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Telly Talk Soaps
UK Soaps Forum
An Oral History 1985-2015
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<blockquote data-quote="James from London" data-source="post: 116947" data-attributes="member: 22"><p><span style="font-size: 18px"><u>1970</u></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Pat Evans, speaking to Big Mo in 2000: You didn't have any friends [in Walford] thirty years ago.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Alfie Moon to Kat: When God was handing out brains, you were standing at the back of the queue asking for a spray tan.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Arthur “Fatboy” Chubb: You must have been born with a beer pump in your hand.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Kat Moon (née Slater): Do I take that as a compliment?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Charlie Slater to his daughter Kat: I've loved you since the first day you were born.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Charlie to Kat: I’ve always loved you very much — a difficult, highly strung, beautiful pain in the neck.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Heather Trott: I’ve got this sort of memory. It’s not like pictures but more like colours and the smell of roses and being lifted up high, and Mummy shouting, “Don’t drop the baby! He’s going to drop the stinking baby!” Big hands and big arms and them roses — it was like flying through perfume. And me dad in me ear, he was going, “Don’t be scared, I ain’t going to drop you. I’m your dad.”</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"> </span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Paul Trueman: Years I spent saying I was sorry - Mum in that armchair and me sitting on the sofa, right in the corner of the sofa, back at the old house. Before I even started school, I can remember Mum in that armchair, me sitting there, shouting it - "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry!" - because I didn't know what else I could say, but she wouldn't crack. She just wouldn't. "So am I," she'd say. "So am I."</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Patrick Trueman: My Audrey was unshakeable [in her religious beliefs].</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Jim Branning: But you've got two kids.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Patrick: Secret's in the wrist action.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Jean Slater: I used to be really, really good at the egg and spoon race. I mean, most people think the</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">trick is in choosing the right egg, but it’s not. It’s about having a firm wrist.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Jean: I was never any good at sport at school. They used to make me do extra needlework instead. Then they discovered I couldn’t sew either so in the end they just let me sit with the coats.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Patrick on women drivers: I'm going to tell you when it all went wrong for us [men] - that Australian lass, what was her name now? Greer Garson, the feminist. I mean, we didn't have all this trouble before she came on the scene. We were literally in the driving seat.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Patrick: I was a terrible father. I made a whole heap of mistakes.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Paul to his younger brother Anthony: You were really cute as a baby.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Patrick: Anthony, he was a last ditch attempt to save the marriage. It didn't work though. She poured all the love she had into him.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Paul to Audrey: You've been controlling [Anthony's] every move since the day he was born.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Patrick Trueman on a home-made baby’s mobile: It belonged to Anthony. His mother kept it for him in case he had children.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">William Edward Skinner Died 22.4.70</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Heather on George Michael: You know how he started his love of music? He was given a radio when he was seven for his birthday. And he had violin lessons when he was a kid.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Shirley Carter: Didn’t we all?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Heather: His mum and dad, they used to have this old record player that he used to use. He had two Supremes records and a Tom Jones.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Shirley: Well, that’s not unusual.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Minty Peterson: Manda [Best] had piano lessons when she was little.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Keith Miller: Brazil, 1970 - the best team ever.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Garry Hobbs: I was conceived during the World Cup.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Pauline Fowler: You used to run the local [football] league, didn't you?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Derek Harkinson: In my better days. I had something of a reputation. Rather a stickler for the rules, I'm afraid.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Billy Mitchell on football: I used to play a bit at school. I had a scout come to see me once, trials and everything.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Ernie Johnson: You were a nippy little winger on the pitch.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Billy: Yeah, I was fast.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Ernie: What year were you actually playing?