The Co-Op's Got Bananas

by Hunter Davies

  Margaret did help me eventually to get some decent clothes. When she came through to Manchester one weekend, to stay in my horrible room, she insisted that I went to Kendal Milne’s in Deansgate, Manchester’s smartest shop. I would have preferred somewhere much cheaper – Manchester was full of factory outlets, half the price. I know these fancy department stores, with their fancy prices, it’s all a con; they just hike the prices. She found a jacket she said would really suit me. It was Danish, in a grey sort of tweed, most distinctive and unusual, with a European air to it, not the sort you saw people wearing in Withy Grove. It cost £14, a whole week’s wages. I protested, demanding to look at cheaper jackets, but I still bought it.

  I wore it for the first time going through to Oxford the next weekend. Margaret, having such a generous scholarship grant, decided to pay for each of us to have our photos taken by Studio Edmark, Oxford’s Daisy Edis. I thought I looked pretty good in the jacket, and in the photo. I had that jacket for years and really did love it. And it was true – if you buy quality, from a quality place, it will last a long time. Not that I have since ever followed that principle. They don’t catch me twice.

  One of the problems when Margaret came to visit was having somewhere to go, something to do when we were not in bed together. We longed to get out in the country, in real fresh air, to go on long walks, the way we had done in Carlisle, but we could never find any parks in Manchester or even green spaces, apart from a little triangle of grass near St Ann’s Square. It was all so busy with traffic and people and industry. Oxford and Durham were clearly much more attractive cities, and even Carlisle seemed greener.

  In Oxford, we were still going to the Scala for the latest films, while in Manchester I began managing some evening entertainments for the two us – and getting paid at the same time. The Chron was inundated with invitations for the first nights of all the amateur dramatic productions for miles around, and liked to cover the bigger ones, with a big audience and big cast, all of which had to be listed. Most of the older staff did not want to go out in the evenings, having homes and families, but I volunteered, once I discovered you got paid five shillings for every one that made the paper. Some of them were excellent. Many were laughably appalling.

  I was then often asked to review the first night of professional shows at the Hulme Hippodrome. This was an old-fashioned music hall, with old-fashioned variety line-ups of jugglers, people whistling bird noises, acrobats, singers, comics and musicians. Now and again there was a strip show, or at least a tableau where two showgirls would pose, having gone through some brief and clumsy dance routine, slowly slipping off their clothes. They would then stand on stage, without moving, the curtain coming down just at the moment they were about to be naked. Then the whole audience stood up and cheered, demanding more.

  The Hulme Hip was an historic theatrical building, first opened in 1901, and what it was showing was also part of history. Even I could tell, in 1958, that what we were watching was the dying, rather tatty and pathetic embers of a century-old music-hall tradition. It was never going to compete with the growing popularity and availability of TV. It closed as a theatre in the 1960s, and became a bingo parlour in the 1980s.

  After a few months in my crummy room in Cheetham Hill, I eventually managed to find something better. I had by now been to various parts of Manchester on jobs, so had more of a feeling for the different areas. I realised the southern bits of Manchester were considered better, especially near the university, so I looked around Victoria Park and chose a room in a street partly because of its name – 43, Daisy Bank Road. I had a proper kitchen and living room this time, and a separate bedroom. Even my own telephone – RUSholme 7570. Margaret approved at once, thank God, and every time she came through to visit she usually did some painting and decorating, while I was at work. The landlady was called Mrs Craddock, but we hardly saw her. I later discovered, though, that she had at one time been a Guardian journalist.

  In the flat below was a young couple with a little girl aged about three. Every time I came home from work she would rush out of their flat and down the hall shouting, ‘SHUNTER!’ So I had to play with her. I always considered myself good with little kids, as opposed to secondary modern third-years. A skill I assumed I would never have a chance to use, as Margaret insisted she never wanted children.

