chingford was how white and English it was. I had grown up amongst four-by-twos, Jamaicans, Irish and Pakistanis. The Jamaican presence, especially, had been impossible to ignore. The ska and blue-beat blaring out from the houses on Sandringham Road, the stalls selling exotic-looking fruit and veg down Ridley Road Market, the gaggles of snappily dressed rude boys hanging around street corners, talking in rapid-fire patois. It was a culture I took to easily and it had quickly left its mark. Queueing up for the latest Trojan releases in Musicland on Ridley Road Market. Playing them full volume on my sky-blue Dansette portable as I picked out my outfit for that night. The quiet thrill of being one of the few white faces in the Four Aces Club in Dalston.
Chingford was just a twenty-minute train ride away, but it may as well have been another planet.
I also made the mistake of arriving there with a bloated sense of self-importance. While I was still very young, I was a suedehead out of Hackney. One who had his new neighbours marked as yokels before he’d even met them. This misassumption was soon corrected. What they may have lacked in attention to sartorial detail, they endeavoured to make up for with an endlessly imaginative capacity for extreme violence.
There was a local night spot, the Lorraine Club, where such youths would gather for a skank and a punch-up. One night, a bus ferrying would-be revellers was attacked and firebombed by a rival mob from Debden. Seriously. Who firebombs a double-decker bus on a village green?
Another time I was at a dance at the Chingford Assembly Rooms when a Wild West-style fight broke out. Amidst the mayhem, a cassocked priest appeared with raised arms and appealed for peace. It didn’t work. A fat bloke called Lips picked him up and threw him off a balcony. ‘Seaside Shuffle’ by Terry Dactyl and the Dinosaurs was playing at the time. I’ve always had an ear for detail.
Being less than enthralled with this new environment, I would get the train back to Hackney most nights and hang out with my old mates. I’d then get a late train home to Chingford and make the twenty-minute walk to our flat, which was on The Ridgeway, near the fire station.
On one such journey, while walking along Station Road, I saw three skins, all older than me, hanging around the dark and otherwise deserted street ahead. I felt like the captain of the Titanic must have on first spotting a big chunk of ice through his binoculars. I knew there was going to be trouble, as you always do on such occasions. I put my hand inside the pocket of my Harrington and clenched my keys in my fist as a makeshift weapon. Then I kept walking. Closer, closer, closer …
‘Wotchoo fuckin lookin at?’
Now I could have said, ‘three ungainly troglodytes wearing the fashions of six months ago’, or even, ‘the excellent range of cycling accessories on offer in Halfords’ window’. But discretion being the better part of valour, I elected to remain silent. It did me no good at all. They came and they came hard. I was battered senseless. Welcome to Chingford.
I arrived home a bloodied mess and my old woman immediately went into her world- famous impression of a hysterical Jewish mother. This was almost as painful as the beating. She repeatedly asserted that I must have done something to annoy them. Which is a very Jewish take on a random act of violence.
But in a way she was right. I didn’t look quite like them. I didn’t even walk like them. Like most of my mates, I’d picked up a bit of a Jamaican stroll, where you push yourself up on one foot as you go. It was an arrogant strut. One that could be quite annoying on a Jamaican, and a good deal more so on a fifteen-year-old Jewish kid. Either way, they had sensed I didn’t belong and that had been enough.
My mum and dad, on the other hand, were settling nicely into their new upwardly mobile lifestyle. Away from the family, they had started to make new friends. Amongst these were our neighbours, the Joneses, who were both Welsh and schoolteachers. Moira, the missus, was lovely. In her early thirties, she had long brown hair and brown eyes, a fresh-faced smile and wore tiny cotton minidresses. She reminded me of a TV series of the time called Take Three Girls, about a flat-share in ‘swinging London’. All I can recall about Mr Jones is that his name was Arfor and he had a beard – which probably tells you as much about me as you’ll ever need to know.
The Joneses would often be invited in for dinner, which was of itself an innovation. Dinner parties? What the fuck? The nearest we’d come to such things in Hackney was when someone brought home a tin of pie and mash and we’d all gorge ourselves senseless, sat around the telly.
At these soirées it was always Moira who held court. She was bubbly and talkative and a fount of modern, progressive ideas. This was all new terrain to me, and I couldn’t get enough. Of Moira, or her free-spirited ideals. She always made a point of talking to me like I was an adult and asking my opinions. Probably the first grown-up to ever do so. In return for such flattering generosity, I made her the regular star of my teenage sex fantasies for years to come.
