Family Britain, 1951-1957 (73 page)

‘It’s a good programme on Thursday night,’ Nella Last in Barrow noted gratefully on 13 January 1955. ‘When I look at my husband sometimes, I wonder
whatever
I’d do without the wireless.’ The following evening,
Any Questions?
came from Taunton, and among those dealing with the first question, ‘Are the measures taken to deal with travel difficulties due to seasonal frost adequate?’, was the Labour MP for South Gloucestershire, just back from a lengthy trip to the States. ‘I haven’t the faintest idea whether the measures are adequate or not – I don’t know what measures are taken,’ impatiently declared Anthony Crosland. ‘As far as I’m concerned, the weather as a subject of conversation after three months away from it, is out.’ Last did not yet have a television, but by this time more than four million households did, and the following evening, Saturday the 15th, saw the debut of
The Benny Hill Show
. ‘A career that owes all, or nearly all, to television,’ remarked
Radio Times
about ‘the burly, chubby-cheeked young man who made such a hit as compère of
Showcase
,’ and the 29-year-old, who had left school at 16 and still lived ‘quietly and modestly in a North London boarding house’, was indeed the first British comedian to forge a style specifically tailored for television. ‘Even though he was prone to be “saucy”,’ his biographer Mark Lewisohn has observed, ‘he traded on a larky, good-natured, boy-next-door image, epitomised by his cheeky looks and grin,’ and at this point his appeal to the television audience was ‘universal – across the classes and generations’. No doubt this was partly a reflection of the still relative novelty of the medium, with BBC audience research finding soon afterwards that ‘there seems to be far less “class difference” in viewing habits than in listening habits’. As it happened, Hill’s was not the only notable debut programme this mid-January weekend, for on Sunday afternoon there featured for the first time
The Sooty Show
. It was almost seven years since Harry Corbett, a Yorkshire engineer-surveyor who also tried his hand at amateur magic, had bought a teddy-bear hand puppet in a Blackpool shop for 8s and called him Sooty. Now, having gone full-time with his little friend in 1952, he was at the start of what would become one of the world’s longest-running children’s television programmes.
¹³

Mid-February also had its moments. ‘Although
Picture Book
will set out to interest its very young viewers and awaken in them a sense of wonder and discovery, no attempt will be made to
teach
,’ solemnly promised
Radio Times
about the latest addition (‘Pages turned by Patricia Driscoll’) to the
Watch with Mother
line-up, going out for the first time on Monday the 14th between 4.00 and 4.15. Two days later, at the Strand Theatre, the curtain went up on
Sailor Beware!
, a kitchen comedy that made an overnight star of the foghorn-voiced, 38-year-old Peggy Mount. In a performance ‘instinct with horrid truth’, according to the
Spectator
’s Anthony Hartley, ‘she roars and bullies, snaps and frets with the immense and hideous gusto of one whose mission it is to make other people’s lives a hell on earth’. He added that, as the raucous Emma Hornett, she was also ‘extremely funny’, and ‘the audience rolled in the aisles’. ‘Peggy, you will never play glamorous roles,’ one cruel-to-be-kind producer had told her. ‘Even if you were slim, you’ve got a character face, character arms, a character body, a character voice.’ Next evening, on the 17th, a less endearing – but almost as enduring – battleaxe appeared on screen. ‘John and Phyllis Cradock, the Bon Viveur husband and wife cookery team, present an unusual style of cooking to a studio audience at the Television Theatre,’ was how
Radio Times
signalled the first
Kitchen Magic
. John and Phyllis were soon much better known as Johnnie and Fanny – with little doubt about who wore the trousers – and that evening their three party dishes comprised a Swiss roll, éclairs and soufflé
en surprise
, prepared for eight people at a cost of just over 6s. The
Listener
’s Reginald Pound called it ‘one of those put-up-job programmes in which the characters try hard to appear as if the inspiration for it has only just come to them’, but the short-tempered, snobbish, attention-seeking Fanny was poised to become post-war Britain’s first celebrity chef.

