Osborne Robinson, Gypsies, and more class!!

(Tom) Osborne-Robinson.

I think I will follow up on the last post which touched on class and the lack of Jewish humour in Great Britain. I had a few emails on the subject and a few complaints from people not being able to add their comments to the blog; I'm afraid I don't have an answer to that maybe people who leave comments would give the others tips????

First of all – what class am I? I was asked that! Well a very good friend told me last week that it is the arts & crafts class as with other actors, poets, singers and artists. This was a line from the film Sex and Drugs and Rock an' Roll and attributed to Ian Dury – the late Ian Dury a real diamond geezer.

By the way – geezer, unlike in America, is any age - a mensch.

He was portrayed in the film by Andy Serkis – a great movie actor who played Gollum in The Lord of the Rings films. Great 'movie' actor I said; I will come to great actors in a later post.

The other thing is I don't hate the middles classes – some of my best friends are middle class; sorry to use that terrible line which was used a lot, years ago, by racists but there we are.

No it is the middle class values that I abhor. Kids go to school full of life and ambition. They make their pals laugh and they like that. They want to grow up, run away from home and join the circus. They want to be pirates, Indiana Jones and live like a gypsy – but middle class teachers knock all that out of them. They teach them words like God and Jesus and expect them to grow up normal and when they leave school they either wear a tie or carry a tool.

I never wanted to join a circus I wanted to be a pop singer; I wanted to be a gypsy. I wore a gypsy scarf when I was young (maybe not that young) and had a couple of days growth on my chin to make me look darker.

The trouble was the teachers didn't quite get through to me and I used to see the funny side of everything and I would crack jokes in class which made Mister Jones, the teacher in the 3^rd form (aged 14), throw chalk at me. Sometimes I could catch it but I never threw it back. He was a jazz loving Welshman (he would be with a name like Jones) who encouraged us to bring guitars to school and play skiffle in front of the class.

My pal, Clive Bishop got up in front of the class and sang an Elvis Presley song and another pal, Alan Chance, also sang an Elvis song.

I got up and played the harmonica; Mister Jones stood at the back of the class, whilst I played, and he couldn't see the faces my pals were pulling at me to try and make me laugh as I tried to play; eventually I had to laugh and stop playing.

Jones would record our efforts; the harmonica, the singing and the skiffle and play it back to the class on numerous occasions. He also let us listen to a football match on the radio when a local team got into the semi final of the FA Cup.

So he never tried to knock anything out of me.

I was chosen for the road safety quiz and was on the stage in front of the whole school but dropped from the team when I made the whole school laugh. It was a wonderful belly laugh from about 600 kids and Mister Jones almost burst a blood vessel laughing as he covered his face.

So some teachers were okay although I think he had a violent streak in him as that chalk would be thrown at full pelt – I was good at catching.

There are a load of gypsies parked in Basildon, Essex at the moment and the Basildon council are breaking up their community – that's what they are a community. The Gypsies are not sticking to the rules by wanting to live in a different way – just like the Indians in America. You never see any Indians in America; they have been put on reservations out of the way of the white man; the middle class white man and that's what they will do to the Gypsies here, one day.

Most of them are Irish and a lot of those, even though they have Irish accents, have never been to Ireland. They probably don't have birth certificates and a lot of them don't read. But they live off the land, off their wits and is it wrong to want to live in a different way?

The Travellers, as the gypsies are called, are too close to 'normal people' and they might affect the prices of property in the area; oh dear!

Who said all property is theft? Of course you know who said it and you know it is correct.

People don't 'own' the houses they live in. They think they do but they are only leasing the house whilst they live in it. Most of the vandalism to property is by the so called owners. They take out original fittings, demolish pantries, dump wonderful Rayburn Cookers just to sell their houses – I know! I've done it!

I remember a wonderful old pub in Little Houghton, Northampton-shire, called The Red Lion and it had a very interesting building outside which was the lavatory. The landlord had the building demolished to make room for two more cars in the car park.

The lavatory had been there for many years!

The people who worked at the garage opposite called him a vandal and he was – in any case where would they pee?

That Landlord has gone but the beautiful shit house is no more; everybody has to cram into the plastic one they built inside.

It might be changed now as it has been many a year since I've been any where near the place supping their ale.

That man at the top of the page is Osborne Robinson. He was a brilliant stage designer and devoted almost 50 years to the Royal Theatre, Northampton. I think it was in his 49^th year of service there that the board fired him. He died maybe a year later, a broken man and the middle class untalented hysterics on the board or the alcoholic artistic director didn't care or probably didn't know.

I worked at the theatre in 12 plays and he designed the sets for most of them and I also lived in Northampton afterwards and saw him wandering around asking me if I would ever go back to work at the Royal Theatre again and I shrugged and said no. I knew he was dying as he was losing weight at an unnatural rate.

The Emporium Arcade, Northampton.

Before my time there he had campaigned to keep The Emporium Arcade in the market place from demolition.

They eventually did demolish it and the newspaper building next door and replaced it with a monstrosity of a shopping centre called The Grosvenor Centre.

The Grosvenor Centre people asked him to paint some murals of the history of Northampton to display inside the building and he painted, I think, 12 but they only displayed 11.

They wouldn't put the last one up because it was the modern Northampton he was depicting in that one and in the painting it showed someone holding a placard saying Save the Arcade.

The owners just couldn't bring themselves to be criticized.

A rebel to the end - The Royal Theatre, Northampton – it should be called The Osborne Robinson Theatre.

Northampton Market Square with the Arcade in the background.