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Billy: '70.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Billy looking at an old photograph of his care home football team: That's me, look.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Ernie: Yeah. You ain't smiling.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Billy: No, I'm not smiling.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Billy: You shouted at me at three in the morning, called me a girl and a mummy's boy just because I had to go off for a wee during the match.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Ernie: It wasn't me who did these things to you. It wasn't me, Billy. Once or twice I may have shouted ...</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Billy: You're a liar. I remember you holding me down.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Ernie: No. You remember me holding you, that's all. Remember? And I just held you, as if you were me own son.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Billy: You held me?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Ernie: You was upset. You wanted your mum. You kept calling for her. And I just held you till you fell asleep.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Billy: Yeah, I remember that.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Ernie: You were homesick. I felt sorry for you, your mum leaving you like that.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Ernie: I worked very hard at Hope Manor. Some of you kids were pretty tough, you know, giving us lip. Not you, Billy. You were a very good boy.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Billy: I tried hard enough to be.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Billy: My radio, my crystal set, I got it working. Everyone was outside, but I was on me own. It was a Saturday and I got the football scores, and that's</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">when you found me. I should have been training outside with the others, but I was listening to the football results and you flew at me. You pulled your belt off and you went at it. You didn't spare the old rod that day, did you? You used the buckle end.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Ernie: We were training for a cup match. I needed you on the pitch.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Billy: You went for it, didn't you, eh? But you left my radio on and while you was beating me, I could suddenly realise why. You wanted to hear the scores. You was knocking the hell out of an eleven year old boy and listening to the football results while you did it.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Ernie: It was only that one time.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Billy: That night, I couldn't sleep because of the pain and even you felt bad because when you came to see me, you held me when I cried and you said, "Don't worry, Billy, it's be all right, it'll be OK. It'll go away by the morning." And guess what, Ernie? It didn't go away. Ever.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Ernie: I didn't use the buckle.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Billy: Well, what did this then? [Lifts up his shirt to reveal a scar on his lower back.]</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Billy: How I felt - it ain't just about the pain, it's about the shame.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Ernie to Billy: What you lot never understood was that we were getting you prepared for the real world. Not some soppy fairy land, but the real world of hard knocks where Mummy and Daddy aren't always there to kiss it better. But did we ever get a letter or a phone call of thanks? No, of course we didn't because it's all "me, me, me", isn't it?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Billy: Ernie used to knock me about a bit. I got off light.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Billy on Ernie: In me head, I always imagined him to be like massive.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Phil: You ever been in juvenile nick? You got any idea what it’s like? I had a couple of mates back in the seventies who went to approved school and they couldn’t hack it. They were tough kids.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Phil to Peggy: You never stuck up for me, did you? Where were you? I was eight, nine. [You were] sat in front room with the telly turned up loud while [Eric] took a set of jump leads to my backside, my back and my legs. Good programme was it, Mum, eh?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Peggy: I don’t even know what you’re talking about.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Phil: No, of course you don’t because you blocked it out just like you always did. I was nine years old, Mum, and crying me eyes out, but what did I get? “If you don’t stop crying, you’ll get some more.” So I got some more, didn’t I, eh? And if weren’t for Grant slinging things at him, he’d probably still be at it now. The next day, I’m all the colours of the rainbow, but she [Peggy] don’t even want to look at me.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Peggy: We all cover things up. I should know. I did it enough times with Eric when he was kicking Phil about, turning your back on things you don’t want to see.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Archie Mitchell to Phil: My dad, your dad, you - it’s just a relay race, handing down the misery and it goes on and on. I’m not saying those jump leads</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">didn’t hurt, Phil, but there’s a reason for everything.