Planet Of The Drapes:The Teddy Boy's Picnic.

When I was a teenager I used to go into Basingstoke town centre on a Saturday afternoon. It was not unlike any other provincial town centre of the 1980s and outside the Wimpy there would normally be an assorted rabble consisting of the various youth tribes of the era. Mostly punks and crusties, a few skinheads and mods, some casuals and metallers too. Also, one or two members of what then seemed to be, and pretty much proved to be, a shrinking cult.

Teddy boys (not so many girls) or teds. While other youth cults have been pored over, had films made about them, books written about them, and lengthy magazine articles dedicated to them, the teds have been pretty much consigned to history. Written off, almost, as a joke. Last night's Sohemian Society talk, Teddy Boys:Post-War Britain and the First Youth Revolution - and the book of the same name by Max Decharne - looks to readdress that.

The Sohemian Society have not hosted an event for over four years, since before the covid lockdown, so it felt like everyone was pleased to be back in Fitzrovia's Wheatsheaf pub. I was a very lucky man as I (a) bagged the very last available ticket on the door (b) ending up sitting next to, and chatting to, Alex MacLaren-Ross, the son of celebrated novelist and renowned dandy Julian MacLaren-Ross, and (c) saw a man riding a penny farthing down the road as I walked to the event.

I didn't, alas, get to chat to former NME and Melody Maker journalist Cathi Unsworth who was sat in front of me or to my friend Dave Fogarty who has been heavily involved with the Sohemians in the past but wasn't attending this event. I also couldn't help thinking of my old mate Pat Still (Pat the Rockin' Maniac, the Swamplord, Pat the Hat) who would have loved this event but passed away (sadly, and untimely, if not entirely unsurprisingly) eight and half years ago.

Maybe I should have worn a drape coat, a music note jumper, and some brothel creepers and quiffed my hair up with some Black and White hair wax in honour of him. Speaker Max Decharne had done his bit. Decharne, as my friend John Patrick Higgins had correctly said, knew his onions and as singer and songwriter with The Flaming Stars and drummer with Gallon Drunk he's served his time in the musical trenches.

But he's also written some intriguing sounding books:- Beat Your Relatives To A Pulp & Other Stories, Straight From The Fridge, Dad:A Dictionary Of Hipster Slang, and Capital Crimes:Seven Centuries Of London Life & Murder all sound very tempting. Decharne was well informed, interesting, engaging, and often very funny but it wasn't a monologue as such. It was done in the form of a Q&A with Sohemian co-founder Marc Glendening and Marc, quite clearly, had done his homework too. It really helps.

Max began by talking of how he came from a family of rock'n'rollers in Portsmouth (with a rockin' uncle in the badlands of Slough too) and how he'd grown up loving Jerry Lee Lewis and Bill Haley and how some of his formative memories involved teds operating the dodgem cars at local funfairs and blasting out the likes of Del Shannon's Runaway.

Now there's a tune. The teds, to him, seemed impossibly glamorous, almost alien. Back in 1974, fifty years ago, Max visited a local sports shop (run by former England and Chelsea striker Bobby Tambling) and bought his first bootlace tie, one he was wearing last night. On purchasing it, he was told "I hope you're not gonna grow up to be a teddy boy".

Even in 1974, teddy boys were seen as something undesirable to be. But how did working class Brit teenagers (as well as the Irish, teddy boys really took off there) end up wandering around in Edwardian clothes?

After World War II, Britain was a grey, depressing, impoverished nation. There was rationing of food and there was a clothing shortage. People started to look back to the good times and the last really good times were 1901-1910, the reign of Edward VII - before either of the world wars. In France, Christian Dior had latched on to that era for female fashion and soon Savile Row followed suit making Edwardian suits for upper class men and aristocrats.

