It seems I spent a fair bit of time with Andy Levinson in the few days between my Bar Mitzvah and going on holiday. Here’s the transcript of the headline picture’s diary scribble
Monday, 11 August 1975 – Andy all day. TV Star Trek, My Honourable Mrs, Yuri Geller and psycho film.
Actually the “psycho film” was Pressure Point with Bobby Darin & Sidney Poitier:
Tuesday, 12 August 1975 – Andy morning. TV Tarzan. Uncle Dick in the evening.
Guess who’s coming to dinner? Uncle Dick! He wasn’t my uncle, but was, I think, next door neighbour Rose Beech’s brother. Very nice chap who had been a POW during the war and needed careful feeding as a result. I’m guessing the the Beeches went away straight after my Bar Mitzvah and mum promised to feed Dick at least once in the days before we also went away.
It was that sort of neighbourliness in that area in those days.
Wednesday, 13 August 1975 – uneventful day. All OK.
Thursday, 14 August 1975 – went to West End to get tickets.
Friday 15 August 1975 – fired Jeanette. Went to Grandma Anne’s.
What on earth can “fired Jeanette” mean? I can only surmise that she was our cleaner for a short while, as I have no recollection of her. Mrs Nugent “Nu-Nu” was our cleaner for many years – most of childhood, followed by Mrs Main who also stuck with mum (and vice versa) for donkey’s years. I’ll guess that Jeanette was one that didn’t work out between the two I remember.
Just to be clear, it will not have been me who did the firing. It will have been mum. I just dutifully recorded the HR proceedings in my diary.
Saturday 16 August 1975 – uneventful. Preparation. TV [Sgt.] Bilko and Crown Court.
I don’t mention watching Days One to Three of the Headingley test, but I know I watched some of it. On the Saturday, Bilko was on the TV before the start of play; Crown Court after stumps. What else would I have done on an uneventful day?
The reason I am sure I saw some of it is that I recall my sense of horror when I learnt, on holiday, what had occurred while I was away from the match after those first three days. England looked very well placed at that stage.
Actually, I wrote up the centre piece of the party – the limbo dancing – some five years ago (he says, writing now in December 2025) – click here or below:
But there was more to this party than just the limbo dancing. Oh yes.
There was a meal, for a start. A meal that is bound to have been baked salmon, although I really don’t remember the meal. But in a non-kosher venue with some observant people present, fish would have been the order of the day for sure. Then you could also have some creamy deserts and stuff like that.
Then speeches. The camera only caught the important ones – me as the star of the show and Andy Levinson as my warm up or warm down act, I cannot remember which way round we spoke.
I certainly win the award for the more skew-iffy tie.
There was also regular dancing for regular people, as well as limbo dancing.
Cousin Angela and John KesslerNext door neighbours Rose & Bill BeechMum with Norman Levinson – Dr Edwina Green looks disapproving, perhaps because mum’s new hip was only three months old at the time
Mum had put enormous effort into rehab after her hip replacement in May, motivated by a desire to dance at my Bar Mitzvah party, which she sure did. My perspective on this has shifted in the past year, having been through the hip replacement and hard yards for rapid rehab myself in 2025.
Mum, Denise Lytton and Rose Beech, as Marjorie and Fiona Levinson look on. Don’t overdo it, mum and whatever you do, don’t fall over……and don’t try to emulate cousin Colin Jacobs.
Of course, these events are family affairs and most of the family was there:
Grandma Jenny & Me above, Me & Grandma Anne belowPam & Michael front, Auntie Francis standing, flanked I think by Lieba and Sam Aarons…Mum liked this picture.
You can see all of the photos from both days of the Bar Mitzvah weekend through this Flickr link, here or below:
This event came to me as a memory flash while in e-conversation with Rohan Candappa in December 2020 on the topic of that “limbo period” between Christmas and New Year. Rohan pointed out:
Limbo is a strangely schizophrenic word. It’s either a time when nothing is going on, or the most extreme dance you can imagine.
