“Remember When” reminded me

First posted January 2009

 

I opened the Evening Chronicle to find the Cumberland Arms featured in it’s Remember When photo.  There is the bar from the Haymarket (now resplendent in the upstairs room), three anonymous barmen, the old landlord Bob Lackenby and the legendary Tommy Cooper back in 1987.   This prompted a Tommy Cooper nostalgia session by Fester and myself.

Before you read on  A WARNING - Tommy Cooper used FOUL LANGUAGE. 

If you are easily offended go no further and move to another page ….

Don’t say you haven’t been warned

Tommy was obviously christened long before the synonymous comedian became famous.   

Either that or his parents had a sick sense of humour.  His name caused him no end of trouble in his youth.   He once confided in me  “Me and me mate was once stopped by the polliss and I refused to give them me name.  Aah tellt ‘em ‘If Aah tell ye ye’ll only bray uz.’  They said 'No we won't'.  So Aah tellt them and they brayed uz.”

The Cumberland, and Byker, are undergoing a kind of gentrification but back in the 80s it was rough.  The Kingsmen christened it “The Crumbling Palms” or “The Shed”.  It was not the sort of place where you were routinely offered ice or complimentary anything.  Tommy fitted right into that scenario.  He skills as a barman included being able to spot troublemakers and having a quiet word with them before any brewed.  That being said, there was seldom any trouble in the Cumberland – or at least none I knew of.

He had a kind of rough charm – commonly know as “service with a snarl”.  Ordering large rounds wasn’t popular.  Fester once went in with the Kingsman, approach the bar and asked for

“Ten pints Tommy please.”

“Far cough”

“No – ten pints please.”

Nor was he one to make polite conversation.  Phil and I went into the Cumberland’s empty bar early one Wednesday evening at the very end of December.

“Ev’nin’” we said and were by Tommy with a growled “Waddyawant?”

“A pint and a half of bitter” replied Phil before asking conversationally “How was your Christmas then Tommy?”

“What the phooks it gorra dee wi’ ye?” came the reply.

“Oh and a happy new year to you too barman.”

The summer after Phil died I started going down to Kingsmen practices as they were helping to teach a women’s rapper team.  Hot and sticky after practice I went to the bar and, without thinking, asked for “A lime and soda please Tommy – no ice.”

The Kingsmen looked at me in awe.

“Are you taking the weewee?” whispered one, as requests for ice to Tommy were usually met with verbal abuse.

But he must have mellowed, or been softened by my widowed state, because all he did was give me a hard look and a grunt.

Like many barmen Tommy had a huge attachment to the drink.  It was about this time that he went a nasty yellow colour and, although the rest of him was thin, his abdomen became distended.  

His doctor told him his liver was shot and if he didn’t stop drinking he’d die.  He didn’t stop and one day failed to turn up for his shift.  The landlord Bob Lackenby went to seek him and found his body in his flat.

He may have been as rough as a badger’s backside and as foulmouthed as the Ouseburn after heavy rain but I’m glad to have known Tommy.  He was a real character in a world where there are increasingly few of them (yes I know that’s an oxymoron).  No one who met him will ever forget him; however hard they try.

 

Many of us hold him in our memory with great affection, which is as good an obituary as any.

May your soul rest in peace Tommy Cooper – yah grumpy auld bar-steward.