I’m from nearby Elm Park on London’s East End border. Ian defined my white working class identity, theatrically and parodically thuggish, gaudily irreverent. Bits of Byron and bits of Mr Pastry thrown in. He was more art school than me (and back then, the difference between art school, university, technical college and plain worker was quite something).

Ian embodied English white working class culture long before my clan recognised the chip on their own shoulder. But this was suburban streets working class – lower middle really – not even your two-up, two-down terrace (later your seven-storey, deck access) working class. His was no racist spat. He was a Bohemian with an attitude problem, aesthetic aspirations, with a bully-or-be-bullied cockney swagger. And then there was the limp, which made him sit up and fly right in a way.

For all his career I identified with his roots and vast grasp of the world of music, poetic lyrics and his f***-you, leave-me-alone guttural gruff Essex-boy bellow. During my teens I pushed fruit & veg barrows on Saturdays on Romford Market, and on Sundays I unloaded the van and manned the stall selling blankets and bedspreads on Peitticoat Lane, Wentworth Street. I knew where Ian was coming from: his father drove somebody else’s Rolls Royce, my father worked on the back of somebody else’s Routemaster bus.

I left Dury Falls Secondary Modern in 1975 with no qualifications. (Even my school in Upminster Bridge was a punning homage to my later hero.) I was into football violence and Motown. Friday’s and Saturdays were for getting drunk and punch ups.

My first job was as a railway operating apprentice on London’s Underground. I lasted one day. I phoned my mum from White City tube station and told her I’d resigned because uniforms with caps were not for me.

Instead, I enrolled at Havering Technical College. Everybody was shocked – I’d failed both maths and English at school. What people didn’t know was that when I was bunking off school (I was rarely there in the final year) I was wasn’t out causing trouble. I was touring London’s museums. I was gate-crashing lectures at the Science Museum, Victoria & Albert and the British Museum put on for other schools’ parties. My horizons were being widened.

I knew there was a better world out there than wasting my life in the Elm Park Hotel, as rough an East End boozer as ever there was, or at Zero Six in South End, with its Kermit Pogo Stick Double Ups and onstage knees-ups. So I told London Underground to do the other thing and set out on my great adventure to develop myself.

At Havering Technical College I was a chaotic disaster. I spent too much time flirting in the Spencers Arms at lunch time to ever stand a chance of passing my exams. But from the students’ union events I found arty films, left wing politics, Ian Dury and how to lose badly at poker (no logical connection).

I was never fully comfortable with punk, which like the hippies I dubbed middle class wankers. Motown became boring. I needed something more grown up, more modern, more me. The Clash appealed, I’ll admit. I liked the Sex Pistols, but couldn’t stand their act-tough but soft fans. I sang Tom Robinson’s Glad to be Gay at the Victoria Park anti-racist gig in 1978. Those were empowering times that opened our working class eyes to new ideas.

I’ve never forgotten seeing Ian Dury and The Blockheads at Hammersmith Odeon. During the break my gorgeous companion distracted the man behind the kiosk in the foyer with a full-on view of her bust while I stole a large box of Maltesers. It was very Ian Dury:

In my yellow jersey, I went out on the nick.
South Street Romford, shopping arcade
Got a Razzle magazine, I never paid
Inside my jacket and away double quick.
Good sense told me, once was enough
But I had a cocky eye on more of this stuff
With the Razzle in my pocket, back to have another peek

If the film lives up to the great reviews it has been getting, I’m gonna be in for a treat.

If anyone had told me, back then, that I’d be living in perhaps Switzerland’s most prosperous village, on Zurich’s lakeside, amongst the billionaires, bankers, oligarchs and entrepreneurs, I’d have said they were Barking as well as Romford. Reasons to be cheerful? You bet!

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1. Elm Park, the BNP and me Unlike the BNP, self-respecting political parties don’t hold their Emergency...

When my blood’s up, I have to remind myself to be pro-British and not anti-German. Germany’s at least as nice a place as Switzerland or my own beloved England. Indeed, after reading English news of late, Continental virtues (Swiss, German or any other) can seem quite worthwhile.

