Great play/production btw. The play is about the Second Red Scare in the 1950s.
It brought back to my mind a memory of playing Call My Bluff in an English class. That simple panel game had teams of three trying to convince the other team of three that “bluff” definitions of unusual words were actually true…and that true definitions were in fact bluffs.
Call My Bluff was “appointment to view” stuff in the 1970s – certainly in our household. Mind you, there wasn’t exactly a lot of choice back then.
The class version of the game was to split into teams of three and try to convince the rest of the class to vote for bluffs rather than the true definitions.
My team was given the word MCCARTHYISM. I must have recently learnt a passage of Hebrew in Hebrew classes with the word “machar” (מָחָר) in it. I quoted the short passage and explained that the word “machar” means tomorrow. I then strung out this small truth into a flight of fancy that there is a sect of Judaism, known as MCCARTHYISM, that venerates the future.
I know what you are thinking. The word would surely be spelt MACHARTHEISM if it had that definition. But such subtleties were probably beyond almost all of us at that age. I must have made the idea seem convincing.
When the class voted on the three definitions proposed for the word MCCARTHYISM, the true definition came second and my bluff got the most votes.
For some reason, this moment of smartarsed glory must have resided at the back of my memory all these decades, only to be revived by seeing Here In America.
But I also recall that, even at the time, I learnt quite a lot from this tiny episode. I learnt that using a grain of truth to disguise a lie (or bluff) is a very effective method of concealment. I learnt that nobody likes a smartarse, because the episode, while momentarily pleasing the teacher, did not make me popular with my class. And I subsequently learnt that my possession of a moral compass and my lack of a poker face would make me a very bad candidate for a future in bluffing.
But did we play that game in 1S, with Ian Sandbrook, or in 2AK with Mike Lempriere? I don’t recall.
Still, McCarthyism is all about naming names and I have named names for both of those classes:
Denise Lytton’s excellent chocolate mousse might have looked a bit like this
My handwriting did not improve as I graduated from my 1974 diary to me 1975 one.
Sunday 29 December 1974 – cloudy, sunny intervals. Played at home in morning. Dined at Feld’s & tea at Grandma Anne’s. TV Annual Lectures For Children & Robinson Crusoe v good.
The historic, world record-breaking, events of Monday 30 December, with Paul Deacon, have already been recorded in a special piece on the topic – click here or below:
How I also had the time and energy to watch Call My Bluff & Churchill’s People on TV at the end of that record-breaking day I cannot quite fathom.
Tuesday 31 December 1974 -fair. Went to West End with Andrew [Levinson]. TV Engineer Through Looking Glass, Till Death Us Do Part v good indeed. SAW IN NEW YEAR.
That will have been the first time I was allowed to stay up to see in the new year. These days (50 years later), Janie and I see it as a badge of honour to try and get to bed and get to sleep before the worst of the noise kicks off.
Wednesday 1 January 1975 – cloudy. Uneventful morning. Dined at Schmidt’s. Grandma Anne at home in afternoon and evening. Helped mum win Kalooki.
Thursday 2 January 1975 – cloudy. Cleared out room. Went to barber. TV After That…This and Two Ronnies very good.
Friday 3 January 1975 – cloudy. Went to Brixton – v tiring. TV Crown Court, The Houndcats, Paper Moon, Ken Dodd & MASH v good.
Saturday 4 January 1975 – TV Dr Who, Bruce Forsyth, Match of the Day, v good. Went to Lytton’s. Played with Steven. Denise’s choc. moose was excellent.
I can hardly believe how much TV I watched back then. Match of the Day was not a feature in our house and I suspect I saw that because we were at The Lytton’s place. I think we were still Black and White TV at the start of 1975 – I think the colour TV “arrives” at some point in my 1975 diary, unless it arrived during my diary-writing-sabbatical in mid-1974. Point is, I remember quite a lot of the TV I describe here in black and white. I also remember colour seeming such a luxury.
Aficionados of my juvenile writing as a food critic might note my description of Denise Lytton’s chocolate moose as “excellent”. Praise indeed.
Mum, Me, Denise, Steve & Tony – guzzling peaches in Bulgaria, 1972
My very first diary entry, a year earlier, described Schmidt’s chocolate moose as “nice”.