I recall one time looking out of my first-floor bedroom window down at the back garden. Moira lay asleep on the grass and her dress had risen up around her waist. It was the most erotic thing I had ever seen. Though at that point in my development it would be fair to say competition was somewhat thin on the ground.
When we moved, I’d switched schools from Hackney Downs to Sir George Monoux in Walthamstow. The two establishments had a lot in common. Both had delusions of grandeur rooted in their past. Both were shit-holes by the time I got there.
At Hackney Downs our official school sport had been a game called fives. It was played in something like a squash court, only with a padded glove and hard ball. The game had been invented by students at Eton in the late nineteenth century. What the fuck it was doing in Hackney in the late sixties was anyone’s guess.
But Monoux managed to top even that. There we had all-year-round swimming lessons in the icy-cold school pool. Lessons in which all students were compulsorily naked. Imagine it. Forty-odd pallid teenagers stood trembling with cold and embarrassment, hands clasped over their bollocks, before being ordered down into the freezing water. The school’s official line was that it was ‘good for the constitution’. Personally, I could never see the connection between wellness and having your cock out.
As if all this was not sufficient a treat, our teacher, a boss-eyed geezer, name of Chatwin, would stroll around poolside with an ’ampton the size of an anteater’s snout slapping about against his thigh as he went. Yup, he was also naked – despite never actually getting into the water himself.
Try putting that in an Ofsted report and see how far it gets you.
But it was at Monoux that I would eventually start to make new friends. My recent transition from hard-working student to class wag undoubtedly helped the process along.
‘Name me two types of chemical bond.’
‘Premium and James?’
‘Get out.’
My best mate was Neal Weaver. He was into the same clothes and music as me, and also a Spurs supporter. We started going over White Hart Lane together and then hanging out of an evening. Neal was a star player for the school football team and had a kind of Prom King gloss about him. Neither of these things were remotely true of my good self, so knocking about with him helped put me on the fast track to a new social circle.
Another advantage was his sister Jacky. She of the Twig the Wonderkid eyes and immaculate dress sense. She and her crew of mates were as sheepskin-coated goddesses. Older, cute and very cool. I was in awe of them.
It was Jacky who first mentioned the Tottenham Royal dance hall to us. In its time the Royal had been a haunt of Teddy boys and, later, mods. Bands like the Who and the Dave Clark Five had also played there. Now it was once again the place to see and be seen. Truth be told, we’d never heard of it. But we acted as though we had, then headed down there at the first opportunity.
From the moment I set foot on that hallowed ground, I knew the Royal was a game-changer. It was cavernous, there were disco balls and it had plastic palm trees. Most of all, it was full of kids like us from all over London, all dressed up to the nines. I was in heaven.
Years later I would write about the Tottenham Royal in my song ‘Saturday Night Beneath the Plastic Palm Trees’.
’69 was a very fine year
Was a teenage rebel who knew no fear
Hanging around the flats at night
Drunk on cider, out of sight
Six months later, barnet’s grown
I got a mohair suit to call my own
Button-down shirt with a window-pane check
Brand new strides with a dogtooth fleck
Growing up, I need much more
Youth club kids were such a bore
Me mate Neal says there’s a place he knows
Where his elder sister and her mates all go
Saturday night beneath the plastic palm trees
Dancing to the rhythm of The Guns of Navarone
Found my Mecca near Tottenham Hale Station
I discovered heaven in the Seven Sisters Road
Crews from Balham and Golders Green
And loads of places I’ve never been
The stroke of ten, a fight breaks out
Hear the bouncers scream and shout
Sling him out, he’s wearing boots
Cry the gangsters dressed in dinner suits
They black his eyes, his nose gets bent
Courtesy of the management
Saturday night beneath the plastic palm trees
Dancing to the rhythm of The Guns of Navarone
Found my Mecca near Tottenham Hale Station
I discovered heaven in the Seven Sisters Road
Eddie Holman slows things down
You ask a girl to dance, but you get turned down
Maybe it’s just not your day
What d’you want for five bob, anyway
I was cool, drinking rum & black
And then felt sick on the journey back
I got soaked right through in the pouring rain
But next week I’m going back again
Saturday night beneath the plastic palm trees
Dancing to the rhythm of The Guns of Navarone
Found my Mecca near Tottenham Hale Station
I discovered heaven in the Seven Sisters Road
‘Seven Sisters Road’ was a bit of artistic licence. It was further down, on Tottenham High Road. But that would have made a really shit chorus.