  Most of the time I was in my flat on my own, as Margaret could only come through from Oxford now and again. I don’t remember doing any cooking, either here or in Heywood Street, or anywhere else in my whole life, come to that. What a disgrace. I blame my generation. My father did not cook either. I can’t remember what I ate in Daisy Bank when I came home from work in the evening. Toast I should think, perhaps some eggs and some beans, bought on the way home, cheap. If I had lunch in Manchester with Barry Cockcroft from the office, at one of the local Chinese restaurants (a form of food that still hadn’t arrived in Carlisle), I would fill myself up to save any cooking in the evening.

  I didn’t really socialise with anyone on the paper. I also didn’t like going to pubs, or spending my money. So during the day at work, I was always on the lookout for stories where there was a buffet, or some event where I could scoff some food.

  While Margaret was in Manchester visiting me, we were once invited out to Rochdale, best part, by Barry Cockcroft and his wife, who was pregnant at the time. He was so proud of Rochdale, saying he would never leave it, it had everything. ‘You’ve got no ambition, Barry,’ said his wife, several times, over lunch. She had a singsong Lancashire accent and this boring phrase, ‘You have no ambition, Barry’, always with the name at the end, went into our lexicon of boring, banal phrases. I always imagined that if we were captured by Russian spies and hidden away in some Gulag for decades, I would just have to say one of those silly phrases and Margaret would know it was me.

  We didn’t really have ‘our songs’ – except perhaps Songs for Swingin’ Lovers!, the Frank Sinatra LP, which I made Margaret listen to and also play on the Dansette record player I insisted she buy out of her first Oxford grant, though strangely enough it ended up in my flat.

  The day that Barry’s wife gave birth was a work day, but Barry was allowed to go home early. I was in the office not doing very much, so I decided to write a letter to his newborn baby daughter. I described what Barry had done that day, what he was working on, what the office looked like, who worked there, what we all did, our favourite restaurants, how Barry looked and dressed that very day and month in 1958. I addressed the letter to her, the newborn baby, instructing her not to open it for eighteen years. Then, on her eighteenth birthday, I would meet her at a certain Chinese restaurant, which was our favourite. I told her the exact time and address and not to be late.

  Eighteen years later, by which time I had completely forgotten that I had ever written such a letter, I got one from Barry’s daughter. ‘I was there. Where were you?’ I was miles away from Manchester by then, in a different world, a different city, a different life, and so was Barry.

  In 1968, Barry left the Evening Chronicle and moved to the new Yorkshire TV station, becoming a star director, winning lots of national and international awards. One of his best-known series was about an old farming woman called Hannah Hauxwell, who lived in a remote farmhouse with hardly any money. She became a well-known and much-loved character in the seventies and eighties on TV, and in books, thanks to Barry.

  I never actually met Barry again, or his daughter, after I left the Chron. But his obituary was in all the national newspapers when he died in 2001, aged sixty-eight. It was, of course, not true that ‘you have no ambition, Barry’. He did have ambitions, all the time. As did I.

  I will always be grateful to Barry Cockcroft for teaching me how to do news stories, passing on his tricks of the trade, generally helping me when I had just arrived in Manchester and everything was new and rather overwhelming.

  25

  SAD CYPRUS

  I got called into the editor’s office in November 1958. I hadn’t seen Jo
hn Goulden since he first interviewed me and, as far as I was aware, he had no idea what I was doing, unless of course Harold Mellor had filled him in on my spelling and other weaknesses.

  I had only been at the Chron for two months, but it seemed like two years. He told me I was being sent to Cyprus and I would be going there by plane. I didn’t quite catch the word Cyprus at first, thinking it was a suburb of Manchester I had not been to yet, perhaps near Crumpsall, so it seemed strange to be going there by plane.

  Cyprus was in the news and had been for two years, full of dreadful incidents and outrages, killings and explosions, mainly involving our brave servicemen, probably some of the same brave men who had been and were still fighting the Mau Mau in Kenya as well as in other red or formerly red splodges on the global map that we were trying to retain or control or govern, despite the wishes of some elements of the local population who had other desires.