Denise’s “excellent” sure beats Schmidt’s “nice”, and I remember Schmidt’s chocolate moose fondly. Big ups to Denise, albeit 50 years after the event, for that stunning chocolate moose. Never forgotten…or at least, now remembered in writing for posterity.
In the same notes space at the back of my 1975 Letts Schoolboys Diary, I recorded the names and nicknames of the boys in my second class, 2AK:
This material is even harder to decipher than the 1S equivalent – my use of bold tempo pens playing havoc with the thin paper of those diaries. So, I set the text out below – apologies for replicated spelling errors, inability to decipher errors and for some of the ghastly nicknames:
Allott
Athaide
Bateman – Batman
Bedford – Bedders
Bradshaw – Brad
Brassell
Dalloway – Dallers
Deacon – Doormouse
Dwelly – Bone
Feeley
Forrest
French – Frog
Geere – Gottle
Goodwin
Gurney – LEFT
Handy
Hanton – Brucy
Harris
Hollingshead – Beachhead?
Jennings – Jumbo, Juggernaut, Jet
Johnson
Kelly
Masson – Chimpy (thanks to David French for the correction).
Pullinger – Tug
Proctor – Superproc
Reeves
Rowswell – Sandy
Spence – Spike
Stevens
Wahla – Gob
I don’t think Gurney was nicknamed “Left”, I think that is a note to say that he left the school.
Now many of the above nicknames are weaker and thinner than a supermodel on a crash diet. I know some of them were genuinely used, but I find it hard to believe that all of them had common currency…
…and surely the rest of us must have had nicknames of some sort at one time or another. My work in early 1975 was only part done and then I got bored – typical kid.
Surely some people out there can help fill in the blanks or put matters right, even after all these years? Comments and suggestions, please. Those from other classes are welcome to add their names and nicknames to the pile.
But I had clearly forgotten that, 30 years previously, I was involved in another world record feat. The reference in the diary dated 30 December 1974 clearly reads:
Paul Deacon came for day – we broke world coin catching record.
Ok, so perhaps that record was not independently authenticated and certified. Perhaps the world coin catching record is not quite so prestigious as longest running live comedy show.
But a world record IS a world record and we broke it.
I have no recollection of the rules of coin catching and how the world record was established. The 1977 recording might contain some clues, but only to the extent that “rules” and “establishment” probably played a very small part indeed. I’ll guess that the coin was tossed in a conventional “start of a match” stylee and then caught (or not),
More importantly, this diary entry is the first mention of Paul Deacon in my diaries and I actually think that day might well have been the very first time that the two of us got together during the school holidays to lark about.
In which case it was genuinely a milestone or seminal event, even if not genuinely a world record.
Postscript One
Paul Deacon has chimed in with some essential additional details:
Haha. I seem to recall I was good at stacking coins on the back of my elbow then catching them with a flick of the arm downwards. Also spinning a coin one handed. What a sad lad
Postscript Two
A link to this posting kicked off quite a controversy on the Alleyn’s 1970s Alumni Facebook Group. A veritable Coincatchgate.
Colourful and barely legible, please allow me to try and transliterate and explain my diary entries.
Sunday, 22 December 1974 – Went down to Southend. Got nasty cold. TV Planet of the Apes and No Honestly v good
Grandpa Lew & Grandma Jenny with Jenny’s sisters Sybil and Alice, Southend, 1950s.Mum, Dad, Swains and Steels, Woodfield Avenue 1993
We would have been visiting Jack and Sybil in Southend back then, and or the Swain family. No pictures from the 1970s sadly, but Sybil can be seen in the 1950s picture and several Swains are there in the 1990s one. This 1974 visit would have preceded Garry Steel’s arrival on the family scene.
I don’t think I can blame Southend for the nasty cold – I think the cold must have already been there.