The difference between her and two longer-established cookery gurus was considerable. ‘Philip Harben and I weren’t celebrities,’ Marguerite Patten recalled half a century later. ‘We were informers, much less important than the food. Our role during rationing was to guide people through interesting meals when what you could buy was so limited.’ But by the mid-1950s rationing was passing into history, and food was starting to become about display as well as nourishment. In short, the mood music was just right for some culinary flamboyance, even some conspicuous consumption. ‘ANOTHER BOOM YEAR IS HERE’, pronounced the
News Chronicle
on the first Monday of 1955, on the basis of a Gallup poll showing that 80 per cent of adults expected to earn at least as much as in 1954. ‘In booming, buoyant Britain,’ declared the paper, ‘people are getting ready for a spending spree in which millions will be poured out on TVs, cars, houses, washing machines and refrigerators.’ Or, as Mollie Panter-Downes not long afterwards told her American readers, Britain was turning into a land of ‘new television masts sprouting from roofs, new cars in garages, and markets bulging with every conceivable necessity and luxury’.
¹⁴

One new car was in Chingford. February started well for Judy Haines – ‘England have won Fourth Test in Australia and consequently retained the Ashes,’ she wrote on the 2nd. ‘Lovely!’ – and then got better. On the 15th a local car dealer returned, at her husband Abbé’s request, the deposit for a Ford Anglia: ‘Can’t wait for car indefinitely. We are all delighted the way is clear to negotiate for a Standard 8.’ The following Saturday was cold and snowy: ‘Just sat around fire and dreamed of a Standard 8 and much better weather.’ And then on Saturday the 26th, after Abbé had bought the car but not been able to bring it home because of still needing insurance: ‘Thrilled! He went off to see Leyton play Watford. Pity they had to lose on this lovely day. I can think of nothing but cars, especially 825 CEV.’ The great day came on Saturday, 5 March: ‘Excitement runs high. Abbé went off to Lamb’s and brought home the beautiful Standard Eight de Luxe 825 CEV. The girls were watching from window. “It’s a black Standard! It’s CEV! It’s 825 – it’s Daddy!” ’ Two days later Abbé was going to work in central London by car, which soon had the family nickname ‘Kevin’. The Standard Eight was a four-door saloon, launched two years earlier, and from May 1955 even the non-de luxe version of it had winding windows and trimmed door panels, at the cost of an extra £28 6s 8d. The Standard Motor Company, explained the
Economist
rather sniffily, ‘has now accepted the fact that motorists are prepared to spend quite substantial sums for details that add nothing to a car’s mechanical efficiency and little to the physical comfort of driving it’. From Judy Haines herself, there remained gratitude for anything that made day-to-day life easier. Or as she eloquently wrote in early May, ‘My back is aching. Oh how lovely to have a washing machine.’

It did not yet feel like boom time in Bethnal Green. There for a week in March, at the request of Peter Townsend, a dozen old people (as they were categorised then) kept a daily diary. A trio of entries for Monday the 21st gives the flavour of a family-centred world where the new affluence was still just a distant rumour:

7.45 am.
I got up, went down, and put my kettle on the gas – half-way – then I raked my fire out and laid it, swept my ashes up, and then cleaned my hearth. Then I set light to my fire, then sat down for a while, then I made tea and me and Dad had a cup.

9.20 am.
I went out for the
Daily Mirror
and fags for Dad. About eight people said ‘Good morning’ with a nice smile, then I replied back. Then I went home and prepared oats and bread, butter and tea and me and Dad sat for breakfast. When we finished I cleared away and swept and mopped my kitchen out.

11.15 am.
I started to get dinner on, then Mrs Rice, a neighbour, asked me to get her coals in, and she will take my bag-wash, also get my dog’s meat. We had a nice chat about Mothers’ Day. I showed her my flowers and card which Alice sent. It was very touching, a box of chocs from John, stockings and card from Rose, card and 5s from Bill, as I know they all think dearly of me.

1 pm.
My daughter Alice came with baby. We had dinner together.

2 pm.
My daughter Rose and husband came. I made them a cup of tea and cake.

3.15 pm.
Dad and I sat to listen to radio.

5 pm.
We both had tea, bread and cheese Dad, bread and jam myself. When finished I cleared away again.

7 pm.
My son John and his wife called to see if we were all right before they went home from work.

8 pm.
I did a little mending.

10 pm.
We went to bed.

7.45 am.
Got up, made a cup of tea.

8 am.
Started to clear the place up. Cleared the fireplace out. I had the sweep coming between 9.30 and 10 and they are very strict on time. And at 9 had some bread and marmalade for quickness and he came at 9.45. He stayed about 20 minutes – another 5s gone. Well, I had to sweep up and clear the place up and got out at 11.15.

11.15 am.
Went to the paper shop, got my
News Chronicle
and my ration of twenty Woodbines and went to my daughter’s place in Thirsk Street at 11.45. Sat down for a while and had a smoke.