What was great about our nights out at the Royal was that my old mates from Hackney would also be there. So I’d spend my time flitting back and forth between my two groups of friends. After a while, I’d spend less time with the old crew. It was a little like getting together with someone you’d met on holiday. Without that thing you’d had in common, there just wasn’t much to talk about. Eventually, the night came when I didn’t even bother going over to say hello.
I’d relocated to Chingford with my parents some eighteen months before. Now, finally, I had moved.
Even Androgynous Creatures of the Night Are Prone to Painful Wardrobe Injuries
The years 1971 to 1972 brought many changes. Most of which were to my wardrobe. I had gone from monogram-blazered, Dapper Dan suedehead to East London’s very own Spider from Mars. Neon-ginger electric-shock hairdo, eye make-up, bright blue Mr Freedom Oxford bags and Anello & Davide girls’ shoes. At a strapping six foot two, I did not blend into crowds easily.
By this time, I also had a regular girlfriend, whom we’ll call Hazel. Hazel wasn’t her real name. But the lady in question is now married to a vicar and I have no wish to cause her any embarrassment or trample over her old man’s sacraments.
Hazel was what we used to call a top sort. Also a former suedehead, she was now all pillbox hats, huge purple quiff and Miss Mouse skin-tight pencil skirts. Together we looked like we’d just left a party at Warhol’s Factory and were on our way to meet Bryan Ferry for cocktails.
But in truth we were guttersnipes. Council-flat kids living at home with our parents. And as such there was one thing we valued every bit as much as tickets to see Ziggy at the Rainbow or a day out shoplifting at Biba. That most priceless commodity for young couples since records began. Time alone indoors. Because in those days working-class parents barely left the house unless it was to bring back provisions. The world we aspired to was all bisexual creatures of the night taking a walk on the wild side. But in Manor House N4 I had to make do with a quick kiss goodnight on the doorstep while I tried to slip my hand inside Hazel’s bra before her dad came out. And Hazel’s dad always came out. Many’s the time I walked home with balls the same colour as my Oxford bags.
So, when the lovely Hazel announced that her parents were going out to visit her brother and his wife, this was the cause of some celebration. Cue Bowie boy clicking wedge heels together while performing a Lindsay Kemp-inspired dance of joy in the front room.
On said day the parents did indeed exit as scheduled. I know this because I could see them through the bush I was hiding behind. I knocked on the front door and some thirty seconds after that, me ’n Haze are in bed.
Now it is a strange and, I think, indisputable truth that whatever point two people have reached in the gamut of sexual contact, the simple sound of a key entering a lock will bring all proceedings to an immediate and crashing halt. And so it was on this occasion. Hazel’s parents came back. Apparently, they’d forgotten something. Like her old man’s well-founded lack of trust in me.
I shot out of bed and, forgetting the niceties of underwear, was into my jeans in record time. But the manoeuvre did not go as planned. The meeting of an abruptly softened penis and a harsh metal zipper was never going to be a warm one with greetings exchanged. But the surge of unbridled agony that coursed through my lower region was indescribable. White Light/White Heat/Blue Murder.
You remember that little metal spiky bit that used to be at the base of zips? That. I was well and truly speared. Worse still, the only position I could find any relief in was bent over double. So that was how I stayed. Tears now streaming down my face. Hazel tried to help. But it was useless.
Her mum got wind of the situation and proved to be an unexpected ally. First she kept the old man at bay. Then she entered the bedroom clutching a pack of Lurpak – slightly salted, as I recall – and offered a helping hand. I declined. The prospect of a sixty-year-old Jewish woman basting my old chap like a miniature Christmas turkey was doing nothing for my rapidly fading dignity.
I can’t say who it was that eventually called for an ambulance. But I have a vivid recollection of two paramedics trying and failing to stifle laughter.
‘Grit your teeth and I’ll give it a quick rip upwards,’ said one. ‘Like fuck you will,’ I replied politely.
And so I was lifted onto a stretcher – sitting bolt upright – and carried out into the lift. Which had people in it, of course. The ambulance ride that followed wasn’t much fun either. It’s amazing how aware one can become of uneven road surfaces in that position.
We arrive at hospital and I’m thankfully whisked straight through for immediate treatment. Even today the National Health charter ensures all A & E departments have a policy of prioritising embarrassing penis injuries.
The steady stream of giggling young nurses who poke their heads around the curtain is the stuff of nightmares. But that’s a prelude to the doctor who approaches, wielding a razor-sharp scalpel inches above my crotch.