Suddenly it all came flooding back to me. The dinner & dance the day after my Barmitzvah. The Peacock Club in Streatham. The limbo dancer my parents arranged as entertainment for said evening. My limbo dancing “career”, not just remembered but I knew for sure that I have photographs.
Why the choice of limbo dancer for a Barmitzvah party? The answer to that question is truly lost in the mists of time. Some would suggest that it was a very “South London” choice. Others that it was an inappropriate choice steeped in cultural appropriation.
My guess is that someone dad knew through his photographic shop business was connected with the charming young lady in question.
Dorothy.
I know that she is/was named Dorothy because the pictures in my parent’s memory book / photo album have clearly been labelled “Dorothy”.
[Infantile readers may insert their own version of the joke revolving around the idea that “Ian was a friend of Dorothy when he was thirteen years old” here.]
Dorothy [Thinks]: What a funny little boy he is. Ian [Thinks]: I could be in here…whatever “being in” might be.
Dorothy showed us how it should be done.
Steve Lytton was one of several people who had a go. Unfortunately for him, his photo survived and has lived peacefully in my parent’s memory book for 45 years and counting:
Friends from the neighbourhood and school might recognise Andy Levinson in the background of the above and following picture. He’s hiding behind is mum. It seems he didn’t have a go at limbo dancing.
My technique showing real promise there. If only I had persevered with the practice, I could have been a contender.
Then Dorothy started to show off.
I mean, really, was that completely necessary?
Seriously, I do remember Dorothy being sweet with me and making the whole event feel special. She was clearly very talented at limbo dancing.
One day I’ll write up other aspects of my Barmitzvah. Sadly, for lovers of music and theology, there is a recording of me singing my rite of passage passage and I’ll feel Ogblog-honour bound to upload it, if only for the sake of completeness.
Anyway, the limbo dancing was great fun. Dad clearly felt that he had pulled off a blinder by booking Dorothy…
…while mum did far more dancing than was good for her, just three months after having a hip replacement:
Update/Footnote Post Publication
I managed to track down and get in touch with Steve Lytton after publishing this piece – it seemed only polite to let him know that his youthful limbo dancing efforts were now in the public domain.
It was really nice to catch up with Steve and e-chat after so many years.
One thing that Steve said solved at least part of the “why a limbo dancer at my Barmitzvah party” mystery:
…what a coincidence. We had a limbo dancer at MY Barmitzvah party…
…said Steve. The penny dropped. We had a limbo dancer at my celebration because I/we had so much enjoyed the limbo dancer at his, a year or so earlier. So the question now really should be, “why did Steve have a limbo dancer at his Barmitzvah party?” Or maybe it was simply the fashion for such parties at that time.
Truth to be told, dear readers, most people who, like me, were brought up in non-religious, or, at the most, quasi-religious households, thought of the Bar Mitzvah as an event which would result in lots of super presents and a big party in your honour…
…with a religious ceremony inconveniently taking place between the presents and the party.
Hence, I felt the need to separate out the Bar Mitzvah itself for an Ogblog page, because I did put in the effort to do the thing properly. My parents would have expected nothing less.
Had I succeeded in recusing myself eighteen months or so earlier, I don’t suppose the presents and the party would have been forthcoming, so…thank you, Rabbi Ginsbury.
I still have a handful of the presents, in particular the gramophone records and books (things I never throw away), a letter writing box/set from Jacqueline and Maurice Swain (still with me but rather fershimmeled to be truthful), a rather splendid onyx chess set in Aztec style (from Monty & Vivienne Phillips, I’m pretty sure)…plus money, of course – I still have some of that – not the actual cash or cheques tendered at that time of course, although several people insisted on their money being converted into premium bonds and I will still have those actual bonds as I have never sold a premium bond.
I digress. Anyway, it wasn’t just me who thought the eating, drinking and making merry was the bigger part of the process. The invitation below, which stretches to ten lines, uses four of them to cover the religious service, then six lines to describe the ensuing libations, feasting and terpsichorean celebrations.