Both Prince Philip and Cecil Beaton dressed this way but by 1952 the hoi polloi started to ape the fashions and they were able to because they had more money than their parents or grandparents ever dreamed of. So many young men had died in the war that there was a brief period of full employment. An event that led to a demand for, and a demand that was met, for mass immigration from Jamaica and elsewhere.

Not only could the working class man afford nice clothes, they could afford to go out dancing. It rankled with some of the older generation who had never enjoyed these privileges so, predictably - as ever, there was a backlash. Also some backlash from the upper crust who weren't so keen on seeing the lower orders subvert class traditions or mix it up with elements of spiv culture. It was alright for Cab Calloway to dress like that on stage but Gary from Watford shouldn't be walking round the town centre like that. Who does he think he is?

Some were having no truck with these expressions of "working class flash". Until 1953, these fancy dressers were known simply as Edwardians but then a gang fight on Clapham Common ended in a horrible murder and during an Old Bailey trial, a girl in the dock used the term 'teddy boy' to describe somebody - and that was it. The Edwardians and the 'cosh boys' (the previous term for juvenile delinquent gang members) merged into one - the teddy boy.

The teddy boy reputation was further traduced during the 1958 Notting Hill race riots when the fascist leader, and friend of Hitler, Oswald Mosley called them his "teddy legions". Bizarrely, Mosley was compared to Elvis at the time (despite looking more like his mate Adolf) and though some teds undoubtedly did take place in the riots and some indisputably were racist, many were not.

Britain was a very racist society at that time and there were grandmothers and small children rioting alongside various youths. Two of Oswald Mosley's sons were involved in the riot and they certainly weren't teds. The teds took the bulk of the blame for the riots but in fact only played a very small part. As an interesting aside into the racist mindset, Mosley had previously been antisemitic and had blamed the Jews for all of Britain's problems. With the onset of mass immigration from the Caribbean, he quickly pivoted to anti-black racism. Some things, it seem, never change.

With the teds now firmly entrenched as prime tabloid folk devils, they soon started appearing as walk on villains in cheap crime novels although a more sympathetic, nuanced, portrayal of a teddy boy can be found in the form of Arthur Seaton in Alan Sillitoe's 1958 novel Saturday Night and Sunday Morning. Karel Reisz's film, two years later, plays down the teddy boy angle as the times had moved on.

The teddy boy taste in music isn't quite as straightforward as you might think either. Teddy boys started appearing on British streets a few years before anyone in the country had heard rock'n'roll. Initially, they were fans of jazz and skiffle, most specifically Lonnie Donegan who was then performing as a member of Chris Barber's jazz band.

Rock'n'roll, of course, incorporated elements of jazz and boogie-woogie and mixed them up with country and when it hit the UK, most prominently in the form of Elvis Presley (who dressed, Decharne memorably said, like a "black Memphis pimp") and Little Richard, it was instantly massive. It was only natural that teddy boys would adopt it as their favourite music. A stance they never really moved away from.

Apart from the large cities the sixties music revolution didn't result in everyone up and down the country dressing like Sergeant Pepper and consuming industrial amounts of LSD and mostly you'd see older, greasier, teds whose hair was growing out a bit and then in the seventies there was a full blown, if sometimes a bit twee, revival.

Mud, Crazy Cavan and the Rhythm Rockers, Showaddywaddy (who'd been on New Faces and whose singer, Dave Bartram, had completely the wrong hair for a ted), Grease (the musical rather than the film), the Rocky Horror Show, That'll Be The Day with former ted Ringo Starr, and Shakin' Stevens and the Sunsets who Decharne described as magnificent before going on to mention, quite remarkably, that Shaky used to regularly perform at Communist fundraisers.

Then there was Ted Bovis from Hi-De-Hi. He was even called Ted and though he was old enough to be the father or uncle of the original teddy boys he definitely had the look. He even took the show's theme tune, the rock'n'roll pastiche Holiday Rock, into the top forty. And then the teddy boy era finally began to fade. Replaced by something new and ultimately replaced by our current era where youth culture, for better and worse, is far less tribal than it has been in my lifetime.