Monday, 23 December 1974 still got bad cold. In all day. TV Yogi Bear feature film, Dad’s Army, Mastermind 19-year-old lost and Horizon on trick photography or V good
The wonder of the web 50 years later enables me to discover that the Yogi Bear movie was named “Hey There, It’s Yogi Bear!” and the 19-year-old Mastermind wunderkind who nearly won was named Susan Reynolds – click here for the Mastermind story. My mum got very excited about that sort of thing back then. I got more excited about the Horizon film about trick photography, but I cannot find anything about that on the web. I seem to recall dad digging out some of his old books to show me more about that sort of thing; I still have those, somewhere in the attic!
Tuesday, 24 December 1974 still unwell. Cough. Home all day. TV Top Cat, Look Who’s Talking, Gulliver’s Travels, Christmas Likely Lads, and Peter Cook & Dudley Moore v good
I must have been googly-eyed after watching that much TV on one day. No wonder I didn’t feel well.
Wednesday, 25 December 1974 – Fair. Got presents. Traditional walk seventh year. TV Way Out West, Magnificent Men In Their Flying Machines and Futtock’s Corner [sic].
I think I meant “Futtock’s End” for that last entry. I remember dad finding that little film hilariously funny, as did I. I’m not sure it would work so well on me now that I am older…nor am I sure that I’ll take the time and trouble to find out.
Thursday, 26 December 1974 – Dined at Schmidt’s. TV A Man Called Flint, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Went to Barnetts’ for supper, v good, trifles specially.
I describe at length dining at Schmidt’s…and indeed the traditional walk to which I refer in my Christmas Day 1974 diary entry, in my very first entry in that diary – click here or below. The traditional seasonal walk with my dad must have started when I was six. I do remember it feeling like a very important custom/ritual throughout my childhood.
Barnetts’ in this instance would be the Cyril & Marion Barnett family next door. (Not Jonathan Barnett from school and his family in this instance.) Marion Barnett’s trifle was clearly not a trifling matter.
Friday 27 December 1974 – Sunny. [Fair crossed out] Andrew played and dined here. Doctor Who and Spiders v good.
I’m not sure who advised me to add a comment about the weather to my diary. This might have emerged from a conversation around me not knowing what to write about (hence my seven-month sabbatical during 1974). I didn’t manage to keep up the weather report consistently or for long. I scratched out that world from Boxing Day, so we’ll never ever know what the weather was like in London on that day…oh no, here we go, the internet can dredge up excruciating detail of this kind – click here. As for 27th December, why or when I changed my diary entry on the weather from “fair” to “sunny” is a weird one. This whole “write about the weather in your diary” business feels more like mum’s influence than dad’s.
“Andrew” will have been Andy Levinson, who will have schlepped all the way from No 42 to join us that day!
Saturday 28 December 1974 – Fair. Played alone. Went shopping. TV Generation Game v good and new Doctor Who v good
For those readers who have any televisual connection with that period, the reference to a new Doctor Who should spark the memory buds – here is a short video that showcases and contextualises the arrival of Tom Baker:
Although sparse and almost illegible, the notes in my diary from that week bring back a flood of memories.
Here is the page for that week in its glorious technicolour sparseness and illegibility:
I was going through a “coloured tempo pen” phase at that time. I think the Saturday entry was written in invisible ink, which I then remedied with the “antidote” stuff that makes invisible ink visible. That is not conventional diarist method, I now realise, but that idea must have made sense to me at the time…probably because I had bought invisible ink from the joke shop that week.
Let me start deciphering diary entries:
Sunday, 15 December 1974 – Hanukkah party at classes. Dined at Feld’s. [Visited] Jacksons to teach backgammon. TV Planet of the Apes v good
Monday, 16 December 1974 – Played at Andrew’s all day. TV Likely Lads, Waltons and Carry On Christmas very good indeed.
Aficionados of Motown music will be disappointed to learn that I did not visit nor teach backgammon to The Jackson Five.
Just to be clear, I did not teach any of these people backgammon. Not Jackie, not Tito, not Jermaine, not Marlon and not Michael.
The Jacksons, in this instance, were Doreen Benjamin’s parents. Doreen’s mum, Jessie Jackson…yes, I know…was a very close friend of Grandma Jenny and Doreen was a very close friend of mum’s.
For the avoidance of doubt, I neither visited nor taught backgammon to the Reverend Jesse Jackson either
Tuesday, 17 December 1974 – Andrew and I went to “Bossils”? and Hamleys. Classes v good. Mum and dad went to [Angela and John’s] wedding. Fooled all with joke shop hot sweets.