To an even greater extent, the surviving photographs are heavily oriented towards the celebratory events the following day, although this can in part be explained by the prohibition of photography in shule and indeed anywhere on the sabbath.
Dad was no doubt breaking multiple rules when he snapped me in my state of readiness on the morning of my Bar Mitzvah before we set off for shule.
I’m pretty sure I still have that yarmulke and it looks suspiciously un-fershimmeled given its vintage, unlike my writing case. I have clearly spent more time writing than praying in the intervening 50 years. Who knew?
Another breach of protocol, although this breach will not have been made on that Saturday, but some days earlier, was a recording of the passages I was to read and sing for my Bar Mitzvah.
The Bar Mitzvah is, in a religious sense, a coming of age ceremony, around the age of 13, when the initiate reads the weekly passage from the Torah (in my case a dollop of Deuteronomy) and that week’s chunk of additional Old Testament material (in my case an iota of Isaiah), along with some ceremonial prayers. All sung in Hebrew using some of the oldest musical notation known to man.
Having done that, the initiate is a fully fledged “man”, in the sense that their presence in the synagogue now counts towards the minyan – i.e. the quorum of ten adult males required for certain prayers.
The idea of a minyan is not to be confused with cute but despicable creatures, minions, who appear in several of my favourite movies. (I never did grow out of loving animated films).
Anyway, with the trigger warning that this sound file is less than special aesthetically, here is the recording of me singing my passages and prayers:
Ten minutes of unimaginable sound.
Had you asked me ten minutes ago what those passages were and what they were about, I’d have shrugged, other than the “dollop of Deuteronomy & iota of Isaiah” line.
But thanks to Mr Google (other AI-enabled searches are available), I can be far more specific:
On August 9, 1975, which was a Saturday (Shabbat), the weekly Torah portion read was Parashat Shoftim.
This Torah portion is the 48th in the annual Jewish cycle of Torah reading and is found in the book of Deuteronomy, specifically Deuteronomy 16:18–21:9.
The main themes of Parashat Shoftim include:
Guidelines for leadership and the appointment of judges, officers, priests, and a king.
Laws concerning the integrity of the judicial system.
Rules regarding prophets, cities of refuge for accidental killers, and false witnesses.
Specific laws for warfare and the procedure for an unsolved murder case.
Reading about that, fifty years later, I sense that “my” portion could come in handy given the conduct of many notable and notorious world leaders, and their hench-folk, in the modern era.
My Isaiah passage covers the late, prophetic stage of the “twixt the temples” exile:
Isaiah 51:12-52:12 is a powerful prophetic passage where God comforts His fearful people, reminding them He is their sole protector, not mere mortals (grass) or oppressors; He calls Jerusalem (Zion) to “Awake, awake!” to cast off shame and put on strength, promising redemption from exile (“sold for nothing”) and the beautiful arrival of good news of peace and salvation from the Lord, telling them to leave Babylon and be purified.
Peace, salvation and purification sound like good ideas, as long as they apply even-handedly to all concerned.
Only mum could have taken photos that were THAT skew-iffy, so my guess is that dad couldn’t be bothered when we got home but mum wanted some more pics from the day.
Worse yet, on the “dad couldn’t be bothered” front, is that the negatives from the events of both days have all been lost. Given that dad was in the photographic business, that is bizarre. The negatives from several holidays around that time are also lost. My guess is that he lost a whole batch together – probably those he had taken to the shop in order to obtain extra prints for sending around to friends and family.
It seems that I got out a bit more in the days running up to the day of my Bar Mitzvah. Just as well, as it was a heatwave week apparently. It seems that the Levinson family had been away for a couple of weeks and had now returned.
Sunday, 3 August 1975 – Uneventful. More presents, dined at Chippy. Grandma Anne and Andrew [Levinson] came home today.