Decharne's talk had been brilliant and I've not even mentioned the various other people and events that cropped up:- Sham 69, Joan Collins, Bill Grundy, Peter Rachman, Joseph Goebbels, Laurence Olivier, Danny Kaye, Hancock's Half Hour, Bud Flanagan, Ealing comedies, St.Trinian's, Marlon Brando, Nancy Mitford, George Melly, Ken Russell, Johnny Hallyday, Nick Lowe, The Stray Cats, Cliff Richard, Roy Wood, James Dean, John Peel, Billy Fury, Malcolm McLaren, The Beatles, Buddy Holly, and even Max Bygraves.

Opening up to questions from the audience proved interesting too and brought many more names into the conversation:- Ian Dury, Marc Bolan, Cilla Black, Tony Curtis, Rick Wakeman, The Jam, Eddie & The Hot Rods, Captain Sensible, Jimi Hendrix, The Small Faces, Peter O'Toole. Strictly Come Dancing, Hank Williams, the MC5, the Cramps, X-Ray Spex, Nick Cave, Iris Dement, the Granny Takes A Trip boutique on the King's Road, Oasis, Viv Stanshall, Gene Vincent, Tom Jones, Hellzapoppin', zoot suits, dayglo socks, James Ellroy, occupied Paris, the Walthamstow Young Communist League, Absolute Beginners, Dance With A Stranger, Vivienne Westwood, Ace Records, Thin Lizzy, the Horse Hospital, and Vince Taylor And His Playboys playing a gig at the Bournemouth Conservative Club.

Phew! It was a lot to take in but it was invigorating and inspiring rather than tiring. What happened to the teddy boys and the teddy girls? In most cases, they grew up, got married, and raised families. But their legacy is kept in people's private photo albums up and down the country and some of them, even to this day, visit holiday resorts out of season, put on the old clothes and dance the night away to rock'n'roll because, as with punk, the key factor in all of this was the feeling of liberation, of being able to dress however you like, dance however you like, and be whoever you want to be while still feeling part of something bigger. That's a feeling that will always stay with you. Rave on, it's a crazy feelin'. 

TADS #63:Scarborough (Postcards Of Scarborough).

"Two postcards of Scarborough just to keep in my mind, to hide away up there and help me remind myself of time past and time passing" - Postcards of Scaborough, Michael Chapman

I've long loved Michael Chapman's mournful, and beautiful, ballad Postcards of Scarborough and I've seen pictures of Scarborough (but never been) and it looked great (reminded me a bit of Llandudno) so when it came to arranging this year's (the NINTH) two day TADS trek, Scarborough seemed a pretty good choice.Then Pam told me her sister Val, and Val's husband Eric, lived there and we could stay with them.

That was it. Decision made and, luckily, at least eight others decided to join us. It's quite a trek though. Those driving took the longest but this is my blog so I'm only reporting on my journey. A 63 bus to KX station, a delayed train to York with Pam and Mo (both of whom I'd met on the concourse), a beer in the real ale pub on York station, and then another delayed, and absolutely rammed, train to Scarborough.

The delays were not a major inconvenience, we even got some money back on the delay repay scheme, and the journeys were actually good fun. On the first train a youngish guy befriended an elder ladies dog to everybody's glee and on the second train virtually everyone in the carriage was yammering away while a young boy impressed us all with his knowledge of the height of various tall buildings. Cliched friendly northerners or just happy holidaymakers? It's hard to tell but it's worth observing that from Doncaster to Scarborough the journey time was two hours. And both those places are in Yorkshire. Yorkshire's big.

 

On arriving in Scarborough, or Scarbados, Val (Pam's sister) came to pick Pam and myself up so we could drop our stuff off at her and husband Eric's absolutely lovely house (seriously, everything about it was amazing but I particularly loved the kitchen and the beautiful garden - and was really touched by the WELCOME DAVE sign in 'my' room).

