Keele – Page 15 – Ian Louis Harris

“Went To Middle Of M62 For JSoc Do”, From Keele, 12 November 1980

Why?

Why did several of us go to the middle of the M62 for a JSoc do on a Wednesday evening?

Because we could, presumably. Of the few Jewish students we had at Keele, two or three had cars, making us more mobile than most societies. But “because we could” doesn’t really help much, as I write forty years later.

Nor does my late 1980 diary help much. It was certainly suffering from the dual problems of belated and inebriated writing up by the time we got to mid November 1980.

There is a little bit of extra help, though, as the black ink scrawl goes on to say:

JSoc Do Exit 22 Ram’s Head Pub enjoyed

OK, The Rams Head is indeed a well-known inn, very close to Junction 22 of the M62 at Denshaw, near Oldham, described in glowing terms here. (or, if anything ever goes awry with Visit Oldham, try this scrape here).

I’m sure The Ram’s Head did and indeed does (once it is allowed to open again post-2020-pandemic) offer fine fare and an excellent range of ales at an historic location in a stunning part of the country…

Picture borrowed from & linked to Visit Oldham.

…but 70-odd miles from Keele to find that? Surely there was something similar, closer?

My guess is that the purpose of the expedition was to meet up with some J-Soc folk from other universities; those in Manchester and/or Leeds. Those places had plentiful J’s, whereas Keele, to be frank, had a veritable J shortage. There weren’t very many of us and those Js who were at Keele tended to be…as I soon became…fairly reluctant J’s.

In my case, at that time, I was still heavily involved with BBYO, soon to be finishing my National Executive tenure but reluctant to give it up at a time of BBYO crisis. My 9 November diary entry probably doesn’t need translating and says it all.

Anyway, if we are to get chapter and verse on what that Ram’s Head Denshaw evening was about, I need help from my old friends.

The bowels of my mind have dredged up some names. Nigel Lloyd, who I think was the leader of the J-Soc pack at that time. Lloyd Green, who was an old friend of mine from the haim (Streatham).

Both of those fellas were surprisingly easy to trace in 2020, forty years on, by Googling their names together with the word Keele. Nigel Lloyd claims to be a lawyer with a sense of humour (we’ll soon find out), while Lloyd Green appears to be the sort of person one might go to if one wanted to find someone forty years on and all you knew about them was their name and alma mater.

Anyway, let’s see if either of those two can (and/or wish to) provide some additional detail to this story…or possibly the names of some other people to “tap up” about it.

The only other names that come to my mind about this are Hilary Kingsley, who I think was there but who does not pop up on a simple search, plus Simon Jacobs who I’m pretty sure wasn’t there that evening but I shall ask him.

The only other thing I remember about the evening, weirdly, is the back gate route we used to return to Keele that evening. In those days, as I recall it, if you were travelling south on the M6 and came off at Keele services, there was a “back gate” that was sometimes left open and which allowed drivers to cut along a track to the Keele University road, shaving several miles and a good few minutes off the journey. Why that small detail sticks in my mind, I have absolutely no idea.

Did Lloyd’s car look a bit like this? I recall at least one hair-raising journey with him from Streatham to Keele, I think in early 1981. That diary is in better nick than the late 1980 one, so more should be revealed on that story when I get there!

Postscript

Nigel Lloyd claims to recall little or nothing about the evening, but Lloyd Green provided this helpful recollection:

I remember travelling there as part of our attempt to integrate into the Jewish North scene ; my clearest recollection was that my old girlfriend at the time was there with her new boyfriend, who I met for the first time. We have remained close friends to this day…it helped he was a Chelsea supporter!!

By way of reciprocation to Lloyd, I discovered a piece of his juvenilia in the January 1981 issue of Concourse. For some reason, Lloyd chose to write a scathing review of a re-released album by The Average White Band:

I’d have given that review the headline, “Well Below Average White Band”, but what do I know?

I bet they weren’t still smiling & laughing after they read Lloyd’s review

“No Law, Molly Badcock’s Instead” & Responding To Concourse’s Shout Out, 6 November 1980

Frankly, writing up my early days at Keele University forty years on, I was baffled when I read, in my diary for that day:

No law, Molly Badcock’s instead.

