An Evening with Johnners (10 page)

B
efore we all have a drink, can I just tell you a little bit about
Down Your Way?
This programme ran from 1946 up to 1987, in the format in which I did it. Since then it has changed. But the idea was to go to a city, a town or a village – a hamlet, even – and interview six people. We would find out the history of the place, what it made in the way of industry, any unusual hobbies, the annual ceremonies (if there were any) and all the old traditions, and we would talk to the local characters.

It started in 1946 and Stewart MacPherson, the boxing commentator, did the first twelve programmes. In those days, they didn’t arrange it with people beforehand, they used to get a list from the Post Office. They did streets in London for the first twelve, and they would look down the list and say, ‘We’ll go to number five,’ or wherever.

After Stewart had done eleven programmes, he was going down one street in London and said, ‘Let’s try number four – Mrs Wilson,’ and knocked on the door of this house. A huge man came to the door and Stewart said, ‘Is Mrs Wilson in?’

And this chap said, ‘Ah! You’re the chap who’s been after my missus,’ and slugged him one!

So he decided to stick to boxing. It was safer! Then dear old Richard Dimbleby did three hundred of them, until he got too busy on television. After him, Franklin Englemann, whom we called Jingle, took over and he did
seven hundred and thirty-three over twenty-two years, which is a long time, but he didn’t do every week of the year. He did about forty each year and did other programmes as well.

Alas, he recorded one on a Wednesday afternoon, went back home and died that night. That programme went out on the following Sunday, but they never had any spares. So the next week, someone would have to go and record another programme. And I suppose you could say I was lucky, because I was walking down a corridor at Broadcasting House and someone popped their head out from an office and said, ‘Did you hear about poor Jingle? He’s died. Someone’s got to record his programme next week. Would you like to do
Down Your Way?’
And I did it for the next fifteen years!

I
did the same number as Franklin Englemann – seven hundred and thirty-three – because I copied exactly what Johnny Francome had done with Peter Scudamore. In 1982, Peter Scudamore was way ahead with the number of winners in the steeplechase jockey table, when he fell off and broke his collar-bone and couldn’t ride for the rest of the season.

Johnny Francome gradually drew level with him and one afternoon, when he realised that he had the
same number of winners, he threw away his whip and his saddle and said, ‘I’m not riding anymore – poor old Peter can do nothing about it in hospital. We’ll finish level.’

I thought I would do the same with Jingle, because he was up there [
points to heaven
] and couldn’t do any more. I chose my last one to be at Lord’s and they did me proud. I remember walking into the ground that morning and on the scoreboard was seven hundred and thirty-three not out. That’s the highest score ever registered on the Grandstand scoreboard. Any cricket buff will know, the highest genuine score was seven hundred and twenty-nine for six by Australia in 1930, when Bradman made two hundred and fifty-four, but mine was the highest!

It was a great programme to do, because you read in the paper about awful things like famine and rape and bombings, and all the stuff that goes on around the world. But if you came around Great Britain with me, as I did for fifteen years, you’d realise what a marvellous nation we are.

Everybody in every place seemed to be doing things for other people; they can be official bodies like the Round Table, Rotary or Lions, but also the Women’s Institute, Mothers’ Union, Help the Aged, Meals on Wheels – all these people are doing things for other people. It’s good news, but it doesn’t ever get in the papers. So we
are a marvellous nation and I was very lucky to meet so many of them.

I
have got one or two favourites. My favourite was someone called Mrs Emily Brewster. She was in Radcliffe-on-Trent and she had just reached a hundred. I went to see her after her birthday and she was surrounded by great grandchildren. I said, ‘Did you have a good birthday, Mrs Brewster?’

‘Yes, a very good birthday, thank you.’

‘Did you get a telegram from the Queen?’

‘Yes, I did, but I was a bit disappointed.’

‘Disappointed?’ I said. ‘With a telegram from the Queen?’

‘Oh, yes,’ she said. ‘It wasn’t in her own handwriting!’

I
visited a lovely lady in Penkridge in Staffordshire. She was aged eighty-five and still delivering milk every day. She lived in an old farmhouse and she said to me (and this to me is astonishing) that she had never slept a single night of her life outside that house. She had been on a day trip to Great Yarmouth and a day trip to London, but every night she would come back. When you consider
how we all rush about the place nowadays and stay away on holidays, that was remarkable.

There was this man down in Usk in Wales. He told me that at the beginning of the war he was sent to India to look after the mules in a regiment out there. He was a vegetarian, and he knew you don’t eat the green stuff if you can help it in India, so he thought he would take some packets of mustard and cress seeds. He took hundreds of packets and after he had spent a hot day with the mules he used to take off his wellies, put some mustard and cress seeds in the bottom and go to sleep. And in the morning he would have mustard and cress for breakfast!

I can’t help it. That’s what he told me and I’m sure it’s true.

I
interviewed a lovely chap at Biggleswade and he had a ferret down his trousers while I was talking to him. He did give me one big tip. If ever you want to put a ferret down your trousers, make sure it’s the male. He’s all right, but if it’s the female – it’s ‘gobble time’, he tells me!

That’s a good tip. You’re never likely to do it, but you never know. And I interviewed a rat catcher at Stockport. He was a very well-known rat catcher. He caught all the local rats but if he saw a particularly fine specimen of rat, he would keep it alive, take it to the vet to have it
inoculated and put it in a cage in his garden. When I went, there were a hundred brown rats in there. He used to use them for films, for scenes in sewers and so on. While I was interviewing him, a rat was running all over him. Euggh! Awful!

A
nd then the things people collect. There was a man at Tenterden in Kent who collected prams. He had three hundred and twenty-nine prams in his garden or in his house: two wheelers, four wheelers, some with hoods and some not. I went up to his bedroom and there were prams all in his bedroom too. He said, ‘Sadly, my wife has died.’

I nearly said, ‘Well, I don’t blame her!’

Another man in Sussex collected pipes. He had twenty thousand pipes and I saw them all – unbelievable. A man up in Cumberland collected bottles. He had eight thousand bottles of all different descriptions and people came from all over the world to see them.

S
o you met all these interesting people and you never really knew if someone was going to tell you a funny story or not. I interviewed a dentist once and I said afterwards, ‘You didn’t tell me a story.’