 

Val even furnished us with some booze as I picked her and Eric's brains for local knowledge. Then Eric drove us into town (advising us to avoid the foreshore pubs as they're full of Wessies - West Yorkshire folk from Leeds and Bradford apparently - getting tanked up all day on John Smiths) and dropped us off at The Leeds Tavern where we met Mo and downed a couple of pints of delightful Timothy Taylor Landlord.

From The Leeds Tavern, it was along the front and up some impressive steps (Scarborough is architecturally a treat to visit) alongside a funicular to the Bike & Boot (near The Grand, or - as Eric joked - not so Grand, Hotel) for food and more drinks and to catch up with Adam and Teresa. The Bike & Boot had a strange toilet. I had mac'n'cheese.

After that Adam, Teresa, and Mo turned in and Pam and I went to meet with Big Neil, Bee, Neil, and Tina at the Crescent Bar. They were hosting an open mic night and though it looked very unpromising to begin with that soon changed. There was a guy doing poetry in a very dry John Cooper Clarke style (he even included a line about Scarborough's infamous wanking walrus) and a guy so frail he could barely climb on to the stage (even though it was only about four inches high) but then performed a version of Hurt (a Nine Inch Nails tune though this cover was definitely the Johnny Cash version) which bought a lump to my throat and a tear or two to Neil's eye.

It was lovely and Val came out and gave me and Pam a lift home. We felt like teenagers. I slept pretty well in the very comfy bed provided and, a bit of an issue with acid reflux aside, enjoyed a lovely breakfast of beans and scrambled egg on toast with veggie sausages. Val and Eric's adorable dog Tallisker (Tali) sniffing round my feet in hope of an extra feed.

Then the four of us took the short, twenty minutes or so, walk into town where, by the ferris wheel - the designated meeting place, we met with Adam, Teresa, Mo, Tina, Neil, Big Neil, and Bee (Cath wouldn't be joining us until later that evening) and started the walk by heading south along the seafront.

I love seaside towns. I love the buzz, the lights, the sense of excitement, the sound of happy children, the sand, the sea itself, the cliffs, the hotels. I love pretty much everything about seaside towns and Scarborough now firmly ranks among my all time favourites. Having said that, though, I didn't fancy a dip. Some brave souls were swimming in it. It can't have been very warm.

 

There's some amazing Victorian architecture on show (plus a bit of Art Deco) to boot and an incredibly picturesque bridge. The Cliff Bridge, formerly the Spa Bridge, was completed in 1827 and is Grade II listed. It does a great job of framing that section of the Scarborough coastline.

There was a tough, short, route and an easier, longer, route to the top of the cliff so we took the latter. Passing where Scarborough's least celebrated (these days) former resident Jimmy Savile used to live and bringing us out on the site of the former Holbeck Hall Hotel. It's no longer there because in 1993, after standing for 114 years, it fell off the cliff. Thankfully - and luckily, nobody was harmed.

 

Once we'd reached the top of the cliffs it was a gentle, winding, rolling path that took us inland through wheat fields at times as well as occasionally on to quiet roads festooned with camper vans. At the Salty Dog snack bar we stopped, after a brief and fairly unanimous vote, for a break. I had an R Whites Lemonade (I don't know if you've heard the rumours but I'm a secret lemonade drinker) and the pack-up (that's Yorkshire for packed lunch) that Val had generously made for me.

The Neils and Tina decided to walk along the beach and climb a steepish hill to meet the rest of us who'd continued along the cliff top. I was torn as I wanted to do both but decided to stick with the bulk of the gang. Eric was pretty much leading the way and that gave me a chance to drop back and chat to people more than I an normally able to. For that, among many other things, I'd like to thank Eric.

 

The view continued to inspire, the breeze was gentle, and the mood among the troops was buoyant. We passed holiday camps and looked out to the impressive promontory of Filey Brigg before slowly beginning to descend into Filey itself. Eric had a couple of friends there and he'd phoned ahead to see if they'd like to meet us for a drink. They suggested we pop round to their place. I don't think they realised there were twelve of us!