Monday, 4 August 1975 – played with Andy [Levinson]. Dentist – no trouble. TV Star Trek, My Honourable Mrs, Hiroshima.
Tuesday, 5 August 1975 – Andy morning, afternoon uneventful. Test draw. TV Test and Inspector Clouseau.
Wednesday, 6 August 1975 – went to Brixton and Grandma Jenny. TV The Shadow, The Rough and the Smooth. Four pressies.
I have no recollection of the sitcom The Rough and the Smooth. That might be a telling fact about it.
Thursday, 7 August 1975 – went to Box Hill, private swimming pool etc. Ida trouble. TV All in the Family.
I have a very vague memory of being taken out by Uncle Manny & Auntie Ida that day. I think the “trouble” resulted because they didn’t drop me back to our house but expected me to walk home from their place, about 15-20 minutes walk, which resulted in my mum having a bit of a hissy about that.
The irony of seeing a programme “All in the Family” after that is not wasted on me. I don’t think that sitcom found much favour in our household either.
Friday, 8 August 1975 – common in morning. Flowers to shule in afternoon / shule evening. Still a heatwave.
This period of the summer of 1975 is the first documented example of my unquestionably masterful deployment of creative avoidance…that thing otherwise known as procrastination.
My Bar Mitzvah (the Jewish coming of age ritual) was coming up on 9 August. I was all-but grounded by my mum – I should imagine in part to focus on my preparation and in part for fear of misfortune befalling me ahead of the big day.
This is how I occupied myself:
I know you need a transcript with explanations, dear, reader, just give me a moment…
Sunday, 20 July 1975 – [Hebrew classes] prize day. Got best pupil cup! I am the greatest. Went to Makro. Two hour wait.
It was quite a surprise to win a star pupil prize at Brixton cheder. More than a year earlier, I had confessed to the Rabbi that I didn’t believe in God and wondered whether, in those circumstances, it was appropriate for me to progress with my Bar Mitzvah. Rabbi Ginsbury “explained” that it was. That story is told in this linked piece – here and below:
Monday 21 July 1975 – uneventful. Did some recording etc. TV Star Trek, My Honourable Mrs.
Tuesday 22 July 1975 – more recording. Uneventful.
Wednesday 23 July 1975 – Alan [Cooke] came. Lovely day. TV BA and LC [Bud Abbot & Lou Costello] in The Noose Hangs High
Well done, Cookie. You were clearly deemed to be safe enough company, at least if you came over to our place, for me to have some respite from my Bar Mitzvah preparations…not that I see any sign of preparations in the diary.
The phrase “lovely day” tells me that this must have been a real highlight for me during that period. I suspect that we spent some of the time playing that makeshift game of ours, where we set up Hot Wheels tracks and flat pack cowboy town houses, using the hot wheels cars to demolish the houses. We brought new meaning to the term “creative destruction”. Such a shame we couldn’t video our activities on smart phones in those days – those Hot Wheels demolition runs must have looked so cool…
…which is more than can be said, most likely, for the Abbot and Costello film. That pairing never did, for me, what Laurel & Hardy and/or The Marx Brothers could do.
Thursday, 24 July 1975 – went to Brixton. Had haircut. Saw Grandma Jenny.
Friday 25 July 1975 – uneventful day. More recording. TV Mahler’s 8th and Ten from the Twenties.
That broadcast of Mahler’s 8th, which was the first night of the Proms that year, was a memorably big deal in our household. It was a simultaneous broadcast on TV and stereo radio, which dad was very keen to experience to the full. I do recall my mother’s verdict on Mahler – I paraphrase:
not for me – too much going on. Mahler is music for culture vultures.
You can judge for yourselves, as the recording of that very concert is available on YouTube:
Saturday 26 July 1975 – shule in morning. Shopping afternoon. TV Crown Court.
Sunday, 27 July 1975 – went to Makro. Got typewriter and paper. TV Italians, Robin Hood.
Monday 28 July 1975 – cleared out room. TV Star Trek, My Honourable Mrs, The Happy Catastrophe.
