In Memory of Three Fictional Spivs

James Beck in character as Joe Walker in Dad's Army (1973) 

George Cole as Flash Harry in The Belles of St. Trinian's (1954)

Arthur English as the Prince of the Wide Boys (1950) 

 

 

I. 

 

As a child, like millions of other people, I used to enjoy watching the TV sitcom Dad's Army (BBC, 1968-1977). Admittedly, some of the characters I found irritating - Clive Dunn's Lance Corporal Jones, for example - but most I thought amusing; particularly John Laurie's Private Frazer. 

 

The character who most intrigued me, however, was Private Joe Walker, played by James Beck, a flashy petty criminal dealing in black market goods with a cheeky Cockney persona; i.e., what is known by British English speakers as a spiv.  

 

If Private Godfrey (Arnold Ridley) might have made a kind grandad, Joe Walker would've been a fun uncle and generous I'm sure when it came to birthday gifts and Christmas presents (even if they had fallen off the back of a lorry).  

 

 

II.  

 

The origin of the word spiv is obscure, although, perhaps significantly, it was the nickname of a small-time London crook and con artist, Henry Bagster, who was frequently arrested for illicit street trading during the early years of the 20th century and whose court appearances often attracted press coverage.  

 

Whatever its origin, the word wasn't popularised until the Second World War and post-War period, when many goods were rationed in the UK and spivs really came into their own as a distinct class of traders, with a distinctive look and way of dressing; hair slicked back with Brylcreem; a Clark Gable style pencil moustache; a trilby or other wide-brimmed hat worn rakishly at an angle; a long drape jacket with padded shoulders; a wide brightly patterned tie, etc. 

 

All these things were de rigueur for someone who wanted to advertise their entrepreneurial spirit at the time and look the business. One of the reasons the general public not only tolerated but seemed to admire these worldly-wise and larger-than-life characters - apart from the fact they could get you what you wanted - was that they looked so chipper and at odds with the austerity of the times [1].   

  

 

III.

 

The look was perfected by comedian and actor Arthur English, who, during his early professional career as a stand-up comic, adopted the persona of a stereotypical spiv and became known as the Prince of the Wide Boys (Jimmy Perry and David Croft, the writers of Dad's Army, were happy to admit that Private Walker was in part based on English's stage character) [2].

 

But the look was perhaps most memorably pushed to its comical extreme by George Cole, as Flash Harry, in The Belles of St. Trinian's (dir. Frank Launder, 1954); one of the greatest and most popular of British films [3].

 

Whether Harry might identify as a spiv is debatable and he tends to describe himself as a fixer and go-between; the man whom the girls trust to bottle and sell their gin, distilled in the school's chemistry lab and place bets on the gee-gees for them. 

 

But he looks like a spiv and acts like a spiv, so I think we can use this term in good faith (although the fact that he helps the sixth form girls find wealthy lovers and potential husbands doesn't quite make him a pimp). 

 

Let's just say that Harry's a shady character and a well-dodgy geezer; a ducker and diver who certainly has connections with the criminal community, even if he's not quite one of their own [4]. 

 

Notes

 

[1] The fact is, the British working class have long had a soft-spot for loveable rogues and dashing outlaws. Thus, as Stephen Baker and Paddy Hoey note, "although in both official discourse and the cinema of the period" spivs tended to be presented as "'dangerous, unpatriotic and un-British'", there was public ambivalence about them and even "a degree of sympathy for such glamorous, anti-authority figures" who, after all, helped alleviate the misery of wartime conditions. 

      See Stephen Baker and Paddy Hoey, 'The Picaro and the Prole, the Spiv and the Honest Tommy in Leon Griffiths's Minder', in the Journal of British Cinema and Television, 15 (4), (Edinburgh University Press, 2018), pp. 513-531. The lines quoted are on p. 519. To read this essay as an online pdf, click here. 