With Hanukkah well before Christmas that year, I suspect that I had already received some seasonal gift money, as had Andy Levinson no doubt, so we were both in a position to treat ourselves on a big day out during the school holidays.
We probably knew where to go (e.g. Hamleys) because of a tradition we were lucky enough to be conjoined in when we were a bit smaller. Mrs Garrett, grandmother of our friend from the street, Bernard Garrett (no, not the Bernard Garrett depicted in the film The Banker), took us up to Hamleys with Bernard a couple of times in the early 1970s as a Christmas treat.
I’m not sure where the joke shop was – I recall visiting Davenports near The British Museum with Andy, but that must have been a different trip I think. I think the source of our joke shop sweets, stinkeroos and invisible ink was a joke shop at the Carnaby end of Soho.
“Fooled all with joke shop sweets” makes me think of the comics we used to read when we were little. I was allowed one a week; my comic of choice was Whizzer and Chips.
I’m sure the conceit that two comics had merged into one made me think I was getting as BOGOF by choosing Whizzer and Chips. Someone else in the street (possibly Andy Levinson) or maybe at Primary School (Alan Cooke?) was more the Beano type, so I would sometimes swap and get to see more than one comic in a week.
I think I had outgrown such comics by the age of 12, but I had clearly not completely outgrown the language I learnt from them. Yaroo!
Wednesday, 18 December 1974 – Dentist in the morning first thing. Essential filling. Andrew in afternoon. “Enhanced”? stinkeroo from the joke shop worked. Went to Fairfield Hall with Paul Deacon – very nice time there.
Mum and dad’s evening at Angela and John’s wedding feast had not been a total success, as I recall. Dad had rather overindulged and mum felt he had embarrassed her. This combination of mum berating and dad hungover was quite clear to me that next morning. Meanwhile I was suffering from my own collywobbles ahead of that trip to the dentist for an “essential filling”.
I have had very few fillings in my lifetime – this might have been my first one or possibly the second.
Our dentist was Harry Wachtel, a gentleman of n Austrian origin, who had been a refugee from the Nazis. He spoke with a thick Germanic accent and did not suffer fools gladly.
I didn’t think that Mr Wachtel had CCTV cameras in his surgery. Yet, a couple of years later, John Schlesinger recreated, in Marathon Man, the scene of that filling, with such exceptional accuracy…I’m now thinking that Harry Wachtel must have filmed that filling event and sent the rushes to John Schlesinger. There is no other possible explanation for the following movie scene:
I cannot remember what Paul Deacon and I went to see at The Fairfield Hall on 18 December 1974. Do you remember, Paul? In any case, many thanks to you, Paul, (or should I say, thanks to your folks) for treating me along with you. My diary suggests that we had a great time.
Thursday, 19 December 1974 – morning Andrews. Lunch at Andrews. Afternoon at home with Andrew -> Classes – TV Mastermind and Xmas Oneupmanship v good.
Friday, 20 December 1974 – Alan [Cooke] here all day – very nice indeed. TV Goodies and the Beanstalk very good. G Anne’s v good got lots of presents.
Saturday, 21 December 1974 – Made a start on model Auntie Pam gave me. TV “something clover v good”?
I’m going to guess that Cookie and I spent a fair part of that day playing the bespoke game we invented with my Hot Wheels car track and a rather motley collection of Timpo Wild West buildings, which we would half-heartedly construct at the end of the Hot Wheels run and then demolish with the Hot Wheels cars.
Maybe you had to be there…or maybe you had to be 10-12 to appreciate this activity, but Alan and I would spend hours at this activity. Hey, Alan – look at those e-bay links – it wouldn’t cost THAT much to recreate the scene. I’m sure Janie would understand and I’m sure we could make space here for yet more clutter.
Sadly, my terrible handwriting, together with the effluxion of time makes the TV element of my log illegible. Happily, BBC Genome comes to the rescue, enabling me to confirm that I rated Doctor In Clover “v good”.