Tuesday 29 July 1975 – went shopping in morning, got more WSG and ASS [William S Gilbert & Arthur S Sullivan] records. TV Time Detective, Al Jolsen.
Wednesday, 30 July 1975 – had haircut, more WSG and ASS. Two presents, all okay.
I had almost forgotten about my obsession with Gilbert & Sullivan that summer. I am sure that it was partly distraction activity from what must have felt like a trial by July, i.e. the impending “trial by ordeal” of my Bar Mitzvah, but also because I had enjoyed school productions such as Trial By Jury and knew that my parents were warm to the material too.
I wasn’t buying the records – heaven forbid – I was borrowing them from the library and scraping them onto tape. I was also reading about the Gilbert & Sullivan genre and memorising some of the patter songs. The evolution of my taping habit can be seen on the following sheet. The labours of that fortnight being tapes 8 to 14:
Thursday, 31 July 1975 watched cricket – England collapse and come back. WSG & ASS. Routine.
Did I mean that England’s batting collapse was routine? Or that England’s batting collapsing and then coming back was routine? Or that me doing more taping and memorising of Gilbert & Sullivan material was now routine?
Actually there was nothing routine about that second Ashes Test, which was at Lord’s.
I wouldn’t have realised it at the time, but the unusually long time it took for debutant David Steele to appear at the crease when the first wicket fell, was due to his getting lost in the pavilion, on his way from the home dressing room to the Long Room, by descending further than he should have done into the basement.
That is one of my favourite Lord’s stories – a location/anecdote that I point out as a matter of course to any guest that I am showing around the Lord’s pavilion. Which is something I do with some regularity these days. Routine in fact.
Friday, 1 August 1975 – watched cricket – England OK. WSG & ASS of course.
Saturday 2 August 1975 – went to shule. Found dad’s watch. Heatwave.
Dad was good at mislaying watches. The 1975 “reported incident” will have been his beloved Omega watch. But I remember he had a “scientific” watch that he hid before going on holiday in the mid 1970s (perhaps 1975 or 1976) and never found again. Janie and I discovered it in his “muck room” (workshop) when clearing the house in 2012!
I have asked Gemini what the weather was like in London on 2 August 1975. It replied:
On 2 August 1975, London was at the beginning of a significant heatwave, with temperatures widely reaching around 32°C (89.6°F) by that date or shortly after.
Things were certainly hotting-up a week before my Bar Mitzvah.
But where in my diary is any mention of me preparing, other than going to shule on the Saturday mornings leading up to the big day? Presumably, in my 12-and-a bit year-old, secular mind, the words and music of WS Gilbert and Arthur S Sullivan were ample preparation for Hebrew recitative from the testaments.
“A wandering minstrel, I, a thing of shreds and patches…”
Yes, I know, you can’t read it. I’ll transcribe it below. Not a lot went on. My main purpose for the next few weeks was to be ready for my Bar Mitzvah, which was a big thing. Between times, it seems I did a lot of taping and watching television and not much going outside and enjoying the summer.
Sunday, 13 July 1975 – classes good. Played boule with dad. TV West Side Story.
Monday 14 July 1975 went to West End. Had bar mitzvah test. Passed with flying colours. TV Star Trek, My Honourable Mrs.
Tuesday, 15 July 1975 – classes good. Last lesson with Morris. TV The Gold Diggers of 1935.
Wednesday, 16 July 1975 played with Andy. Made more recordings. Got a case. Deciding holiday.
Thursday, 17 July 1975 – made more recordings, TV Apollo – Soyuz link up – landmark, Three Comedies of Marriage.
Friday, 18 July 1975 – another uneventful day. Went to Uncle Cyril [next door], more tapes etc, TV Main Chance.
Saturday 19 July 1975 – went to shule in morning. Uneventful afternoon. TV The Jokers, Crown Court.