With the gang spreading out, we made our way to The Imperial pub in Filey (a place where Pam certainly didn't want to mention who she worked for) for some good craic. Teresa (AKA Filey Riley) told us how her parents spent their honeymoon in Filey so her and Adam and a few others went off to explore while the rest of us, lazily, stayed in the pub. I should have joined them as I don't know when I'll get a chance to visit Filey again.

We reconvened at Filey station where some weird incident involving a mobile phone was happening and the train back to Scarborough was, of course, delayed. We passed the time by having a very jolly game of Heads Up and I wonder what other travellers might have thought when they caught a glimpse of nearly a dozen middle aged ramblers impersonating chickens on the platform!

Back in Scarborough, once Mo had retrieved several packets of Oor Willie's Iron Brew Bon Bons (The Very Dab! - they looked like internal organs that had been removed during a gruesome operation and didn't taste much better) for a man who dropped his bag getting into a car, we had time for one more drink - and to meet Cath - before the curry.

Trouble is, August Bank Holiday weekend on a Saturday night in a seaside town, everywhere was rammed. The Craft Bar was too busy, the bar in the Stephen Joseph Theatre was too busy, and the Victoria Hotel bar wasn't too busy but, quite remarkably, had no beer. The Stumble Inn looked like it had a bit of character but it was still full. There was one small table outside so some of us had a quick one there while the rest went elsewhere.

We all met up again in the Taj which we'd booked earlier. But we'd only booked for eight people and there were twelve of us. It was a tactic which we thought we'd remedy on the night and though it was a little stressful to begin with we did all manage to squeeze in eventually. Apart from bringing out the wrong dish to begin with, everything else was great about the Taj. Tasty food, BYO booze keeping the prices down, and waiters who were over to the table (usually with bottle openers) as soon as we asked while not being too in your face. Can't recommend it enough but would advise booking for the correct amount of diners in future.

After that, Eric, Val, Pam, and I headed back 'home', Eric and I watched a bit of Match of the Day and I turned in for the night. The first day had been grand (like the hotel) and the second day wouldn't be a let down either.

 

This time, Eric wouldn't be joining us as he was playing at a festival with his ska band (that's my sort of person) but he would end up meeting us twice throughout the course of the day. Once at the start of the walk and then again in the evening. We met by the ferris wheel again but this time with an extra surprise. As we were waiting I got a call from Tina. Her and Neil were on the wheel, a wheel that earlier Val had said she'd never seen anybody go on.

Tempting though it was to go in the arcades, go for a ride on a pirate boat, or play a round of crazy gold, we instead headed north along the foreshore. The initial plan had been to try and reach the incredibly beautiful looking Robin Hood's Bay but further research suggested that was foolhardy and would have been too much so I decided Hayburn Wyke would be our destination for the day. No pub stops (because, except the pubs in Scarbados itself, there were no pubs en route) meant five hours and twenty minutes of solid walking with only a few very brief breaks to catch breath. Some felt the pain a little. These walks aren't supposed to be hard but they're not supposed to be TOO easy either.

 

Instead of going up to visit Scarborough Castle and Anne Bronte's grave, we carried on round Marine Drive between the sea and the cliffs. Passing more camper vans and lots of circular mountings on the seawall telling stories about Scarborough's history (which was handy as I hadn't prepared my usual spiel for this walk). Although I noticed there wasn't one devoted to Jimmy Savile or his paedophile accomplice, mayor and ice cream man Peter Jaconelli.

A nice memorial to Freddie Gilroy & the Belsen Stragglers had me musing that that sounded like an unfortunately named sixties beat combo but the large bench provided a good photo op for some of the ladies. There were some lovely pastel shaded beach huts, a last chance for a toilet break, and the beach was packed with people frolicking and taking a dip. All was good. I wanted to stay for at least a week.

