The lives of brian a mem.., p.6
The Lives of Brian: a Memoir, page 6
The second my milk round finished, I should add, I had to dash over to the newsagent’s and start my paper round. By the time I got to school, I’d already been at work for more than two hours. But I loved my jobs. Especially on Saturdays, when the milk van driver, Lettie, would take me to the baker’s after our round, and I’d get a meat square straight out of the oven, which would burn my mouth and tongue, but it didn’t matter because I’d wash it down straight after with a half-pint of full-cream milk. Then I’d get paid and I’d go and buy myself a model aeroplane.
Ah, just fantastic stuff.
Anyway, the trouble started with the last milk round before Christmas, when people would come out of their houses and give me tips. I collected £2 in total that morning – which I’d decided to spend on Christmas presents for my ma and dad.
But there was a big, nasty bully of a kid who also worked at the dairy – I won’t mention his name – and he must have heard about my tips because he followed me out of the building after my shift, cornered me in a shop doorway, and demanded that I hand over the money. No reason. He just thought he could get away with it.
No.
So, he drew himself up to his full height, pulled me up by the collar so my face met his, and went, ‘I’ll ask you one more time, you little shit . . . give me your money.’
All I could think of were my dad’s words about turning around and walking away. But I was up against a door, so there was no escape. And as a matter of principle, I wasn’t going to give this guy a single penny. So, without even thinking – as a surge of pure animal rage took over me – I nutted him so hard, right between the eyes, it broke his nose and his cheekbone. The scream he let out was awful. Even I was shocked. Then he started to cry, and of course there was blood dripping everywhere. But I didn’t feel sorry for him. He’d tried to rob me because I was small, and as my dad would say, he had it coming. So, I left him there and legged it home, looking over my shoulder all the way, just in case he’d followed me.
The police were never called. But when I went back to work after Christmas, Lettie’s sister tore into me, calling me every name that she could think of. ‘You little Italian pig,’ she spat. ‘you should be ashamed of yourself, fighting like a dirty foreigner.’
Lettie pointed out that it was the older boy who’d started it by trying to steal my tips – and that he had a long history of being lazy and rude and nicking milk from the van.
‘Aye, but we cannit sack him,’ came the reply. ‘He’s English.’
I kept my job, and he didn’t. Lettie was a hero to me. She stuck up for me, and that meant everything, at a tough time.
The one shining beacon of light for me during my late childhood and early teenage years was the Fifth Tyne Sea Scouts. If you’re not familiar with the various branches of the Scouts, the Sea Scouts are just like the ordinary Scouts, but with a focus on boats and water – and, of course, there are plenty of both in Tyneside, which once stood alongside Glasgow and Belfast as one of the shipbuilding capitals of the world. But the purpose of the little troop I joined was really more to introduce working-class kids like me to the world beyond our grey, polluted and increasingly rundown industrial surroundings. Which is exactly what it did.
Without the Sea Scouts, I’m pretty sure that my life wouldn’t have turned out the way it did.
A lot of this was down to our Scoutmaster and my first mentor, a young guy who went by the name of Warren Young . . . because apparently when I was born, the clouds parted, a shaft of light shone down, and God boomed, ‘AND LO, EVERY IMPORTANT FIGURE IN THE LIFE OF THIS CHILD BRIAN SHALL BE CALLED “YOUNG”.’
I mean, granted, Warren Young was a bit of an oddball – a bachelor who still lived with his mother in a big old house in Gateshead – but he was the loveliest, kindest, most thoughtful man that I’d ever met. He didn’t shout at you if you made a mistake. He’d always listen to what you had to say. And he’d always help you if he could.
To understand just how rare that was back then, bear in mind that it was entirely normal in those days – expected, even – for figures of authority to treat kids in ways that would get them locked up today. Back at Dunston Hill juniors, for example, I was once reading out loud in front of the class and got it a little wrong, and the teacher came up behind me and smacked me on the side of the head so hard I fell down and couldn’t get back up.
It was criminal, the force he used. And he kept screaming at me to get up, but I couldn’t, so he had to ask one of my classmates to get the school nurse. I thought he’d get into trouble for it, but not at all – he was back to knocking kids around the next day.
The point being that Warren Young was halfway to a saint because he was so patient and kind – and we respected him all the more for it. We also loved him because he was always coming up with new games and activities for us, including endless rounds of ‘British Bulldog’, during which we got to knock the living shit out of each other in the Scout hut for half an hour at a time, even though one of the Little ones would nearly always end up going home with half of his teeth in a paper bag.
But the games weren’t my favourite part of the Sea Scouts. Not by a long shot. What I loved the most . . . was the singing. Because it wasn’t the boring, stodgy singing that we did at school or in church. It was boisterous, sitting-around-a-campfire, bellowing-it-out-at-the-top-of-your-lungs singing – the kind that makes your spine tingle and puts a huge grin on your face, no matter what kind of mood you’re in.
Another reason I liked the singing so much was because I was starting to realize that I was good at it.