To be honest, my diary is not especially helpful for that November/early December period of my life. It’s pretty clear from the scrawl and my own graffiti, that I was writing up several weeks later, in some manner of inebriated state.

It crossed my mind that “Molly Badcock’s instead” sounds like a euphemism, somewhat along the lines of “Ugandan discussions” in Private Eye.

But in truth I couldn’t remember who Molly Badcock was, so I tried Googling her. I am sorry to report that, at least initially, this only made matters worse, as Google did that, “surely you mean Lolly Badcock” thing, allowing me to discover that Lolly Badcock is a porn actress; Molly’s less appetising twin, perhaps.

Clicking (or rather, mostly not clicking) very carefully indeed by this stage, I tried Molly Badcock Keele as a search term and found Molly Badcock’s diaries on the Merchant Taylors’ Alumni Network site – Item 30. There I learnt that Molly was a cultured girl, who became a biologist, teaching ecological science at Keele.

Ah, yes. Now I remember.

Although Molly Badcock didn’t teach me at Keele, I was allocated to her for “pastoral care”, I believe as something known as a “resident tutor”. She lived in an academic’s house or apartment in Lindsay Hall, near to my humble fresher diggings in F block (long gone; possibly her place has also gone).

I think Molly had set up a series of “pop around for tea and a chat” slots for her fresher charges. I believe I met (amongst others) a lovely lass named Mary Keevil that day; another of the people who became a chatting & nodding acquaintance for many years. I certainly didn’t hike the Appalachian trail or discuss Uganda with Mary. I do remember running into her in London mid to late 1980s by which time she was working for SportsAid. I also have a funny feeling I first met Rob Whitehead there that day; we subsequently became work colleagues at BDO Consulting.

My visit to Molly Badcock’s that day might have been my only resident tutor encounter that year, although I have a vague memory of returning at the end of my first year for another informal session at Molly Badcock’s.

Fascinating to learn that Molly, like me, kept diaries as a school kid. But look how neat and tidy Molly’s were compared with mine. She was 12 in 1934 (roughly the same age as I started) and 15 in 1937.

Photos above borrowed from and linked to that Merchant Taylors’ Alumni site – item 30. I do wonder what “massage” might have been; the MT archivist’s theory is unconvincing.

Postscript To My Molly Badcock story: Karen Walsh reports on the KUSU Facebook Group that:

I was a biology student so had molly as a lecturer – and escort for a field trip to aberystwyth where she patrolled the corridors to ensure there was no “mixing” 😂😂”
Enough said.

Concourse Needed Me

Although it is not mentioned in my diary, I recall that I (along with Simon Jacobs) responded to the above shout out in the October 1980 issue of Concourse, the students’ union newspaper.

There I met, for the first time, John White. I recall that John was sitting on a bar table looking rather sinister with a football scarf around his neck (Tottenham Hotspurs for some reason; he has been relentlessly Leyton Orient for decades) and Doc Martin boots.

I now realise that John was somewhat shy or at least introverted back in those very early Keele days. The problem was, his look fitted the exact stereotype I had been warned about; racist (or at least very right wing) students who seek to disrupt student life, often by getting involved in student politics and student journalism. I so clearly remember thinking, “be careful of him”.

I now know, of course, that John is a gentle fellow; we worked tremendously well together in student politics and have been firm friends ever since. Actually it didn’t take long for my “John stereotype” to collapse in a heap, as John had been quick off the mark to sign up for the Labour Club and for Concourse – he was already credited although not bylined in the October edition that contained the shout-out:

In fact none of us new arrivals got bylines until the January 1981 edition, apart from David Perrins, who coincidentally was Simon Jacobs’s next door neighbour in Barnes, who was so quick off the mark he had become the “Arts Correspondent” on arrival, presumably by dint of dressing in a dandified fashion and talking in an Oscar-Wilde-stylee…

David Perrins – the first of our batch to get a big column (as it were) – *October 1980*

…or perhaps because no-one else put their hand up to review the drama.

Anyway, I must have made a huge impression when we were asked if we had any previous experience of journalism by admitting that I had edited the national magazine for BBYO – an organ with a circulation in the hundreds or low thousands, much the scale of Concourse – albeit a much simpler style of publication – Gestetner printed rather than “proper” letterpress printing.