12.15 pm.
Washed her breakfast things up, swept the kitchen up and then had another sit down talking to Mr Bird (budgie). Then found some cold meat, so I boiled some potatoes and had some dinner with a nice cup of tea.

1.30 pm.
Sat down and read the paper and listened to the wireless and of course dozed off till 3 pm. Got up, washed up and got ready for the girl to come home at 4.20, made a cup of tea, then the grandchildren came home at 4.40 and you know what they are for talking and at 5.30 I went home, buying the paper as I go along. Got home at 5.50.

5.50 pm.
First thing light the fire, then lay the table, make the tea, boil an egg and finish up with marmalade. Then sat down and read the paper. Then got up, washed up, had a wash, sat down till 9. Then went to the club and had a chat and a game of cards till 11, then home and so to bed 11.30.

Got up at 8.30, lit the fire 9.0, then had breakfast, tea and toast. 9.20 my grandson brought my dinner in to cook. 9.45 cleaned my budgie out and settled her. 10.0 peeled the potatoes. 10.15 started my clearing up, made the bed and washed up. 11.0 put my dinner on to cook and then did a little washing. 12.30 had my dinner, bacon and potatoes, fed the dog. After sitting a while got up and washed up. 2.10 got myself ready to go and see an old neighbour. 2.30 went over to my neighbour. After sitting talking about the family, made a cup of tea and had a cake, after that we finished our conversation. 4.0 washed up. 4.30 left her to come home to catch my daughter’s club man [her daughter was an agent for a clothing club, collecting weekly payments for clothing and shoes] but he didn’t turn up, so at 5.0 got my tea and sat resting by the fire. Then I got up. 6.30 a friend came in to pay her club. We sat talking about the family, and in the meantime my grandson and his friend came in to take the dog for his night’s run. My friend left at 7.15. After that I cleared the fireplace up and tidied up the room. 7.30 sat down and had a read of the paper. 7.45 started to write a letter to my son in Dorset. 9.0 got my supper, a boiled egg and toast, and cleared away. After that I sat and had another read. 10.20 went to bed.

‘Balls to say as administrators do more neighbourliness & more services for elderly,’ Townsend himself jotted down not long afterwards. ‘Important thing is what is happening to family. Help family to help itself.’ Meanwhile, his colleagues Michael Young and Peter Willmott continued to work away at what would become
Family and Kinship in East London
(1957). ‘800 Bethnal Green families now lie massed on a big office table,’ Young noted in May after a big push on the interviews. ‘How shall we convert them back again into flesh and blood people? Social research is a strange job. Pouring information from one bottle into another, making people into words and always hoping for the creative leap which will make facts into life.’
¹⁵

Things were also tight at Woburn Abbey. Family seat of the dukes of Bedford, it was in a decrepit state when the 13th Duke inherited it in 1953, along with a crippling bill for death duties not far short of £6 million. After initial dismay, he went to work with a will and in April 1955 opened it to the paying public, complete with children’s zoo, playground, boating lake and tearoom. His wife Lydia helped out as a guide, and during the first week a man came up to her and, with the words ‘That’s for you, ducks’, put a sixpenny bit in her hand. More than 180,000 visitors came in the first year, well above expectations, and despite some murmurings of disapproval, a razzmatazz future lay ahead for the ancestral home. The Indian writer Nirad Chaudhuri, visiting England about the same time as the opening, noted ‘the growing habit of visiting the country houses’ and, on the basis of personal observation, tried to explain why: ‘One motivation of a practical order must be ruled out altogether, and that is the wish to get ideas about building, furnishing, and living in such places. Even historical interest in them or the families did not seem to be very strong, because many of the visitors had to be supplied with such information. Those who went to see them appeared to derive some immediate and direct satisfaction from the mere sight of the houses and their contents.’ Even so, these were grim times. ‘In 1955 alone,’ according to the architectural historian J. Mordaunt Crook, ‘country houses were coming down at the rate of one every two-and-a-half days. There had been nothing quite like it since the Dissolution of the Monasteries.’ And this summer there was particular dismay when Lord Lansdowne demolished a large, Adams-built part of Bowood House in Wiltshire, on the grounds that it had gone beyond any possibility of economic repair and, even if repaired, would be uneconomic to maintain. ‘In France and Italy Bowood would be a classified monument,’ James Lees-Milne from Brooks’s fulminated to
The Times
. ‘The fate that now awaits it would not be tolerated in these two countries for a moment.’