It’s funny, looking back, that I could belt out a tune even though my voice hadn’t broken yet and I was still so underdeveloped. I suppose I just got the ‘huge pair of lungs’ gene from my dad. Where my pitch came from, though, I’ve no idea. My dad couldn’t hold a tune to save his life. My mother, God bless her, was even worse.
So, there I’d be in the Scout hut every week, and sometimes even at the weekends, dressed up in my little neckerchief and woggle, my knees and arms all bruised and grazed from British Bulldog, singing my heart out, imagining myself somewhere on the plains of Africa . . . just loving every second of it. And then one day, Warren Young took me aside and told me something that would change my life forever.
‘Brian, son,’ he said, ‘I want you to come back here on Tuesday afternoon – for an audition.’
‘An audition?’ I said, my face dropping – I wasn’t quite sure if this was a good thing or a punishment for something that I’d done wrong. ‘What d’you mean . . . audition . . . ?’
‘Well, the Scout leaders have had a meeting and we’ve decided it’s high time we put on a Gang Show,’ he said. ‘And with that voice of yours . . . I think you should be in it.’
Of course, the whole Scout troop would be in it, but he said he wanted me to sing a song solo.
That stopped me in my tracks a tadge.
Now, Gang Shows in those days were pretty awful events – like school pantomimes, only worse. But entertainment was hard to come by in the early 1960s, so everyone wanted to pile into the Scout hut to watch two hours of lads cracking jokes, dancing and singing songs that everyone knew by heart.
Gang Shows had started thirty years earlier with the songwriter and producer Ralph Reader, the guy who wrote ‘We’re Riding Along on the Crest of a Wave’.
So, getting the chance to be a part of this great British institution was a massive honour – and an opportunity that could very well change my life. But first I had to get through my audition with the show’s ‘musical director’, a much older guy named Mr. Tedd Potts, who had greased back hair and a very affected, theatrical manner.
I was so nervous, I barely ate or slept for days.
I shouldn’t have worried, though, because it turned out to be a mass-audition of Scouts from all kinds of different troops, from all around the area – and all we had to do was skip around in a circle while a guy played the piano and Mr. Tedd Potts watched our every move in a slightly unsettling way. Later on, I was told that I’d passed with flying colours and would be getting four songs to sing. A chance to sing in front of a live audience for the first time.
And then we were taught very roughly how to dance. It wasn’t dancing, it was more marching and waving hands. It was George, Raymond, Carl – all friends of mine from the Scout troop and Beech Drive. My voice wasn’t broken, it wasn’t anything to shake the world, but I held a note true. There were a lot of warblers, but I seemed to be able to hold onto a note without thinking about it. The songs were ‘Stay after School’, ‘The Morning of My Life’, ‘Sisters’ and one other.
The first dress rehearsal was in the church hall and we were all dressed up, with the piano and lights. Even though there wasn’t anybody there, it was quite nerve-wracking. We had to make costume changes, running downstairs to a room buzzing with activity. All the mothers were helping with makeup, and the makeup was bad because of how bad the lights were. We had to have red cheeks and we looked like mannequins. The wonderful thing was the excitement, which I’d never felt before, like I was part of something. People were tripping up, walking off stage and walking into things, and boys were getting a bollocking. It was just a fantastic feeling; I knew this was the life for me.
I was nervous because there was this one song, ‘Stay after School’, that was quite rocky. I had to wear jeans, but I didn’t have any at the time so I was given a pair with a T-shirt. When we went out to do it on the live show, the girls were screaming, which we loved. Our hair was slicked back, and we wore sneakers. I was so wrapped up in our performance that I didn’t think about the parents, but my mother thought we were lovely. To me, it was like there were thousands there in that church hall.
The awful thing was that we only had two performances, a Friday night one and a Saturday night one, and then it was over. I felt like I had nothing to do because before the show we would rehearse twice a week and now, nothing.
5
A Ruff Business
Courtesy of the author
While I was in the Sea Scouts, Warren Young knew I was a Catholic in a Church of England and Catholics Scout Troop, then again, so was he. We were known as left footers in the North East.
He’d produced the Dunston Scout Gang Shows and he’d heard me sing, so he asked me if I would like to sing in The St. Joseph’s Church Choir. I really wasn’t interested until he mentioned that I would be paid one shilling and sixpence every week.
‘I would love to,’ I said.
And God had nothing to do with it, this was a cash deal.
He took me along to the choir practice on Wednesday night, and there were around sixteen youngsters like myself, about thirteen years old and upwards, and about twenty adults.
He asked me to sing for him and handed me a hymn sheet. I took a look and realized it was in Latin. Bye-bye one shilling and sixpence.
I said I couldn’t understand it and he smiled and said, ‘Neither does anyone else.’
Then he handed me a phonetically written one, ahh, this was better.
Dominus vobiscum and such, this made you sound really holy. Latin was a language only spoken by public school boys and priests.
It wasn’t a hymn I learned first, but something one of the older boys taught me, which goes:
Nil carborundum illegitimi.
Which, roughly translated, means ‘Don’t let the bastards grind you down.’ A very important lesson in later life.
Everything in Latin or Italian sounds dignified and posh. Take, for instance, a Ferrari Testa Rossa, which means ‘Red Head’, but you just can’t call a Ferrari that. Or, how about a Quattroporte. It’s a beautiful name for a car, but it just means ‘Four Doors’. See what I mean?