But I could type fast with two fingers (still can) and was credited in the next issue which came out in early December…

…by which time John White had dropped off the chart, although just for one issue…and Simon Jacobs hadn’t yet got a mention. Like me and John, Simon got his first byline in January 1981. But that part of my past is still in the future, as far as my Ogblog write-ups are concerned.

Meanwhile, returning to 6 November 1980, the other thing I remember doing that evening (although the diary is silent on this point) is queing up for ages to get a turn on one of the handful of payphones and calling home to speak with my parents. It was a hugely onerous, time-consuming and expensive routine, which lives long in the memory of those of us who had to put ourselves through all of that just to make a phone call. A phone call is now so cheap, so casual, so simple…

…anyway, the reason I know that I subjected myself to that routine on that evening is because 6 November 1980 was my parents’ silver wedding anniversary and I couldn’t let an occasion like that pass without a phone call.

The Teardrop Explodes supported by The Thompson Twins, Keele Students’ Union Ballroom, 5 November 1980

No fireworks for me in the conventional sense that year, but a couple of pyrotechnic splashes to be sure. This was my first term at University and what a billing. The Teardrop Explodes were reasonably well known among the cognoscenti, but back then no-one would have known that the Thompson Twins were also heading for new wave stardom.

I had actually rubbed shoulders with Julian Cope some months before, at a The Sound gig in a Clapham Junction dive:

My First “Proper” Rock Gig, The Sound, 101 Club, 16 May 1980

Benita “Bi” Marshall was my-mate-Anil-from-school’s big sister – how cool was that?

Anyway, I thought that The Teardrop Explodes were just great and that this was one of the best gigs I had ever been to in my entire life. It was, of course, one of the first gigs I ever went to, so perhaps my judgement was not yet well-formed. Still, even with the benefit of subsequent experience and some more-informed hindsight, this was a pretty superb gig to get in your first term at University. I do remember it went down really well with the crowd.

I’ll leave it to the better-informed Concourse reviewer, in an article from the 1980 special Christmas edition, to let you know how the concert really was.

Although why the reviewer thought the concert was in October is a mystery; perhaps he’d lost all track of time that term. Bless him, it sometimes happened to the best of us at Keele. I registered this concert in my diary as 19 November, but I was going through a particularly hazy patch towards the end of my first term, if you know what I mean, writing up my diary while inebriated some weeks after the event. Oh dear!

Richard Marks Visits Me & Simon Jacobs At Keele, Not Least For Stoke v Manchester United, 19 & 22 October 1980

Richard Marks With Terri Vine (now Phillips) c Spring 1979

In truth, the only bit of this visit I remember is Richard talking me into joining him at The Victoria Ground to see Stoke City play Manchester United on the Wednesday. But the diary is clear that Richard came to visit initially on the Sunday.

My guess is that Richard did not hang around on campus with us for several days. My guess is that he visited us on the Sunday, went on to Manchester to visit some of his many BBYO friends and/or attend to some other business for a couple of days, then returned to North Staffordshire for the football match he yearned to see.

I’m fairly sure Simon could not be persuaded to come with us to the football match, so it was just me and Richard.

Richard’s purpose was to see the debut of Garry Birtles for Manchester United, as Birtles had just been signed from Nottingham Forrest for a record transfer fee. Get this number; £1.25 million. I’ll repeat that number in words, just in case the sheer scale of it blows readers away. One-and-a-quarter-million pounds.

People who know me well know that I am not exactly a football person. Cricket, yes. Tennis, yes. Rugby, no. Soccer, no, not really. But I was up to have a butchers at my now local soccer venue on an historic night.

Here’s the 11v11 card for the match – sadly lacking the Stoke team but delightfully full of names that even I recognise on the Manchester United side of the card.

Lou Macari, one of those Manchester United players (indeed one of the scorers), went on to manage Stoke and formed an extraordinary relationship with Neil Baldwin, a Keele legend, celebrated in the film Marvellous.

For the record, Manchester United won the match 2-1. Here’s the Guardian review of the match, including both teams’ names:

Stoke v Man U Thu, Oct 23, 1980 – 20 · The Guardian (London, Greater London, England) · Newspapers.com

But my main memory of the evening was Richard suggesting that I might get us both killed.