‘Try and relax,’ he says. This is not so easy, considering the last time anyone went near my penis with a scalpel a significant slice of foreskin ended up down the waste disposal.
He comes in closer … closer still …
And begins to cut away my jeans. I breathe a huge sigh of relief. In around a minute I am naked from the waist down. Only with a zip hanging off my knob.
Without the encumbrance of the jeans, he is soon able to release my now battle-weary member.
Free at last, free at last. Thank God I’m free at last.
I’m left with what was then known rather unpleasantly as a black man’s pinch. A distorted bubble of blackened blood under the skin.
‘Can I give you anything for that?’ asks my saviour.
‘Do you have anything that’ll ease the pain but keep the swelling?’ I enquire. He doesn’t laugh. I leave.
Which might be a good place to end this sorry tale. Save for one thing.
I had to walk back out onto the street to get the bus home. With my Ziggy haircut, no shoes, a shirt Hazel had thoughtfully draped around my shoulders and a pair of jeans that had the crotch cut out. And no underwear.
And that, my friends, really was a walk on the wild side.
A Man Called Alf
Walthamstow Town Hall is a handsome devil of a building that I’m never less than happy to cast my minces upon. Designed and built by British architect Philip Dalton Hepworth in 1942, it’s set way back from the road, with clean lines constructed from white-grey Portland stone. It also boasts a beautiful fountain-cum-water feature out front.
Increasingly, as the years tally up, things I’m drawn towards tend to have memories attached to them. Well done, Geoff, you’re finally turning into your mother. Anyway, such is the case with the Town Hall. Be it sitting with my kids, cooling our feet in the water during a scorching hot summer gone by or warming up with a glass of mulled wine from my buddy Bruno’s stall during the annual Christmas market. So not just a good-looking gaff, then. A happy one.
Inside the Town Hall are the beautiful Art Deco Assembly Rooms. In the early seventies I had a part-time job working as a kitchen porter for a caterer named Alf Altmann. The weddings and bar mitzvahs Alf catered were usually held at the Assembly Rooms, so it became home turf. Remember that stupid-looking bloke with the dyed Bowie cut, loading heavy tea chests full of crockery and kitchen equipment onto a truck while you were waiting around in your finery for your carriage to take you home? That was yours truly. Those Mr Freedom Oxford bags didn’t pay for themselves.
Working for Alf was long, hard and frugally rewarded. A seventeen-hour day for a score and a roast chicken. But as I had no discernible skill set beyond an ability to turn up, I didn’t much grumble. Truth be told, I enjoyed it. The people were friendly, and we had a laugh. And being part of a well-drilled if somewhat frenzied operation was strangely satisfying. These functions were huge life events for the people hosting them, and there was a genuine desire not to let them down.
At the centre of proceedings, barking out orders like Monty at El Alamein, was the always irrepressible Alf. Alf looked in his early seventies but with the stress his chosen field inspired, he could have been thirty-two for all I know. He’d kick off the day by sending me out to get his cigarettes. One hundred Senior Service. Untipped. Yikes. By eight in the evening, he’d run out and was poncing off others. For most of the day, you wouldn’t see Alf. You’d just hear his unmistakable rasp emerging from behind a dense cloud of smoke. A one-man Chernobyl in a tux that had seen better days.
But Alf knew the game inside out. And what a game it was. A cycle of cooking, plating up, serving, clearing away, washing up and then going again. Through six courses for around 250 to 300 people. Plus canapés, champagne cocktails and a cold buffet on arrival.
Not to mention a bar fully stocked and manned for the endurance. Did I mention the coffee and pastries served later in the evening? Just in case the 17,000 calories previously consumed had been burned up on the dance floor.
Things would go wrong. Sometimes disastrously so. Rock-hard sorbets, split sauces, ovens that wouldn’t heat. On one occasion a chef cracked under the pressure and did a runner mid-service. But Alf was wired into the entire event like Davros to the Dalek empire, and a solution was always close to hand.
At the end of the night, the guests having left happy, Alf would survey the now empty ballroom, point to the tables, and bellow out his inevitable, final order of the day.
‘Fruit off, flowers off, fuck off.’ And we did.