  I hadn’t followed all the developments closely, although recently there had been one of the worst atrocities, when seven young RAF men had been killed by a bomb planted in the NAAFI. That had been in all the national newspapers. The word NAAFI, which I had assumed was no longer in use, had of course made me think of my mother.

  Cyprus had been under British control since 1878, becoming an official part of the British Empire in 1914. It became a Crown colony in 1922, which it still was in 1958. It was seen as a vital strategic base at the far end of the Mediterranean, handy for sorting out any problems the UK might find itself in anywhere in the region. At the beginning of the last world war, back in 1939, Britain had offered to give Cyprus to Greece if the Greeks would come in on the side of the Allies, but King Constantine of Greece was against it – being partly German himself and married to a German.

  Since 1955 there had been a campaign by a group wanting independence from the UK and union with Greece. They were called EOKA which stood for, in Greek, National Organisation of Cypriot Fighters. The British called the EOKA fighters terrorists, as they were attacking and killing our military forces. They were also attacking civilians employed by the British, blowing up barracks, assassinating informers and being generally unpleasant to all the British expat families. There was an added internal complication because EOKA was also fighting against a much smaller independent movement of Turkish Cypriots, who also wanted the Brits out, but in their case they wanted union with Turkey not Greece. None of these internal wars and struggles, then or now, are ever as simple and straightforward as they can at first appear from the outside.

  EOKA had around 1,200 fighters, led by George Grivas. In theory, they should not have stood a chance against some 40,000 British troops who were on the island at the height of the fighting – but, of course, EOKA was on home soil, with lots of local supporters and local knowledge. They were not fighting to take over any territory or bases, which might have been harder for them to achieve. Their main objective was to disrupt the British. Grivas wanted headline explosions and dramatic events to draw world attention and support and sympathy for their struggle. The Brits were therefore trying to protect themselves, keep peace and order on the island generally, while EOKA snipers were taking shots at them, ambushing and blowing up British convoys and men. The scenes we were reading about daily in the papers at home, and watching on TV, were much like the urban warfare we saw later in Belfast and Northern Ireland.

  I was being sent out to live with the 1st Battalion, Lancashire Fusiliers. They were a local regiment who had been based in Cyprus for about six months.

  I didn’t quite understand the deal at first, thinking it was the paper that was sending me, till it was made clear that it was an RAF press visit, using their facilities. I would be going on an RAF plane and would live there under canvas, along with the troops. They had also invited a reporter from the Evening News. The two of us would go out and report to our million readers in the Manchester area what a great job our lads, their lads, were doing.

  Mr Goulden had also said that London – meaning the HQ of the Kemsley group – would expect me to write stories for all their papers, both national and locals, in the group, if anything significant happened which I witnessed, or if I picked up any good stories. I was thrilled. What a chance, what a great job.

  I was rather brought down to earth when I came out of the meeting with the editor and told Mac, sitting next to me on the reporters’ table. ‘You are only being sent because you are young and single and expendable.’

  Thanks a lot. I told Margaret my news, and also what Mac had said. She agreed it was probably true. But what she wanted to know was, why did I want to go anyway, why was I so excited?

  It just seemed so obvious to me – a massive career move, and so interesting and exciting. I never for one moment thought of any danger. Going on a plane for a start, that was exciting. I had never been on a plane. I had been abroad, to France and Holland, but Cyprus sounded much more exotic. Perhaps my future was not in writing football reports, as I had fantasised, but as an ace war correspondent.

  A week before I was due to set off, I thought of a great idea. I would invite all Chronicle readers who had lads or relations out there to write a letter to them which they could send to me at the Chron – and I would personally deliver each one by hand, to their loved ones. The Evening News had not thought of this ruse, so the Chron made a big story of it – with my photo in the paper and my name. The first time either of those wonderful things had happened.