The thing is, not being a football person, I didn’t really understand some of the subtleties of going to watch such a match.

Richard had got us seats in a part of the ground where Stoke home fans watch.

It didn’t occur to Richard that I wouldn’t understand that neutrals and/or supporters of the other team need to travel incognito in such circumstances.

I don’t actually support any team but I was with Richard and he was there to see Birtles and Manchester United so I started cheering for my friend’s team.

It was at that juncture that Richard warned me that I might get us both killed and I must admit that I noticed a few dagger-like looks coming our way. Richard found a way to mollify those around us (I think by signalling with eye rolls and gestures that I was simply a clown, an imbecile or both), enabling us both to survive the potential ordeal.

Diary says that I enjoyed, so I must have enjoyed..

Thanks for the educational and entertaining evening out, Richard.

My First University Of Keele Students’ Union UGM, Starring Princess Margaret, 20 October 1980

I have no idea why Princess Margaret loomed so large at Keele University, but throughout my time at Keele our titular Chancellor was the source of countless controversies in absentia…which is indeed the manner in which I chose to receive my degree in 1984.

I knew nothing about this when I signed up for Keele. I knew more or less nothing at all about the place, other than the fact that Simon Jacobs had been to visit Keele in August and liked the look of it.

Getting In To & Starting At Keele University, 8 October 1980

Indeed, it was along with fellow fresher Simon Jacobs that I took my seat at my first Students’ Union UGM…the first of a great many as it turned out…on 20 October 1980.

I don’t remember all that much about that first UGM, other than the hoo-ha that was the Princess Margaret controversy.

There were no doubt student political machinations involved in the matter dating back to before our time. But in short, it seemed, the new union sabbaticals had invited Princess Margaret to the Union’s Christmas Ball without seeking approval for such a manoeuvre from the whole committee nor from a UGM which is (or at least was) the sovereign body of the union.

Trying to recall how I felt about it, looking back on the event almost exactly forty years later, I don’t think I saw the matter as especially newsworthy or even all that controversial on the night itself. It just felt like good debate with some political theatre thrown in…and we even got to vote. The argument that the student ball would be far more restricted if HRH attended and that anyway she probably didn’t really want to come to our student ball seemed the most convincing to us and indeed to the majority of those who bothered to turn up, listen and vote.

Extract from The Daily Mirror Diary Page, 22 October 1980. Click the picture link above to see the whole page, including a piece about Mick Jagger describing him as an ageing rock star…he was 37 back then.

The Daily Mirror saw it a little differently. We’d been at Keele for less than a fortnight and already we were “bolshie students” and “little devils”. Yay!!

A week or so later, the student newspaper, Concourse, covered the story in a far more balanced manner:

The controversy rumbled on and had an impact on several of my activities in the first couple of terms, as my unfolding story will reveal. Within a few weeks, Simon and I and others were lampooning the whole affair through a street theatre skit which I wrote up a year or two ago – click here or below:

Street Theatre, Princess Margaret and The Ball Debacle, Keele, 10 December 1980

Not even two weeks after coming through those Keele gates for the first time, I felt that I’d well and truly arrived by the night of 20 October 1980!

In The Absence Of Glittering Prizes…Stardust Memories, Keele Freshers Week, 12 To 18 October 1980

AVRO, CC BY-SA 3.0 NL, via Wikimedia Commons

I didn’t hang around long after getting to Keele and enjoying my first few days.

Getting In To & Starting At Keele University, 8 October 1980

I was still on the National Executive of BBYO and spent my first weekend in Glasgow. Travelling to and from Glasgow from Keele for the weekend is not a brilliant idea but according to the diary I got back to Keele early enough on the Sunday evening to show up at the Union bar. Yes, really that is what the Sunday entry (below) says.

Monday 13 October – First lectures – OK. Went to Union in evening. Quiet day.
Tuesday 14 October – Lectures OK, Politics OK. Went to drama workshop in eve – good.

I was doing the Foundation Year (FY). In those days most Keele undergraduates did four year courses, starting with FY. It is was a wonderful course which helped me to learn how to learn and also enabled me to decide what to study for my degree. Politics was one of my two sessional courses (the other was History).