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Peggy: It wasn’t my fault. What was I supposed to do? What Phil’s never understood is that if I interfered or tried to stop it, it would only make things worse. Phil blames me and that’s what I’ve had to live with. I know deep down I should have left him, but how? Eric had his hands on the pursestrings and where was I going to go? There were no women’s refuge in those days.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Phil: A funny thing happened to me, it must have been around the same time. It was at the school assembly and this bloke from the NSPCC’s come to give us a talk and he’s going, “What you have to realise is that there’s children out there, they’re not as lucky as you are. They don’t come from nice homes and their mum and dads, they do cruel things to them." And I’m sitting there and I’ve got bruises all across the back of me legs, all across me shoulders. Anyway, when he’s finished his bit, they give us these collection boxes, blue things in the shape of an egg.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Archie: Do you get a badge?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Phil: Yeah. You collect a pound, you get one blue bird. You collect two pounds, you get two blue birds. Anyway, I really wanted one of these badges so I took the collection box home. I stuck it on the kitchen side. I opened it up at the end of the first term and there’s three and a tanner in pennies. So no badge for me. So you know what I did? The school swot, he’s a kid called Robert McClenon, and he’s got a badge with three blue birds on it so I go up to him after school and I say, “Give us your badge or I’ll do you.” Anyway, he wouldn’t give me his badge so I did him, nicked his badge. A couple of weeks later, I lost the badge and I bought ten Number 6 with three and a tanner and I smoked them one after another and felt sick as a dog.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Cora Cross, speaking on September 5th 2011: Today is the anniversary of the day I met my husband William, forty-one years to the day. I was running for the bus. He was a bus conductor and he grabbed me and pulled me up.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Cora: Only one man ever meant toffee to me.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">David Wicks to Pat: Have you any idea what it was like being your son?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Pat: I was a rotten mother. I never really put my boys first.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Pat: When Simon and David were kids, they had a horrible room. Brown walls, disgusting lampshade. I couldn't be bothered.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Pat: My lot lived in hand-me-downs. Saved me a fortune.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">David: My childhood memories — your knickers on the stair carpet and you at it with some salesman with the bedroom door open. That’s item one in a long long list.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">David to Pat: I remember one night, I was, I don't know, seven or eight, and I'd had this terrible nightmare and I woke up and I was frightened. I was shaking. So I thought I'd go into your room, get into bed with you, even though I knew you didn't like it. I gets up, I goes to your room and as I open the door to your bedroom, do you know what I saw? I saw you having it off with this bloke. I knew him, I knew the guy. I recognised him from down the market. Blimey, he could only have been out of school a couple of years. Do you know what he did when he saw me looking at the two of you? He winked. He bloody winked. That was the worst moment of my life. And I bet you don't even remember his name.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Simon: My mum used to say that every lad should learn the ropes from an older woman. I think that's because she wanted to be the teacher.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Pat: Who got up in the middle of the night when you were sick, eh?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Simon: The one time I got out of bed because I was sick, I come down, you was on the settee with one of my uncles.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">David: I never had a father, just a succession of uncles who liked it best if I kept out of their way. I had a crap childhood.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Simon on Pat: Up until she got her hooks into [Brian Wicks], I had so many uncles I couldn't keep track of them. Some of them were all right. There was one of them, Uncle Charlie, he used to play football with me in the street on a Sunday morning. He lasted about six months. I'd just get to know them and they'd be off.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Pat: I had a lot of problems when you were kids, things you knew nothing about.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">David: All right, but did you have to take it out on me and Simon? Did you? I remember it so well. You'd come rolling home in a drunken rage and belt the living daylights out of us. Do you remember doing that? For nothing, just because we were making a bit of noise or something. And then the next day, it would be as if nothing had happened. You never, never once, said sorry. You never gave a toss.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Pat to David: Ever since you were a little boy, you’d make a mess and you’d jump on your bike and you’d run away, disappear over the horizon and start again.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Dot: I remember David Wicks when he was little. He was always riding for a fall. Too full of himself. Still, having Pat as a mother didn't help. I mean, how could it?