Anyway, I’m richly varied. I once fell into the folly of being far left. My reasoning of thirty years ago flooded back to me after seeing news of England’s shame in the form of the BNP – neatly put in perspective by David Aaronovitch. I’m from Dagenham and Romford, white heartland of NF and BNP lumpens. I opposed them in my youth when I used to push fruit & veg barrows on Wentworth Street and Romford markets. My mates were a mixed crowd, and a target of hate. I still despise neo-fascists today. And I do mean “despise”: a sort of visceral loathing that isn’t polite.

And there’s the point: I want to stop the BNP, but my hating them doesn’t help me or hurt them. Time to move on.

But I couldn’t resist sharing this Ian Dury classic. It’s a white and indigenous ditty, by chance. It’s somehow the best of patriotism without the worst. The words and humour of Ian Dury’s Blockheads helped define the spirit of my East End gang. While we were all in Victoria Park on 30th April 1978 to hear Tom Robinson, The Clash, Steel Pulse and others say no to racism, Ian Dury was our local hero, not them. So, for all my Dagenham-mates against the BNP, here goes Ian Dury:

There are jewels in the crown of England’s glory (England’s glory)
And every jewel shines a thousand ways

Frankie Howerd, Noël Coward and garden gnomes
Frankie Vaughan, Kenneth Horne, Sherlock Holmes
Monty, Biggles and Old King Cole
In the pink or on the dole
Oliver Twist and Long John Silver
Captain Cook and Nelly Dean
Enid Blyton, Gilbert Harding
Malcolm Sargeant, Graham Greene (Graham Greene)

All the jewels in the crown of England’s glory (England’s glory)
Too numerous to mention, but a few (but a few)
And every one could tell a different story (different story)
And show old England’s glory something new

Nice bit of kipper and Jack the Ripper and Upton Park
Gracie, Cilla, Maxie Miller, Petula Clark
Winkles, Woodbines, Walnut Whips
Vera Lynn and Stafford Cripps
Lady Chatterley, Muffin the Mule
Winston Churchill, Robin Hood
Beatrix Potter, Baden-Powell
Beecham’s powders, Yorkshire pud (Yorkshire pud)

Billy Bunter, Jane Austen
Ray Ellington, George Formby
Billy Fury, Little Titch
Uncle Mac, Mr. Pastry and all
Uncle Mac, Mr. Pastry and all

All the jewels in the crown of England’s glory (England’s glory)
Too numerous to mention, but a few (but a few)
And every one could tell a different story (different story)
And show old England’s glory something new

Somerset Maugham, top of the form and the Boys’ Brigade (England’s glory)
Mortimer Wheeler, Christine Keeler and the Board of Trade (England’s glory)
Henry Cooper, Mighty Strangler, England’s labour (England’s glory)
Standard Vanguard, spotted dick, England’s workers (England’s glory)

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Oh doom, oh gloom, oh glum. Thank goodness, Boris says that view’s nonsense.

Oh no, let’s not think anything like it, boomed the Mayor of London at today’s opening bash. He said:

Let me ask you the question, with unemployment rising in the UK, is it right that Westfield make an investment of £1.6 billion and create 7,000 jobs?

He added:

Gordon Brown says to me we’re in a hole. I say to you, we need a hole the size of Crossrail. The essential thing to do is keep digging.

Yesterday Boris urged us to eat, spend and be merry. Writing in The Daily Telegraph he said that those with money – and there’s still loads of them – had a duty to keep shopping, keep spending and to lead by example for the benefit of us all.

Markets downturns are as much about mood and confidence as anything else. Perception isn’t exactly reality, otherwise my sausage dog is a Pit Bull. But a smile and some confidence are infectious. So, three cheers for Boris’s guts gusto and umpth. As Ian Dury – “we’re all Blockheads now” – once wrote:

Reasons To Be Cheerful, Part 3

Health service glasses
Gigolos and brasses
round or skinny bottoms

Take your mum to paris
lighting up the chalice
wee willy harris

Bantu Stephen Biko, listening to Rico
Harpo, Groucho, Chico

Cheddar cheese and pickle, the Vincent motorsickle
Slap and tickle
Woody Allen, Dali, Dimitri and Pasquale
balabalabala and Volare

Something nice to study, phoning up a buddy
Being in my nuddy
Saying hokey-dokey, singalonga Smokey
Coming out of chokey

John Coltrane’s soprano, Adi Celentano
Bonar Colleano

Reasons to be cheerful part 3
Reasons to be cheerful part 3
Reasons to be cheerful part 3
Reasons to be cheerful part 3

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