  I received 250 letters. Bloody hell, I thought, what have I done, how am I going to carry them all, never mind deliver each one? On going through them, I discovered quite a few could be dumped – they were illegible, illiterate or addressed to soldiers serving in totally different regiments in totally different parts of the world, or not even soldiers, not even abroad. It was the first time I learned, but not the last time, that not all readers actually read. They just think they do, skimming and picking up snippets of what catches their interest.

  My fellow ace war reporter was going to be Brian Hitchen, born 1936, so the same age as me, twenty-two, and single, but he was more experienced. He had started as a copyboy aged sixteen on the Daily Despatch and worked his way up. He had also done his national service, unlike me, spending two years in the Parachute Regiment. He was also better dressed, very dapper, wearing hound’s-tooth suits and a jaunty trilby.

  He beat me to the first story, which rather compensated him for my ‘Letters for the Lads’ idea. We flew out on a troop carrier plane, which had been stripped of seats and fittings, so the sides were bare metal. Rows of soldiers in their full kit sat cramped on the bare floor. Over the Med, we hit a tremendous thunderstorm. The plane and all the soldiers and contents got violently thrown around. The howl of the wind and the rattle of the hail on the metal was frightening. I thought we were goners.

  ‘Thank God that’s over,’ I said to Brian when we had landed safely and had arrived at our base. I was looking round for a drink, perhaps a pie, but Brian was off, searching for a telephone. He immediately sent over a dramatic story about the near-death experience in the air of our local soldiers. When he got back to our tent, and I discovered what he had done, I realised I’d better cobble something together before Harold was on the phone. It reminded me of missing the so-called ‘wild horse drama’ when reporting the Penton show. Perhaps I did not really have a tabloid mentality. However, I sent over a similar story, as quickly as I could. Brian, like Barry, had perfected the knack of instantly writing dramatic news stories.

  My story, which I had done thanks to Brian, made the paper on 14 November 1958. And, of course, I still have the cutting. ‘MANCHESTER TROOPS IN PLANE DRAMA’ by Hunter Davies, Evening Chronicle Reporter, Cyprus, Friday.

  Manchester servicemen and women were in a 90-seater Skymaster plane which was struck for five minutes of terror 13,000 feet above the Aegean Sea tonight. The plane was caught in a freak air pocket and tossed about like a toy.

  I had a few quotes, as on the plane I had by chance spoken to a woman flying officer who had
been powdering her nose in the washroom when she was thrown slightly against the wall. In my story, I had her being ‘momentarily stunned’. I finished by saying I had received a big welcome from the Lancashire Fusiliers and was about to deliver ‘200 personal messages to them from Lancashire and Cheshire’.

  The heat was the first thing that struck me, the sort of semi-tropical heat I had never encountered before, not in Carlisle of course, nor in France or Holland during my brief visits there. The weather in both those places had seemed much the same as England. But Cyprus felt vaguely Eastern or African, as if I knew anything about them, a clinging, cloying heat that lasted all night. Going on a plane had been a first for me but so was complaining about the heat. I never thought I would ever moan that the weather was too hot.

  It did seem properly foreign, the look of the people, their language, their pottery and food, all so different from mainland Europe. I felt very young and naive, inexperienced and innocent, but did my best not to show it. Or betray any fear, despite being in what was a war zone. I was doing a man’s job, a professional reporter, even though I was but a callow youth in my early twenties, fresh out of university.

  We were living in a tented encampment, Kermia camp, which was just outside Nicosia. We were offered guns, for use when we went on patrols. Brian was of course familiar with guns, and could use them, having served the Queen, but I did not know one end from the other. However, we made a unilateral decision between us to politely refuse the offer. We both realised that we would be drawing attention to ourselves by carrying weapons. Anyway, we were civilians, newspaper reporters not soldiers.

  Technically, for the sake of the exercise, we were classed as officers. And I still have my official papers, issued by the War Office, which were given to me before we boarded the plane. It states that I was ‘authorised to travel by air . . . from London to Nicosia’ and that my ‘Status/Branch of Service/Trade was “officer”’.