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Dot on Pat: I never had you down as a good mother.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Pat: In them days, I was so careless with people. David never stood a chance.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Pat: I couldn't stand you and your brother clinging.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Simon: I remember. We stopped pretty soon, didn't we?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Pat: That's not to say I didn't love you or look after you properly because I did.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Pat: All I ever wanted was a bloke who'd see me right and be a good dad to me kids — a good man, someone to look after me.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">David: If I had a pound for every bloke my mum said she loved, I'd be in Rio.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">David to Pat: Seen it all before, haven't I? You breaking your heart over some stupid bloke who's been messing about with your feelings.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Pat: I was so down once, I felt like advertising. You get a few nutters, but some of the replies are quite genuine.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Pat: I had a bloke once, said he was popping round the shop for some fags. Never saw him again.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Pat: I nearly got married on a beach once — Margate.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Simon on Brian Wicks: He was the one that didn't get away, wasn't he? He was a bastard.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Pat on Brian: He was good for a cuddle. In them days, I needed lots of cuddles. He was the real thing for a time. That's why I married him.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Pat on Brian: Thinking back, I was a bit hasty though. What a con merchant.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Pat: Brian Wicks fobbed me off with [an engagement ring] that belonged to his mum.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Pat on getting married: I was pretty wobbly my first time. And the second.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Pat: I can't say either of my honeymoons were a great success.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Pat: [My] second [marriage] was a non-starter.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Pat: I was married to a man I didn’t love and it weren’t much fun.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Pat: Brian’s mum didn’t talk to me for the first six months we was married.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Pat on Brian: He looked flash in a suit and he had nice hands, strong.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Simon: Oh yeah. I know all about his strong hands, don't I?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Pat: You and your brother were a handful. You needed a man about the house.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Simon: There was a time I was a right little toe-rag.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Pat to Brian: You always were a conniving rat.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Brian Wicks: A wage packet at the end of the week, that's all I was to you.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Pat: You never did a day's work in your life. The only cash that come in that crummy council flat was what I earned. One thing you did give me was your fist.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Simon to Pat: I know what you got [from Brian] when he was home — a right-hander six nights a week.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Brian to Pat: I never meant to hurt you. It was me I was getting at really. I'd let you down, I'd let Simon and David down.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Nana Moon on her nephew Maxwell: Pumpkin, that's what I used to call him when he was little.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Maxwell Moon, looking at old photographs: Hastings, 1970. Our first holiday. You remember that really hot day? Here look — there's me, look.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Alfie, Maxwell's second cousin: How come you're wearing a balaclava?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Maxwell: I was in disguise, weren't I? You told me that I needed a passport to cross the river. I spent the whole holiday thinking I was an illegal immigrant. Here look, there's me nan burying me in the sand.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Louise Raymond (née Simmons): Butlin's Holiday Camp, Pwhelli, 1970. I was eleven years old and there was a dancing competition - The Hitchhiker. I was up against all these thirteen and fourteen year olds and I beat the lot.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Pauline on Eddie Skinner: I haven't seen him since I was twenty-five years old.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Pauline: I wish I was twenty-five again. I was happy then.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Kenny Beale: I didn't really grow up till I went overseas. [New Zealand] was a bit like landing on the moon. I did a few things I shouldn't have.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Lou Beale to Kenny: It took you five years to let us know what you were doing.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Kenny: Best day's work you ever did [sending me away]. Wouldn't have sold many swimming pools in this dump [Walford].</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Lou: Pauline said that's what you were doing.