Getting back to the choir practice, I sang ‘Oh Come, All Ye Faithful’ and the choirmaster must have been impressed because he handed me a hassock or a cassock, which, when you put it on, made you even holier. All I needed was the wings.
After about two weeks of practice, I was ready for my first gig: the eleven o’clock one-hour mass on the coming Sunday.
The Catholic mass was, to me, the most complicated way to worship a deity I had ever witnessed. The priest said things and the audience answered in monotonous drones. There was no joy in it, no one looked happy. Then again, God’s not that funny!
Then there were the altar boys who walked around the stage, sorry the altar, doing stuff like dusting the crucifix and polishing things. The priest pulled out this receptacle with a silver chain and tilted it from side to side and back and forward, with this foul-smelling smoke coming out of it. To me, it looked like voodoo but hey, money talks and bullshit is king. Then we sang something, which I think was a bit of a relief, more like a commercial break, so to speak. Then, just when you thought you were safe, the priest gathered his gang from the altar and walked down the aisle, spraying holy water on everyone. I tried to take a food stain off my cassock once with holy water and it didn’t work, so there you go.
Back they came to the stage and Pop Gunning brought out the box of crackers. I thought, great, a tea break. Sadly, he held one of them up to the heavens, said something exceptionally holy, and broke it in pieces, then everyone in the audience came for a piece and, while they ate, we sang. It took a while, but it killed some time . . . this was going on forever. I was getting dizzy with boredom, it surely had to end soon. I lost count of how many times people were standing up and sitting down, then kneeling down and then standing up again. It was bloody exhausting.
Somewhere in amongst all the action, Pop climbed into the pulpit to give a sermon, telling us all to be good and not to give in to the temptation of eating meat on a Friday, except spam because that wasn’t real meat. He told us of God’s wrath being cast upon us and that the badder you were on earth, the longer you would be in this place called purgatory till you were allowed into Heaven. He finished by saying that God loved us all, but he didn’t speak of the Holy Ghost. I suppose it’s because it’s not very unique being a ghost up there. Then he went back to the altar, poured himself a glass of wine and drank it all himself. I was impressed – he’d already done the eight o’clock and nine o’clock masses and was still steady on his feet.
It was his last orders and, with us singing at full volume, Pop and his gang left the stage, though no one applauded, which I think was unfair. I thought he was quite good.
My mother was there and she was very proud. She said I was the best singer there, which is what mothers do. However, two weeks later at practice the choirmaster announced to the whole choir that I would be Head Choir Boy and handed me a golden sash to put about my neck.
I thought, shit, that’s a lot of responsibility for someone who has no idea what the hell went on in a mass. I just followed everyone else, and now I would have to sing solo now and again. I wasn’t ready, and I knew it.
I was told that the Head Choir Boys got two shillings and sixpence. Wow, a promotion and a pay rise, all in the name of God. There was a price to pay, however. When practice was over, the deposed Head Choir Boy was waiting for me outside the church, and he was a big bugger. Let me tell you, there’s nothing scarier than an ex-Head Choir Boy whose voice has broken. He jumped me as soon as I got out the door and was systematically trying to knock the shit out of me when the choirmaster came out, kicked him in the arse and pulled him off, then told him that kicking the shit out of people is right out of the question on holy ground (tell the Crusaders that).
My greatest moment as a choir boy was at midnight mass, Christmas 1960. I sang ‘Silent Night’ solo. All lights in the church were out and it was candlelight only. It really was a beautiful place to be. My mother was there again, and she cried. It was magical. There was no applause, obviously, but there was a lot of sighing and ahhing.*
Not all of Warren Young’s ideas had such happy endings.
The example that immediately springs to mind – because it was such an unmitigated disaster – was the boxing tournament he once organized for our troop against the Sea Cadets from across the river in Scotswood. What you’ve got to bear in mind is that our troop was made up of schoolboys aged from ten to fourteen, while the Sea Cadets – a proper naval reserve force – was composed of sixteen- to eighteen-year-olds with biceps and tattoos. More to the point, they were from Scotswood, which was where young lads from Dunston went on a Friday or Saturday night . . . if they wanted to die. It was the toughest place in Newcastle, if not the entire North of England – home to the terrifying Tams family and various other Peaky Blinders-style gangs. Getting into a boxing ring with these lads, in other words, was absolute madness.
But I was a teenager now and up for anything – something Warren Young clearly liked in me – and I was probably feeling a bit tough after my victory over the thief at the dairy. So, I was one of the handful of idiots who raised their hands to volunteer to join our team, even though I’d never donned a pair of boxing gloves in my life.
A rigorous course of training followed . . . which consisted of exactly one practice round. Oh, and our troop had only two pairs of gloves, and the ones I got were bigger than my head, which meant I had to stuff them with newspaper to stop them flying off whenever I attempted a jab. Even when they were stuffed with newspaper, though, they still felt all wobbly and loose – and by the end of the round, I hadn’t managed to land a single punch. But by then, it was too late to back out.