Angela & John Kessler, this photo just nine months after their wedding
The diary page for this week is as colourful as it is (almost) unintelligible:
It is my profound belief that, although artificial intelligence can read the charred remains of 2000-year-old Herculaneum scrolls, the technology would still struggle to make sense of my diabolical writing and spelling from 1974
Allow me to try to interpret the above scrawl for you:
Sunday, 8 December 1974 – First light in play [Hanukah play at chedar, presumably]. Dined at Schmidt’s. The Great War, Sykes, David Copperfield and A Change Of Ground.
Monday, 9 December 1974 – Last full day of term. Uneventful. TV Waltons, Call My Bluff, and Horizon v good indeed.
Tuesday 10 December 1974 – Christmas dinner v good. Classes rehearsal. Mission Impossible and Rhoda v good.
Wednesday, 11 December 1974 – Rather uneventful. Left school 2 o’clock, Carol rehearsal. Disappearing World – Ongka’s Big Moka Rather amusing?????
I don’t much review television programmes (probably just as well given the amount of TV I was watching back then), but a few years ago I wrote up my memories of Ongka’s Big Moka, because it had such a profound effect on me, sparking my interest in South-East Asia/Oceania.
Thursday, 12 December 1974 – Left school 2:20 carol service. Classes good. TV Mastermind good.
Friday, 13 December 1974 – Broke up today. Not a very good report…
…hardly surprising given the amount of TV I was watching in the evenings when I should have been doing my homework. Honestly…
TV Dad’s Army, Ken Dodd and MASH v good.
Saturday, 14 December 1974 – Went to ooof roof [John & Angela’s aufruf]. Meal was excellent. TV Run Wild Run Free film, Stanley Baxter, and Candid Camera very good indeed
I didn’t at the time spot the juxtaposition of watching the Melanesian tribal ceremony, Ongka’s Big Moka, and, a few days later, attending the Jewish tribal ceremony that was Angela and John’s aufruf. For those who don’t like to click, the aufruf is a tradition of calling up the groom in synagogue on the Saturday before the wedding.
I am glad that I gave that aufruf meal an “excellent” review 50 years ago, as that should please Angela and John ahead of their impending golden wedding anniversary. I do remember enjoying the aufruf event very much, conversing with the grown ups and feeling a little more grown up myself for the experience. I distinctly remember finding the film Run Wild Run Free rather childish and mawkish, perhaps in comparison.
What might seem a lot less grown up…and might please Angela and John a bit less, is my abiding memory that I insisted, in the build up to the day, on pronouncing the word “aufruf”…
woof-woof
…to the extent that I recall mum telling me, wagging finger style, that I was not to make that silly joke at the event.
My diary entry for 11 December 1974 includes the phrase:
Disappearing World. Ongka’s Big Moka. Rather amusing.
In October 2016, while pondering the idea of Ogblog but before I had started the project in earnest, I uncovered this diary entry and vaguely remembered the television programme to which it referred.
I Googled the programme name and read the Wikipedia entry, which, at that time, reported that the programme was first broadcast in 1976 – probably when it received its first US airing. A bit more Googling enabled me to confirm 11 December 1974 as the first airing date so I (in the form of Ged Ladd who is an occasional but keen Wikipedia editor) corrected the Wikipedia entry.
Anyway, since my October 2016 detective work, someone has, helpfully, uploaded the Ongka’s Big Moka film to YouTube:
It might have been this television documentary that sparked my lifelong interest in the tribes and cultures of Oceania.
I do also remember being inspired by the exhibits from the Pacific South Seas in the Horniman Museum, on an Alleyn’s School visit, probably around that time, but I do not recall which of those inspiring introductions, television or museum, came first.
Perhaps I’ll find a reference to the Alleyn’s visit somewhere in my diaries, but it might be pre-diaries or during one of my irritating diary-writing-intervals in those early years.
One of my old school pals might just help me to date that school visit, although I suspect there were plenty of such visits on field days “back then”, as the Horniman was such an easy place to visit from the school. So unless I did something memorable on that trip…
…I dread to think what memorable thing I might done, but my lifelong interest in that part of the world does include a fascination with koteka.
Still, I suspect that the date of my visit to the Horniman is either in my diaries or lost in the mists of time.