Near The Old Scalby Mill pub (tempting but too soon) we crossed a footbridge and ascended to a windy clifftop. Val assured me she'd never heard of anyone being blown off the cliffs but I wondered if I may be the first. We were on the Cleveland Way and we would be staying on the Cleveland Way for quite a long time. We passed some other walkers who had left Robin Hood's Bay at 9am that morning. We don't start that early!

 

There's not much up on those cliffs, except the odd bird observatory, but the views are incredible. Mostly it was flat but every now and then we had to descend and ascend some steepish steps which some found easier than others. We're a friendly group though and if someone is struggling, someone else will help them out.

With Eric banging out Madness covers elsewhere, it was up to me to lead today so I strode ahead at the front, perhaps going a bit too fast for some - but, hey, I wanted to get to the pub. We crossed stepping stones, climbed through wooded areas, and went up and down more sets of steps than I cared to count. But, eventually, we reached Hayburn Wyke where folks had two options. Go straight to the pub or look at the waterfall and then go to the pub.

 

Mo wanted to know if the waterfall was as impressive as Iguazu Falls and I had to point out that, no the waterfall would not be as impressive as Iguazu Falls. If North Yorkshire had a waterfall that looked like Iguazu Falls I think that's something that would be quite widely known. So Mo, and Bee, went to the pub and the rest of us went to have a look at a waterfall that Val had warned us was not particularly interesting.

Big Neil joked it looked like a sewer pipe and Adam nearly fell over on the rocks trying to get a better look but it was worth the extra few minutes I thought and the climb back up wasn't so bad (there were kids of about five/six years old doing it easily). The Hayburn Wyke pub wasn't so bad either but they'd stopped doing food (though they were dishing up free roast potatoes at the bar) so Bee handily booked somewhere up in Scarborough later. The taxis had been booked for 6.30pm so we had about two hours in the pub which we passed easily playing silly games (names five bands beginning with Q, name five television programmes beginnning with Z, and, for Cath and Mo, a film trivia game).

 

Back in Scarborough, we were dropped off at the Scarborough Flyer. Not one of the town's finest pubs but as a late replacement for somewhere to eat it served its purpose. I had veggie burger and chips and even though the pub looked like a Wetherspoons it wasn't one. It had lots of huge screens that would be used for showing sport but there was no sport on, just pundits talking about sport.

So we didn't linger long once we'd filled our bellies. We headed to the Merchant, a slightly tatty Irish bar but one full of character - and a really grim tap in the men's bog, where we had more drinks (my birthday was later in the week so I didn't have to pay for many - thanks generous folk - for the drinks and the cards) and a real good chinwag. It was a lovely way to round out the weekend although the weekend, for some of us, was not quite over yet.

Eric, Val, Pam, and I headed back and then the next day, after another lovely breakfast, we had a tour of Peasholm Park. A magical place. Beautiful gardens and lake, a funfair with a really bizarre water chute, dragon boats, and lots of happy holidaymakers. I felt sad that our short holiday was coming to an end but it was. Pam and I were dropped off at the station where we met with Mo. We had a quick drink in Koda Coffee and took the train to York and then another, delayed of course, back to London where we said our goodbyes and that was it for another year. I'm so glad I finally got to visit Scarborough and I must say I leave with very fond memories of the place and hope to visit again one day and, next time, go in those arcades, go on that ferris wheel, visit Robin Hood's Bay, and avoid the pub with no beer.

Thanks to Pam, Mo, Big Neil, Bee, Cath, Tina, Normal Sized Neil, Adam, and Teresa for a lovely weekend and extra special thanks to Val and Eric for being the greatest hosts ever (seriously, lifts, beds, breakfast, drinks, local knowledge, and, best of all, plenty of laughter). Here's some more photos of all the weird and wonderful wallies that made this postcard from Scaborough such a lovely thing to have to write. Where next year?