glared at me for a short time and then took me to see the headmaster.
We trooped over to his office and when he was told, he was, if anything, more apoplectic than her. He ranted for a while and I stopped listening. He was almost always ranting about something, generally to do with not wearing our skull caps. I concentrated on his dandruff. He favoured a black suit with a black cape, so it was always noticeable, but it seemed particularly bad today. As he spoke, I could see it falling off his head like a moderately heavy snow shower. Like it might settle. It piled up on top of the dandruff already there. His shoulders looked like a ski resort. He told me to go home and he would speak to my mother in due course.
And so it was that I had a week off school. It was incredibly boring. Today, with all the different TV channels and Xboxes and the like, I could’ve kept myself busy. Back then, there was nothing to do. One of the only things stopping us bunking off more than we did was the almost complete lack of entertainment available at home during work hours.
I watched Pebble Mill at One. This was a magazine show broadcast at, would you believe, one o’clock in the afternoon. It was broadcast live from Birmingham during the week and was very popular with students, the elderly, the bedridden and people who were snowed in. The audience was entirely made up of old people. The women all had white hair, most of the men were bald.*5
My mother was really upset with me because she had to take a week off work. I didn’t take a lot of looking after but without her, I wouldn’t have eaten. She made me food, knocked on my bedroom door to tell me it was ready and told me to turn the music down. It was like having the angriest room service ever.
The following Monday, she had to come in and sit with me in the head’s office while he laid into me again for what felt like a week. He was shouting and spitting. One small bit of spittle landed on my mother’s bag. All three of us saw it happen but no one said anything. As we were leaving, he made it very clear that if I ever said anything else grossly insulting to the Jewish faith, I’d be expelled. Did I understand? I did. I almost said something grossly insulting there and then, just to get it over with.
*2 Except for Martin Cohen, who was a very good-looking guy. He told me one day that he’d started going out with one of the girls from Camden Girls School. He was meeting her later on and did I want to tag along. Later that day, Martin and I got the bus to the station and in order to look like he didn’t go to our school he took off his school blazer and tie when we got there. Vanessa or Chloe or Virginia turned up shortly afterwards and they kissed. I was introduced. She gave Martin a look that said ‘what are you doing hanging out with one of those kids from the Jewish school?’ It was a fair question. I went home shortly afterwards.
*3 Simon told me that in his Biology ‘O’ level exam, one of the questions was ‘Why is the pituitary gland known as the conductor of the orchestra?’ And he answered ‘Because it looked like Andre Previn.’ Still tickles me.
*4 Was there any other kind?
*5 Twenty-five years later as a fledgling stand-up comedian, I was offered a slot on the show. Because it was live, daytime TV, the producers required a full script of the act you were going to do so as not to offend the delicate sensibilities of the daytime crowd pottering about at home. I faxed (!) the script over and an assistant called me straight back.
‘You can’t say arse.’
‘Can I not?’ I had a joke where the punchline was ‘right on the arse’ and I was hoping I could get away with it. Apparently not.
‘No.’
‘Oh. How about bum?’
‘Hang on a minute.’
He put the phone down on the desk and I hear a muffled shout across the office. ‘Can he say bum?’ There’s a pause. I don’t hear the reply. The assistant comes back on the line.
‘Bum is out.’
‘Oh. Bottom?’
‘Hang on.’ We go round the same routine again.
‘We’d rather you didn’t.’
‘Bottom? Really?‘ And I want to say, ‘Who’s watching this show? Nuns?’ but I refrain.
The assistant has an idea. ‘You couldn’t say rear end could you?’
‘Rear end?’
‘Yeah, rear end.’
I think about it. The punchline ‘right on the rear end’ does have a certain alliterative quality.
‘Alright then.’
I imagine a rubber stamp bashing down on the script. Approved!
A first class return ticket to Birmingham arrived on my doorstep and I travelled up on the day. The audience was not really my target demographic. ‘Right on the rear end’ was met with complete indifference as was everything else I said. It was the worst death I’ve ever had on or off TV. The old people stared at me for my allotted five minutes and the only solace I can find is that they’re all long dead by now. When it was over, the presenter said ‘one more time for Ian Stone’ and got absolutely nothing from them. I still think ‘Arse’ would have got a laugh.
Things We Didn’t Have in the 1970s
Part Three
Part Three: Male Grooming
Take a walk around the average chemist in 2020. There’s usually a section devoted to male grooming, often an entire aisle. Hundreds of different types of shaving cream, shaving oil, aftershave, forty-eight-hour deodorants (presumably for those men who have only got time to wash every other day), moisturisers, four- and five-blade razors with swivel heads, nose and ear hair trimmers and hundreds of ‘Just for Men’ shampoos, conditioners and shower gels. Back in the 1970s, because men were expected to be ‘men’, they didn’t groom. Men bathed once a week. The rest of the time, they shaved, threw some aftershave on and put Brylcreem in their hair. That was it for male grooming. Cats did more grooming than men.
Chapter Four
True Inseparables
Paul Weller wrote ‘I Got By in Time’ in his early twenties. I have no idea how he knew all this stuff at such a young age. From my teenage perspective, he seemed to have lived an entire lifetime. There was such beauty in the idea of not recognising a girl that he used to know because he was looking at his own face. The irony being that it would’ve completely passed me by because I was too busy looking at my own face to see if my nose looked smaller from ANY angle (I positioned mirrors in the bathroom so I could get a 360 degree view – it didn’t). I certainly didn’t spend a lot of time deep in thought, being much more like my dad than I cared to admit. Thinking deeply wasn’t a Stone family character trait.
I never tire of listening