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Kenny: Couldn't you have put pen to paper just once and written to me instead of getting Pauline to answer all the letters?</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Lou: What did I care what you were selling? Didn't see none of the profits, did I? Didn't help your own mother out. Dad gone, me running the stall, then Pete. You knew how things were. You couldn't so much as send me a cardigan for Christmas.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px"></span></p><p><span style="font-size: 18px">Billy: I had a bear when I was [eleven].</span></p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="James from London, post: 116947, member: 22"] [SIZE=5][U]1970[/U] Pat Evans, speaking to Big Mo in 2000: You didn't have any friends [in Walford] thirty years ago. Alfie Moon to Kat: When God was handing out brains, you were standing at the back of the queue asking for a spray tan. Arthur “Fatboy” Chubb: You must have been born with a beer pump in your hand. Kat Moon (née Slater): Do I take that as a compliment? Charlie Slater to his daughter Kat: I've loved you since the first day you were born. Charlie to Kat: I’ve always loved you very much — a difficult, highly strung, beautiful pain in the neck. Heather Trott: I’ve got this sort of memory. It’s not like pictures but more like colours and the smell of roses and being lifted up high, and Mummy shouting, “Don’t drop the baby! He’s going to drop the stinking baby!” Big hands and big arms and them roses — it was like flying through perfume. And me dad in me ear, he was going, “Don’t be scared, I ain’t going to drop you. I’m your dad.” Paul Trueman: Years I spent saying I was sorry - Mum in that armchair and me sitting on the sofa, right in the corner of the sofa, back at the old house. Before I even started school, I can remember Mum in that armchair, me sitting there, shouting it - "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry!" - because I didn't know what else I could say, but she wouldn't crack. She just wouldn't. "So am I," she'd say. "So am I." Patrick Trueman: My Audrey was unshakeable [in her religious beliefs]. Jim Branning: But you've got two kids. Patrick: Secret's in the wrist action. Jean Slater: I used to be really, really good at the egg and spoon race. I mean, most people think the trick is in choosing the right egg, but it’s not. It’s about having a firm wrist. Jean: I was never any good at sport at school. They used to make me do extra needlework instead. Then they discovered I couldn’t sew either so in the end they just let me sit with the coats. Patrick on women drivers: I'm going to tell you when it all went wrong for us [men] - that Australian lass, what was her name now? Greer Garson, the feminist. I mean, we didn't have all this trouble before she came on the scene. We were literally in the driving seat. Patrick: I was a terrible father. I made a whole heap of mistakes. Paul to his younger brother Anthony: You were really cute as a baby. Patrick: Anthony, he was a last ditch attempt to save the marriage. It didn't work though. She poured all the love she had into him. Paul to Audrey: You've been controlling [Anthony's] every move since the day he was born. Patrick Trueman on a home-made baby’s mobile: It belonged to Anthony. His mother kept it for him in case he had children. William Edward Skinner Died 22.4.70 Heather on George Michael: You know how he started his love of music? He was given a radio when he was seven for his birthday. And he had violin lessons when he was a kid. Shirley Carter: Didn’t we all? Heather: His mum and dad, they used to have this old record player that he used to use. He had two Supremes records and a Tom Jones. Shirley: Well, that’s not unusual. Minty Peterson: Manda [Best] had piano lessons when she was little. Keith Miller: Brazil, 1970 - the best team ever. Garry Hobbs: I was conceived during the World Cup. Pauline Fowler: You used to run the local [football] league, didn't you? Derek Harkinson: In my better days. I had something of a reputation. Rather a stickler for the rules, I'm afraid. Billy Mitchell on football: I used to play a bit at school. I had a scout come to see me once, trials and everything. Ernie Johnson: You were a nippy little winger on the pitch. Billy: Yeah, I was fast. Ernie: What year were you actually playing? Billy: '70. Billy looking at an old photograph of his care home football team: That's me, look. Ernie: Yeah. You ain't smiling. Billy: No, I'm not smiling. Billy: You shouted at me at three in the morning, called me a girl and a mummy's boy just because I had to go off for a wee during the match. Ernie: It wasn't me who did these things to you. It wasn't me, Billy. Once or twice I may have shouted ... Billy: You're a liar. I remember you holding me down. Ernie: No. You remember me holding you, that's all. Remember? And I just held you, as if you were me own son. Billy: You held me? Ernie: You was upset. You wanted your mum. You kept calling for her. And I just held you till you fell asleep. Billy: Yeah, I remember that. Ernie: You were homesick. I felt sorry for you, your mum leaving you like that. Ernie: I worked very hard at Hope Manor. Some of you kids were pretty tough, you know, giving us lip. Not you, Billy. You were a very good boy. Billy: I tried hard enough to be. Billy: My radio, my crystal set, I got it working. Everyone was outside, but I was on me own. It was a Saturday and I got the football scores, and that's when you found me. I should have been training outside with the others, but I was listening to the football results and you flew at me. You pulled your belt off and you went at it. You didn't spare