Simon Jacobs did a three year degree without FY. Simon and I threw ourselves into the drama workshop in our first term.

Simon Jacobs throwing himself into something, 1979

The brains behind that drama workshop group was Brian Rawlins, whose picture and cv nearly 40 years later can be found through this web link…

…or, if anything ever goes awry with the above Wirral Festival link, click here for a scrape thereof.

Several of us who had enjoyed doing drama at school wanted to do a bit of performance stuff without getting involved in the formalities of the drama society and full scale productions. This group proved to be just the ticket for us. We were very lucky to be led by someone of Brian Rawlins’s quality for such a group. That story ends with this piece of street theatre…

Street Theatre, Princess Margaret and The Ball Debacle, Keele, 10 December 1980

…but I’m getting way ahead of myself there.

Wednesday 15 October 1980 – dull lectures today. (??) Pleasent [sic] afternoon. Went to J-Soc & Freshers Ball till very very late.

Didn’t take long for the novelty of foundation year lectures to wear off, did it?

Our Freshers Ball was supposed to be headlined by Gary Glitter, but apparently he fell ill, so Alvin Stardust was wheeled out at the last minute as a replacement. This event was long before Gary Glitter’s infamy as a child sex offender, of course. Indeed Glitter did show up at one of the balls I attended some time later in my Keele journey. Unlike Glitter, there was nothing edgy about Alvin Stardust, neither in performance nor, as far as we know, in real life.

There are two Concourse pieces about the Freshers Ball. The first one a damning news piece with no byline…

…the second a rather more upbeat music review by Dave Lee. Do you know who wrote the first piece, Dave? If so, do tell.

Dave Lee talks highly of Glass Torpedoes. I certainly recall enjoying the warm up act more than the Alvin gig. Embedded below is the Glass Torpedoes Peel Session from earlier that year:

Dave Lee also talks up the Tour de Force gig in Room 14 upstairs, which I also vaguely recall enjoying more than Alvin. I have managed to find some interesting material on the former, including a rare recording on the following embedded vid.

Thursday 16 October 1980 – V tired today. Law v good. Got some letters written, received some letters as well. Went to bar with Simon in evening.

Law was a four week topic with Michael Whincup. We needed to do several such topics during FY. So inspired by that law topic was I, that ended up switching to study law (along with economics) as my degree the following three years.

Going to the bar with Simon in those early weeks/months of Keele not only included beer drinking but invariably a few games of table football. I have no pictures of me playing table football with Simon, sadly, but more than a quarter of a century later, when visiting Jinka in the South Omo Region of Ethiopia, I learnt that I hadn’t mis-spent that aspect of my youth at all; I was able to call on the skills acquired in those all-too-frequent games in the Keele Students’ Union to great effect:

Friday 17 October 1980 – Not bad lectures today. Disco in eve, bad.
Saturday 18 October 1980 – Easy day. Went to disco in eve, good.

How was I assessing the discos in those days? I doubt if I was doing the “disco aficionado” thing at that stage. Admittedly, I had experienced an Ian Levine special at Mecca in Blackpool by then…and a few good ones in London no doubt. But my guess is that “bad” and “good” would have been determined by the extent to which I had managed to perk up any interest among the female freshers who were still in the market by the Friday and Saturday of that week.

Not that I had really worked out what to do about it when I got a bit lucky. As much as anything else, I was committed to traipsing up and down the country for the rest of that term still. I do recall getting friendly that week with a pretty girl with a turned up nose from the North-East named Jo. Her father was a vicar and she was even more shy with that sort of stuff than I was. We didn’t get far. I think we went back to her place for a cup of coffee and had…coffee. But we remained smiling, nodding acquaintances for several years at Keele. Bless. That pleasing non-event might well have been after the “good” disco.

Getting In To & Starting At Keele University, 8 October 1980

Tanya Dedyukhina / CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)

I saw Keele University for the very first time on 8 October 1980. I entered through the main gates, on the bus from Stoke, carrying a suitcase and a holdall; less stuff than I would take with me for a weekend these days.

[“These days” means almost exactly 40 years later at the time of writing].

I stayed at Keele for five years.

It was Simon Jacobs’s fault. (Simon, right, trying to look cool and uninterested).

