When you were five, what did you want to be when you grew up?
I had a range of jobs I wanted to do when I was little. I saw my first combine harvester (or “combast harvinger” as I called it) at the age of three I wanted to drive one of them.
When I went to school we were often asked what we wanted to do when we grew up. Now, I’ve never really known what I want to do, should I ever grow up. It changed every time, and I kind of fell into science. I envy Mrs S, who always knew she wanted to act. However, when I was five I said I wanted to be a window cleaner.
Why I said this, I don’t know. We didn’t have a window cleaner at home, my parents cleaned our windows themselves. Someone may have cleaned the school windows, but I never saw them, despite our house backing into the school grounds. It may have been a telly programme such as Nationwide or Blue Peter that showed window cleaners cleaning tall buildings that lodged the idea in my head. Or perhaps George Formby influenced my decision.
George Formby (Jr)
When I think about window cleaning now, the famous song by George Formby1 comes to mind and won’t leave.
Released in 1936, the song was banned by the BBC. The lyrics were a bit risqué for the time:
The blushing bride she looks divine,
The bridegroom he is doing fine
I’d rather have his job than mine
When I’m cleaning windows.
Lord Reith, the controller of the BBC, expressed his disgust and contempt2:
If the public wants to listen to Formby singing his disgusting little ditty, they’ll have to be content to hear it in the cinemas, not over the nation’s airwaves
The royal family disagreed and King George VI requested that he play the song for them at a royal command performance.
Formby didn’t care what Lord Reith said. His star was on the rise and he became the highest paid British entertainer with a six-film £500,000 contract with Columbia Pictures.
Segregation and World War II
Formby died in 1961, aged 56. In the alternative 1985 of Jasper Fforde’s Thursday Next series, he’s the President of a republican England. At a book signing in 2004 I asked him why he chose Formby to be the president. The answer was remarkable.
During the Second World war, the Entertainments National Services Association (ENSA) paid Formby £10 a week to provide entertainment and morale-boosting content. This he did, making films and touring factories, theatres and concert halls. He performed in Normandy after the D-Day landings, giving impromptu concerts in barns and on the back of farm carts. His 1940 film Let George Do It! got great reviews on its release in America as To Hell with Hitler.
When the USA joined the war, Formby received a commission to perform for the American troops stationed in Britain. He refused initially, standing firm against performing in front of a segregated audience. Fforde explained that Formby saw segregation as a class issue. As a result of this stand, the US commanders ensured that his concerts were to to non-segregated US troops. In addition to his Normandy performances, he did nine concerts to the 6th Airborne Division standing beside a sand-bag wall to an audience in fox holes.
All this put a new perspective on a man I’d only ever seen as a turnip-faced ukulele strummer who sang silly songs. His position as a fictional President of England was clearly justified.
Goes to show, you can’t judge by appearances.
- His father was also billed as George Formby. In Warrington cemetery there is a huge monument to George Formby. As an afterthought there is the inscription “Also George Formby OBE, son of the above”. ↩︎
- The BBC has a great tradition of blocking songs that now seem innocuous. I Am the Walrus by The Beatles got banned because it contained the word ‘knickers’. ↩︎