the old rod that day, did you? You used the buckle end. Ernie: We were training for a cup match. I needed you on the pitch. Billy: You went for it, didn't you, eh? But you left my radio on and while you was beating me, I could suddenly realise why. You wanted to hear the scores. You was knocking the hell out of an eleven year old boy and listening to the football results while you did it. Ernie: It was only that one time. Billy: That night, I couldn't sleep because of the pain and even you felt bad because when you came to see me, you held me when I cried and you said, "Don't worry, Billy, it's be all right, it'll be OK. It'll go away by the morning." And guess what, Ernie? It didn't go away. Ever. Ernie: I didn't use the buckle. Billy: Well, what did this then? [Lifts up his shirt to reveal a scar on his lower back.] Billy: How I felt - it ain't just about the pain, it's about the shame. Ernie to Billy: What you lot never understood was that we were getting you prepared for the real world. Not some soppy fairy land, but the real world of hard knocks where Mummy and Daddy aren't always there to kiss it better. But did we ever get a letter or a phone call of thanks? No, of course we didn't because it's all "me, me, me", isn't it? Billy: Ernie used to knock me about a bit. I got off light. Billy on Ernie: In me head, I always imagined him to be like massive. Phil: You ever been in juvenile nick? You got any idea what it’s like? I had a couple of mates back in the seventies who went to approved school and they couldn’t hack it. They were tough kids. Phil to Peggy: You never stuck up for me, did you? Where were you? I was eight, nine. [You were] sat in front room with the telly turned up loud while [Eric] took a set of jump leads to my backside, my back and my legs. Good programme was it, Mum, eh? Peggy: I don’t even know what you’re talking about. Phil: No, of course you don’t because you blocked it out just like you always did. I was nine years old, Mum, and crying me eyes out, but what did I get? “If you don’t stop crying, you’ll get some more.” So I got some more, didn’t I, eh? And if weren’t for Grant slinging things at him, he’d probably still be at it now. The next day, I’m all the colours of the rainbow, but she [Peggy] don’t even want to look at me. Peggy: We all cover things up. I should know. I did it enough times with Eric when he was kicking Phil about, turning your back on things you don’t want to see. Archie Mitchell to Phil: My dad, your dad, you - it’s just a relay race, handing down the misery and it goes on and on. I’m not saying those jump leads didn’t hurt, Phil, but there’s a reason for everything. Peggy: It wasn’t my fault. What was I supposed to do? What Phil’s never understood is that if I interfered or tried to stop it, it would only make things worse. Phil blames me and that’s what I’ve had to live with. I know deep down I should have left him, but how? Eric had his hands on the pursestrings and where was I going to go? There were no women’s refuge in those days. Phil: A funny thing happened to me, it must have been around the same time. It was at the school assembly and this bloke from the NSPCC’s come to give us a talk and he’s going, “What you have to realise is that there’s children out there, they’re not as lucky as you are. They don’t come from nice homes and their mum and dads, they do cruel things to them." And I’m sitting there and I’ve got bruises all across the back of me legs, all across me shoulders. Anyway, when he’s finished his bit, they give us these collection boxes, blue things in the shape of an egg. Archie: Do you get a badge? Phil: Yeah. You collect a pound, you get one blue bird. You collect two pounds, you get two blue birds. Anyway, I really wanted one of these badges so I took the collection box home. I stuck it on the kitchen side. I opened it up at the end of the first term and there’s three and a tanner in pennies. So no badge for me. So you know what I did? The school swot, he’s a kid called Robert McClenon, and he’s got a badge with three blue birds on it so I go up to him after school and I say, “Give us your badge or I’ll do you.” Anyway, he wouldn’t give me his badge so I did him, nicked his badge. A couple of weeks later, I lost the badge and I bought ten Number 6 with three and a tanner and I smoked them one after another and felt sick as a dog. Cora Cross, speaking on September 5th 2011: Today is the anniversary of the day I met my husband William, forty-one years to the day. I was running for the bus. He was a bus conductor and he grabbed me and pulled me up. Cora: Only one man ever meant toffee to me. David Wicks to Pat: Have you any idea what it was like being your son? Pat: I was a rotten mother. I never really put my boys first. Pat: When Simon and David were kids, they had a horrible room. Brown walls, disgusting lampshade. I couldn't be bothered. Pat: My lot lived in hand-me-downs. Saved me a fortune. David: My childhood memories — your knickers on the stair carpet and you at it with some salesman with the bedroom door open. That’s item one in a long long list. David to Pat: I remember one night, I was, I don't know, seven or eight, and I'd had this terrible nightmare and I woke up and I was frightened. I was shaking. So I thought I'd go into your room, get into bed with you, even though I knew you didn't like it. I gets up, I goes to your room and as I open the door to your bedroom, do you know what I saw? I saw you having it off with this bloke. I knew him, I knew the guy. I recognised him from down the market. Blimey, he could only have been out of school a couple of years. Do you know what he did when he saw me looking at the two of you? He winked. He bloody winked. That was the worst moment