It was Simon Jacobs’s fault that I was there. No ifs no buts no maybes.

It happened like this.

Both Simon and I had made a similar mess of our A levels. We’d both thrown ourselves into BBYO at a local level (Pinner in his case, Streatham mine) and at a national level as well; we were both on the National Executive and indeed that summer I had been running the office after the sole full-timer, Rebecca Lowi, had left.

Simon started to address the educational “oops, what happens next?” problem far quicker than I did. On one unsung occasion in mid-to-late August 1980 Simon popped in to see me at the office at Hillel House, after he had visited Keele.

It seems like a really nice University. It’s small and friendly, the campus has large and very attractive grounds…and…they’ve offered me a place, even with my crummy A levels. You should give it a try.

I phoned Keele the next morning. I explained my predicament. The official I spoke with sounded quite promising.

Sure – come and have a look in the next week or so and we’ll have a chat about what we might be able to offer you with your so-called crummy A levels.

I demurred.

That might be a bit difficult. I am running this office all by myself and we have our annual National leadership training course starting next week and a bit of a governance crisis going on at the same time. You come highly recommended to me by Simon, whom I trust, so if you have a place for me I’m sure it will work out well for me and for Keele.

The Keele official demurred…slightly.

Well, that is a rather unusual request, but I suppose you have described a rather unusual predicament…let’s see what we can do…

I recall being asked to provide character references from senior teachers at my school, Alleyn’s, which wasn’t too difficult for me to achieve. Thank you, Colin Page; house master, games master, nice guy and teacher whom, I believe, never actually taught me academically-speaking. Not quite sure what he organised for me, but it worked.

My diary on Wednesday 10 September notes:

…good day (possible good news from Keele)…

I think that might be the news that I had a place subject to references.

Then Monday 15 September:

Got back from Nottingham [BBYO that was, not University hunting] – phoned Keele – in.

So when I entered through the gates on that bus with my measly bags, all I knew about the place was Simon’s review from his interview/tour day and the correspondence the University sent me between accepting me and my arrival.

Still, by 8 October, Simon had been there for a few days, so he was an expert already. He recalls being taken up at the weekend by his parents. That must have been the Sunday, because my diary says that Simon (along with several others) spent Saturday at the Harris residence in Streatham, but Simon wasn’t among those who stayed over.

Wednesday 8 October. Left home early. Easy journey. Registered. Met Simon, easyish day. Disco in evening v good.

That first day of Keele reads a bit Adrian Mole.

Thursday 9 October. Tons to do. Sorting things out. Saw Supercharge in evening.

No comment on Supercharge there. I do recall buying, for a very modest sum, one of their albums, Local Lads Make Good, in Record & Tape Exchange later that academic year. I realised on listening to it that they worked better live than they did on album…and I recalled that they hadn’t worked all that well for me live. They were fun, it was Freshers’ Week and we were all up for pretty much any live music.

I have subsequently found the micro review of the Supercharge concert from Concourse, the student newspaper – see below. I don’t think Christine was impressed.

Friday 10 October. Lots to do today. Sorting things out. Evening down union & singing songs avec Simon.

Cripes. I’d been at University for fewer than 72 hours and already I was clipping phrases such as “down Union”…

…and where did the phrase “avec Simon” come from? Was it an in joke from the evening – perhaps we had sung a French song or parodied the French chanteur style.

I recall the singing taking place in the Walter Moberly Hall. Certainly on more than one occasion and I’m pretty sure that evening must have been the first. Simon was itching to play the piano, so after a drink or two (and almost certainly a game or three of table football) we went in search of a piano for Simon to play and discovered that the Walter Moberly Hall was left open in the evenings for the convenience of scallywags like ourselves.

Of course, Simon has subsequently gone on to have a glittering avocational musical career, with album launches…

Simon Jacobs, Circle Line, Album Launch Showcase, Old Paradise Yard, 10 September 2017

…and more recently his latest album, from lockdown, which is previewed on the following track:

Coincidentally, Janie and I had arranged to visit Simon 10 October 2020 in blissful ignorance of the fact that it was 40 years since he and I had started Keele. It was only some chat on Facebook that alerted me to the “anniversary”.

Postscript

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Concourse Needed Me

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