The tapes I was making, colluding with “Uncle” Cyril Barnett next door, were a mixture of gramophone records and reel-to-reel tapes of his.
those items I already had (I had been given a box set of Tchaikovsky Ballet Suites for my Bar Mitzvah)
Mozart’s Ave Verum Corpus, which my mum would have deemed inappropriate – not least for a kid who was about to have his Bar Mitzvah. Mum’s attempts to dissuade me from Christian sacred music failed dismally, as my interest in early music (although not religion per se) blossomed later, but that’s another set of stories.
The other material mostly comprised albums from musicals of the 1960s. I’ll trawl my lists for those and playlist them separately. One of them, I recall, was Fiddler on the Roof sung in Yiddish, which pleased Grandma Anne no end. It does sound appropriate (albeit a bit weird to the untrained ear) given the context of the musical. It occurs to me, of course, that you can find pretty much anything on YouTube music, and of course that obscure thing was no exception. Here’s a link if you are curious – I’ll listen to it some other time, for old time’s sake – although I think this recording is a more recent album.
So much happened in that week, which was the last of my second year at Alleyn’s. Here’s the diary page.
Naturally, readers are already writing in to complain that they cannot read my scribble, even though I haven’t even finished writing up this piece yet. Here’s a transcript:
Sunday, 6 July 1975 – Went to classes. Grandma Anne gave me £100. Great.
Monday, 7 July 1975 – more relaxing. Fives good. TV Sportstown, Star Trek, Waltons, Horizon.
Tuesday, 8 July 1975 – classes good. No bar mitzvah class. Uneventful.
Wednesday, 9 July 1975 – we won cricket. I got a hat-trick and eight runs. TV The Ascent of Man.
Thursday, 10 July 1975 – classes good. Picking up mix-up. TV Jacques Cousteau, Comedy of Marriage.
Friday, 11 July 1975 – broke up from school hurrah. TV Walt Disney, Celebrity Knockout. England flop in first test.
Saturday 12 July 1975 – shule in the morning, Andrew in the afternoon. Aussies dish out more punishment. Susan’s wedding.
£100 was a princely sum in those days. This was my bar mitzvah present. Of course I was allowed nowhere near it – straight into a savings account where it probably ended up making a small but significant contribution to the first deposit I made on a flat nearly a quarter-of-a-century later.
I have also previously written up my hat trick taking heroics in the cricket at Alleyn’s school. A relatively common topic of my conversation, even 50 years later, when talking about my own cricket playing “career”…because there’s not much else of note to talk about.
The phrase, “broke up from school hurrah” sounds like something out of a Billy Bunter book and doesn’t read like me – but it does indicate my enthusiasm for that Alleyn’s school year to have ended – an annus mirabilis (by my standards) in sport but annus horribilis academically.
I had been eagerly anticipating the opportunity to follow England in the 1975 Ashes. I had not fully engaged with cricket aged 9/10 when Australia had previously visited, in 1972. By 1975, I was a proper cricket-mad youngster.
I suspect that I spent more time than was good for me watching that cricketing road crash unfold in slow motion. 50 years later, I realise that my habits, in that regard, have not changed much.
I didn’t much follow popular music back then, but I do recall that Van McCoy’s The Hustle was riding high in the charts that summer and was my earworm around the time we broke up from school.
Can you listen to and watch the following vid without trying some of the moves and getting the whole tune stuck in your head as an earworm? Of course you can’t.
On 23 September 2016, I was honoured to witness live Toby Roland-Jones taking a hat-trick for Middlesex, sealing the County Championship for my beloved county – naturally I Ogblogged about it – here…
…but that wasn’t the first time I had witnessed a hat-trick live. Indeed, it wasn’t the first time that month, September 2016, that I had witnessed a hat-trick live – I saw Middlesex on the wrong side of one at Trent Bridge, Nottinghamshire – Ogblogged about here – just 17 days before the day of glory…
…but that Trent Bridge one wasn’t the first hat-trick I had witnessed live, although it was the first professional one.