of my life. And I bet you don't even remember his name. Simon: My mum used to say that every lad should learn the ropes from an older woman. I think that's because she wanted to be the teacher. Pat: Who got up in the middle of the night when you were sick, eh? Simon: The one time I got out of bed because I was sick, I come down, you was on the settee with one of my uncles. David: I never had a father, just a succession of uncles who liked it best if I kept out of their way. I had a crap childhood. Simon on Pat: Up until she got her hooks into [Brian Wicks], I had so many uncles I couldn't keep track of them. Some of them were all right. There was one of them, Uncle Charlie, he used to play football with me in the street on a Sunday morning. He lasted about six months. I'd just get to know them and they'd be off. Pat: I had a lot of problems when you were kids, things you knew nothing about. David: All right, but did you have to take it out on me and Simon? Did you? I remember it so well. You'd come rolling home in a drunken rage and belt the living daylights out of us. Do you remember doing that? For nothing, just because we were making a bit of noise or something. And then the next day, it would be as if nothing had happened. You never, never once, said sorry. You never gave a toss. Pat to David: Ever since you were a little boy, you’d make a mess and you’d jump on your bike and you’d run away, disappear over the horizon and start again. Dot: I remember David Wicks when he was little. He was always riding for a fall. Too full of himself. Still, having Pat as a mother didn't help. I mean, how could it? Dot on Pat: I never had you down as a good mother. Pat: In them days, I was so careless with people. David never stood a chance. Pat: I couldn't stand you and your brother clinging. Simon: I remember. We stopped pretty soon, didn't we? Pat: That's not to say I didn't love you or look after you properly because I did. Pat: All I ever wanted was a bloke who'd see me right and be a good dad to me kids — a good man, someone to look after me. David: If I had a pound for every bloke my mum said she loved, I'd be in Rio. David to Pat: Seen it all before, haven't I? You breaking your heart over some stupid bloke who's been messing about with your feelings. Pat: I was so down once, I felt like advertising. You get a few nutters, but some of the replies are quite genuine. Pat: I had a bloke once, said he was popping round the shop for some fags. Never saw him again. Pat: I nearly got married on a beach once — Margate. Simon on Brian Wicks: He was the one that didn't get away, wasn't he? He was a bastard. Pat on Brian: He was good for a cuddle. In them days, I needed lots of cuddles. He was the real thing for a time. That's why I married him. Pat on Brian: Thinking back, I was a bit hasty though. What a con merchant. Pat: Brian Wicks fobbed me off with [an engagement ring] that belonged to his mum. Pat on getting married: I was pretty wobbly my first time. And the second. Pat: I can't say either of my honeymoons were a great success. Pat: [My] second [marriage] was a non-starter. Pat: I was married to a man I didn’t love and it weren’t much fun. Pat: Brian’s mum didn’t talk to me for the first six months we was married. Pat on Brian: He looked flash in a suit and he had nice hands, strong. Simon: Oh yeah. I know all about his strong hands, don't I? Pat: You and your brother were a handful. You needed a man about the house. Simon: There was a time I was a right little toe-rag. Pat to Brian: You always were a conniving rat. Brian Wicks: A wage packet at the end of the week, that's all I was to you. Pat: You never did a day's work in your life. The only cash that come in that crummy council flat was what I earned. One thing you did give me was your fist. Simon to Pat: I know what you got [from Brian] when he was home — a right-hander six nights a week. Brian to Pat: I never meant to hurt you. It was me I was getting at really. I'd let you down, I'd let Simon and David down. Nana Moon on her nephew Maxwell: Pumpkin, that's what I used to call him when he was little. Maxwell Moon, looking at old photographs: Hastings, 1970. Our first holiday. You remember that really hot day? Here look — there's me, look. Alfie, Maxwell's second cousin: How come you're wearing a balaclava? Maxwell: I was in disguise, weren't I? You told me that I needed a passport to cross the river. I spent the whole holiday thinking I was an illegal immigrant. Here look, there's me nan burying me in the sand. Louise Raymond (née Simmons): Butlin's Holiday Camp, Pwhelli, 1970. I was eleven years old and there was a dancing competition - The Hitchhiker. I was up against all these thirteen and fourteen year olds and I beat the lot. Pauline on Eddie Skinner: I haven't seen him since I was twenty-five years old. Pauline: I wish I was twenty-five again. I was happy then. Kenny Beale: I didn't really grow up till I went overseas. [New Zealand] was a bit like landing on the moon. I did a few things I shouldn't have. Lou Beale to Kenny: It took you five years to let us know what you were doing. Kenny: Best day's work you ever did [sending me away]. Wouldn't have sold many swimming pools in this dump [Walford]. Lou: Pauline said that's what you were doing. Kenny: Couldn't you have put pen to paper just once and written to me instead of getting Pauline to answer all the letters? Lou: What did I care what you were selling? Didn't see none of the profits, did I? Didn't help your own mother out. Dad gone, me running the stall, then Pete. You knew how things were. You couldn't so much as send me a cardigan for Christmas. Billy: I had a bear when I was [eleven].[/SIZE] [/QUOTE]
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