 

[2] As Denis Gifford reminds us in an obituary for Arthur English published in the Independent (19 April 1995): "English was not the first to caricature the spiv on stage. That honour belongs to the great Sid Field, whose West End wide boy, Slasher Green, is immortalised for all time in the film London Town (1946)." But English's spiv act - "which he wrote himself and delivered at top speed in full motion" - was undoubtedly a thing of comic genius. 

      English signed off his first radio broadcast with the following rather lovely lines:  

      "This is Arthur English shoving orf to the tune of 'The Windmill's Turning'. Shove on the coal, blow the expense,  just keep the 'ome fires burning. Perhaps I've made you larf a lot, I 'ope I've brought yer joy.  So 'ere's mud in yer eye from the end of me tie, good night - and watch the boy!'

      To read Gifford's obituary for Arthur English in full by clicking here.   

 

[3] Such was its success with critics and moviegoers alike, that The Belles of St. Trinian's gave rise to three sequels: Blue Murder at St Trinian's (1957); The Pure Hell of St Trinian's (1960); and The Great St Trinian's Train Robbery (1966), all directed by Frank Launder.

 

[4] In this he's very much like George Cole's other iconic character, Arthur Daley, in the long-running TV comedy-drama Minder (ITV, 1979-1994). They are, of course, distinct characters created by different writers and operating in different eras, but whenever I watch the Crombie-coated, trilby-hatted, cigar-smoking Arthur Daley, it's hard not to have thoughts of Flash Harry. 

      Interestingly, there was initialy resistance to the idea of casting George Cole in the role of Arthur Daley as he was seen as a bit too refined: "It was only when Euston Pictures's executive producer Verity Lambert intervened, noting that Cole had made a name for himself playing Flash Harry, the spiv in the St Trinian's films, that the deal was sealed ..." 

      See the excellent essay by Stephen Baker and Paddy Hoey cited in note 1 above, p. 518.  

 

 

Bonus: Flash Harry making an entrance in The Belles of St. Trinian's (1954): click here.    

 

 

A Postcard from Southend-on-Sea

Southend-on-Sea, Essex, lies approximately 40 miles east of London on the north side of the Thames Estuary; a region that has produced its own virulent strain of English now spoken in many regions of this blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this Ingerland.  

It is home to the world's longest pleasure pier; a marvel of 19th century engineering that everyone from Princess Caroline to Arthur Daley has strolled along at some point. 

I first day-tripped to Southend with my parents in the early seventies. By then - although I didn't know it at the time - it was already in decline as a popular holiday destination. Everyone who could was jetting off to sunny Spain instead. For who wants soggy fish and chips and a mug of lukewarm tea, when you can have a big plate of paella washed down with a cheap bottle of vino? 

Still, I always loved my time in Southend as a child, beginning with the train ride from Romford via stations whose names had an exotic and almost magical allure - Shenfield-Billericay-Wickford-Rayleigh-Hockley-Rochford-Prittlewell - my excitement growing as I got ever closer to the coast and the thought of a fresh plate of cockles raked straight out of the mud at low tide, or an ice-cream from Rossi's.

There was no real beach to speak of and the grey sea was always out as far as I remember. But the place had a certain working-class Cockney charm (dare one say authenticity) and I had hours of fun in the amusement arcades and Peter Pan's Playground (which I preferred to the rather intimidating Kursaal full of young skinheads in their boots and braces and ageing Teddy Boys). 

What I enjoyed best of all, however, was sitting in the landscaped gardens of the Shrubbery eating a packed lunch, which always involved either a ham or cheese sandwich. There was a little stream and a waterfall, a fairy castle and a few left-over figures; remnants from its fifties heyday as Never Never Land.

Today, over forty years later, Southend is still on sea and many things have remained essentially the same; the pier, for example, still stretches a mile out to nowhere (although now you have to pay to walk along it).

But the deprivation of the town is as noticeable - and as shocking - as the tattooed obesity of the natives, or the large number of women hanging around the newly built lagoon wearing hijabs and burkinis and recreating scenes that more closely resemble Mogadishu than the lost world of Jane Austen and Donald McGill.