The first hat-trick I witnessed live (and the last one for more than 40 years) was, remarkably, my own.
I don’t have many glorious feats of cricket to report. Let’s be honest about it; I’m not much good at playing cricket. I love it, but I’ve never been much use at it. But on 9 July 1975, the last match of 2AK’s trophy-winning season, I reported with little ceremony in my diary the following:
The irony of having watched The Ascent Of Man after such an auspicious sporting achievement is not wasted on me.
I remember the hat-trick remarkably well. I am pretty sure we were playing up on Alleyn’s top fields – not the very top one but the large, “lower top field”. That was mostly used as the second eleven pitch, but for the juniors I recall that field was divided in two, with a couple of strategically located mini-squares, so all four classes could play at the same time.
I can’t remember the name of the master who was umpiring. I do remember that my first wicket was a clean bowled and the second was a caught and bowled. The master and I then had the following conversation:
“Do you realise that you are on a hat-trick, Mr Harris?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“What are you proposing to do about it?”
“I’m going to try and bowl the same ball again, Sir.”
Which I did.
The “same ball” being pretty much my only ball. A moon ball, ludicrously slow, with an attempt at spin on it; probably a bit of top spin but nothing else in its favour other than being straight.
You see, I was very keen, so I used to practice bowling in the back drive against the garage door for ages. I didn’t get much better at bowling, but I was usually at least able to bowl the ball straight in those days.
Clean bowled.
In my memory (undoubtedly a falsy) the master was rolling on the floor laughing when I took the third wicket in three balls. I’m sure he really did laugh, anyway.
9 July 1975, a truly memorable date in (my personal) cricket history. The ill-fated 1975 Ashes series started the very next day; I don’t think this fact is even faintly relevant to my story, but I wanted to write it nonetheless. I can write what I like on Ogblog.
A lot of very good bowlers have played an awful lot of cricket without ever taking a hat-trick. I know that I’m not and wasn’t ever a good bowler. My hat-trick was at a very elementary level and only has significant meaning to me. But it is a memory I have carried with me all my days since and I shall continue to cherish that memory until I am gaga and/or dead.
I wonder who the hat-trick victim was? That much has slipped my mind completely. His too, almost certainly.
Michael Lempriere had arranged for our drama class to go and see Entertaining Mr Sloane by Joe Orton. It would have been the mid 1970s Royal Court revival production (probably the West End transfer thereof), with Beryl Reid as Kath, Malcolm McDowell as Sloane, James Ottaway as Kemp and Ronald Fraser as Eddie.
Anyway, when my mum got wind of it that we were going to see THAT play, she went into high horse mode, for reasons I cannot quite work out. I think she just felt that we were far too young for…whatever it was…not that she really knew anything about it, other than the fact that she probably mentioned it to a friend and that friend looked horrified at the thought. perhaps a sample of two priggish friends.
Mum was probably in a grumpy mood generally at that time – she was in and out of hospital for the first half of that year, culminating in a hip replacement in May. Anyway, she decided not merely to ground me from this one – I might have got away with just minor embarrassment for that. She got on to the school and got the outing cancelled. How un-hip was that?
Several of my drama pals were mightily unimpressed with this, as was I. We were all very disappointed as much as anything else. Michael Lempriere handled the matter with great dignity I’m sure, but that couldn’t prevent the ribbing. In particular, I recall Bob Kelly giving me a hard time; not least suggesting my mother’s physical as well as behavioural similarities with Mary Whitehouse. As my mother had chosen to go down the cruel spectacles line during the mid 1970s (illustrated with a 1977 picture below) this was a difficult charge to deny.
I’m not entirely sure when the theatre trip that never was should have happened. My diary is silent on the whole matter. I am guessing it was supposed to be an after exams jolly at the end of my second year, but it might just have been a start of the next academic year jolly for our drama group. If the latter, we didn’t miss out on Ottaway and McDowell, we missed out on Harry H. Corbett as Ed and Kenneth Cranham as Sloane.