Adventures in the Rag Trade
There seemed to be a lot of characters about when I was growing up. Maybe there still are. Or maybe there isn’t sufficient breathing space for them to thrive any more. I’m not sure. I remember my late cousin Tony, a black cabbie of the Gooner persuasion, telling me about another driver whose entire raison d’être had been to secretly slip items of cutlery about the person of others he ran into in the course of his working day. So one might stop to exchange pleasantries, then arrive home to find a fork and spoon secreted away in your overcoat pocket. Kept it up for a lifetime, apparently. I’ve always admired that kind of commitment to a cause. Especially when it’s a stupid one. Anyway, enough bunny. Here are a few words on one such character of my historic acquaintance.
Back in the day – we’re talking 1973 or thereabouts – I had a Sunday job working down Brick Lane for a legend of a geezer with the unlikeliest of handles, Sefton Cheskin. What to say about Sefton? A four-by-two in his mid to late forties, he sported a dodgy auburn syrup worn at a rakish angle and was an inveterate spieler on a losing streak the length of the Yangtze. Sefton owned a run-down old shop that was stuffed to the rafters with piles of clothes, mostly whistles of every size, shape and colour. Little was in any semblance of order and nothing was priced. It was a smallish gaff, but of a Sunday, Sefton had some ten or twelve youngsters like me working for him. Most of the boys were Jewish and worked during the week at esteemed West End establishments such as Cecil Gee and Take 6.
So what attracted us all to a madhouse like Cheskin’s? In short, the money and the larks. For this was a shop like no other. Well, no other I’ve ever happened across. The day would kick off with Sefton arriving with a tray of warm Chelsea buns fresh from Kossoffs baker’s, their sweet, cinnamon aroma filling the air. The chaps would stand around tucking away the pastries and drinking coffee until the first customers arrived. Which rarely took long. And when they came, it was usually thick and fast. But here’s the thing. Sefton’s clientele was almost exclusively Nigerian, usually wanting to bulk buy at a discount to take home to flog. Try to visualise it. A cramped shop full of unpriced schmutter and back-to-back Jews and Nigerians haggling over price and quantity. It was like the fucking Somme in there. And all manner of attempted trickery from both sides was par for the course.
A lot of the whistles in Cheskin’s were actually very good. Probably retailing straight for about a ton to £120, even in those days. Others looked like they’d been knocked up by a blind Bulgarian working out the back of a hooky polyester farm. These were not worth the price of a stale Scotch egg. So if you could slip one of the latter into a purchase of a dozen of the former, you and Mr Cheskin would be quids in, even after having had some outrageous, last-minute discount beaten out of you by the punter. That was how the game worked. No rules, and fuck off will I take a Gregory Peck. Readies only, mate.
I remember one time Sefton bought in a job lot of about a hundred or so greatcoats. The kind of thing that was popular amongst students and hippies at the time. Nigerians, not so much. And to make matters worse, they were a fifty-six-inch chest. Every fucking last one of them. But if you could out even one, the buntz would be significant, what with Sefton Cheskin having picked them up for a price in the vicinity of gornisht. If you could cajole a punter into trying one on – ‘Just in from Paris. Exclusive. And I can do you a deal’ – you still had to get around the fact they were some ten sizes too big. To overcome this, we would explain that being the height of contemporary fashion, the way to wear them was belted at the back. We would assist with this, folding in ruddy great swathes of excess greatcoat behind the belt in the process. Coats were sold, money was made, and many laughs were had.
But the most memorable thing about working for Sefton Cheskin Esq. was the man himself. Every conversation I ever had with him or saw him have with anyone – be it friend, employee or punter – was littered with references and asides to ‘Mrs McArdle’: ‘That looks lovely on you, mister. Mrs McArdle was in yesterday – she bought one for her Harold. He was happy, but I bet her Bert will have something to say. Ooh, look there she is now. Mrs McArdle … Gotta go, mister, the young fella will take your money.’
Needless to say, Mrs McArdle didn’t exist. Unless she was a distant relative of Larry Grayson’s Everard. It was just Sefton’s thing. How it started and why he did it I couldn’t really hazard a guess. I’d like to say people just did shit like that back then. But they didn’t really. It was only him.
*
NB. Months after writing this, I was having a chat with a latter-day mate of mine, Mark Baxter, and it turned out Bax had also come across the man Sefton. Back in 1989, the week the Berlin Wall had come down, they had run neighbouring stalls in Camden Market. As luck would have it, not too far away from an old building that was being demolished. At Sefton’s bidding, Bax had decamped to said building and returned with a sack full of rubble. The two of them then proceeded to make a killing, flogging its contents to unsuspecting tourists as ‘genuine pieces of the Berlin Wall’. Back then, you see, you really could be heroes just for one day.