Images scraped with loving care from Alleyn’s Scriblerus
I went with my parents on the Saturday evening to see the last night of that year’s Bear Pit production; a double-header no less – The Lesson & The Real Inspector Hound.
Let us gloss over the monumental water polo victory in the morning…11-7 that reads, just in case you are finding my handwriting a little hard to read.
Let us not linger over the fact that the 12-year-old me thought it important to say that I thought the Generation Game was good…
…whereas 12-year-old me failed completely to mention that Barry White – “The Walrus Of Love” – “The Pachyderm Of Passion” – was riding high at the top of the charts at that time with this classic sound:
No. Let us please focus on Bear Pit production for December 1974. My job back then as a juvenile critic was to be clear, incisive and decisive in my opinions. I think I achieved that:
Bear Pit. The Lesson – boring. Inspector Hound – good.
The late, great, Trevor Tindale spent at lest 100 times as many words saying…if I have understood the thrust of his argument correctly…more or less exactly the same thing in Scriblerus some months later.
…and went to Sicily with my parents, turning 12 while I was there… [Ogblog yet to be writ on this topic. Alleyn’s pals didn’t want to know all about it in autumn 1974, I doubt if anyone is desperate to know about it in autumn 2024]. The photos can be viewed through this link or below.
Then I went back to school, joining 2AK. By the end of November, I was ready to be a diarist again – indeed I kept a diary pretty much unbroken for the next 14 years, after which I switched to event logs to accompany my appointment diaries.
I think I might have taken some guidance from my parents or friends on what to write about, in the immediate aftermath of my return to diary writing. I talk a lot about what I saw on TV and for a while prefaced each daily report with a one word summary of the weather. The latter habit soon passed. The watching much TV habit passed once I finished school, so my knowledge of soap operas and comedy shows is extremely patchy for the 1980s and almost non-existent by the 1990s, when for many years I had no TV at all!
My handwriting was truly terrible back in my school days, made worse by the use of coloured Tempo felt tip pens (or occasionally pencil or goodness-knows-what-sort-of-writing-implement) for the diary.
I am reliably informed by educationalist friends that my bad handwriting and terrible spelling would no longer justify a clip around the ear and recriminations about my laziness by school-teachers. Apparently it is a condition known as dysgraphia, which would open up all manner of possibilities for my special needs, including the provision of IT equipment in class and at home to assist me, plus, presumably, pity rather than opprobrium.
Anyway, let me try to transliterate the first few days of my return to being a diarist:
Saturday, 30 November 1974 – Performed whodunnit play. Afternoon uneventful. Dick Emery and Upstairs Downstairs good.
Sunday, 1 December 1974 – Classes started a Hanukah play. Afternoon Grandma Anne’s. Planet of the Apes on TV v good.
Monday 2 December 1974 – Inter-form soccer v good. Extra + Rothbart. TV Likely Lads, Waltons and Call My Bluff v good.
Tuesday, 3 December 1974 – French, maths and Latin tests. Classes v good. TV Paper Moon and Mighty Continent.
I cannot remember anything about the whodunnit play, but I think Michael Lempriere was our English teacher that year (other 2AK folk might confirm or deny) – if so, then drama-oriented English class activities were very much his thing.
Weirdly, although I report that the inter-form soccer on the Monday was “v good”, the rear of the diary also records, dutifully, that our opponents were 2AS and that we lost 2-6. Was I really that good a loser back then?
I have no idea what “Extra + Rothbart” means, other than a sneaking suspicion that Bernard Rothbart must have refereed that game and presumably gave us some extra practice and/or coaching after the match, that pleased me. I remember Mr Rothbart a chess and hockey master, not soccer. And of course I will never forget about his sad demise just five year’s later:
Thursday, 5 December 1974 – 40 out of 50 for Latin test – good. No other positions. Learnt Hanukkah baruchas [prayers] with Mr Morris. Mastermind and Monty Python v good.
Friday, 6 December 1974 – Rather uneventful. PE good. Ken Dodd quite good.
The PE was more likely to have been with Mr Sherlock or Mr Berry than with my form master, Tony King. But they were all of the sporty teachers, for sure.
