He owned a couple of greyhounds and every Tuesday morning he would send me off to Wimbledon dogs to clock the trials before the Thursday evening race meeting. The betting-shop manager was a lovable rogue called Bob who became my early mentor in life. I went to work in a bookies in the horse-racing town of Epsom and fed back to my father the tips the stable-lads brought into the shop. I guessed he thought they owed him something. You would have thought he would have taught his kids to steer away from gambling, but when I left school he got me a job in Mecca Bookmakers – a firm in which he had over the years “invested” a substantial portion of the family budget.
He had a complete phobia of snakes, ever since his youth when he badly broke his wrist falling out of a palm tree after being surprised by a snake hiding among the coconuts. He was also a charmer, with a slight hint of Clarke Gable about him, I always thought.Įven after the family bank account was made out in my mother’s name to stop him cleaning out his wages on payday to hit the bookies, he managed to cash checks at the bank by sweet-talking the cashier.Įventually, during my teenager years, my mother was forced to hide the cheque-book in the one place in the family home he would never dare look – under a vivarium in my room that housed my corn snake. My father, who emigrated to Britain from colonial Trinidad in the early 1950s, was – among other things – a compulsive gambler. All in all, a very decent affair and a good documentary on Parsons and Pursey's important and creative work.Facebook 0 Twitter 0 Reddit 0 WhatsApp Email 0 Shares There's a very readable biography by Betty Chienne, a decent discography, and a set list that allows you to pull up whichever song you'd like to hear.
The bassist's youthful looks feel like a time transfusion next to his mates, and he plays well with Parsons' slashing guitar lines while keeping a good rhythm with drummer Whitewood, the song "Tattoo" having some nice camera shots to add to the excitement. At times the video is dark - but it captures the energy as those Eddie Cochran chords are used again on "Borstal Breakout." For fans of the group, this is a nice little treasure chest that is apt to pick up some new devotees who weren't born when this music originally happened. "Fourteen Years" provides evidence that this new lineup can handle it, with Ian Whitewood on drums and Matt Sargent on bass. The sound is in gorgeous 5.1 Surround Sound and holds up well throughout the performance and interviews. Their "national anthem," which evolved out of this record industry demand (à la Garland Jeffreys' "Wild in the Streets" and Joan Baez's "Diamonds and Rust," strangely enough) opens with chords straight out of Eddie Cochran's "Somethin' Else" and works fine all these years later. In between the tunes there is interview footage, guitarist Dave Parsons reminiscing about how "Hersham Boys" was written at the "Honky Chateau" studio (made famous as the title of an Elton John album) because the label needed one more song. Filmed live at the Concorde 2 in Brighton on April 10, 2002, and released by Secret Records/Quantum Leap on the Music Video Distributors DVD imprint, Hersham Boys: The Adventures of Sham 69 opens with the short and punky "What Have We Got," frontman Jimmy Pursey aging like a subdued Iggy Pop - and if you turn away from the video the lines on his face just fade away to reveal the same passion and spirit that fans expect.
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