1960-12-27 — Page 9

THE CHINA MAIL, TUESDAY, DECEMBER 27, - 1960.

What's Best in Kowloon!

"The hire purchase man came and took it away"

Piano

For

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· London Express Gerrice.

for New Year

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At Our Cocktail Lounge Miss Sally at the piano

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7, Humphrey's Avenue, Kowloon,

He's everything a legend-maker CHAMPAGNE RESTAURANT

should be

"I say, you fellows!"

"Bunter, you fat ass!”

"The anfulness is terrific "

London.

"We're jolly well going to bump you, Bunter}"

"Ow! Yaroo; Leggp, you beasts!”

STRANGE benighted words, these; relics

of a facetious Edwardian slang long dead. But in many

an ageing male

heart, in many an unlikely corner of the world, they evoke the dim memory of a youth that seemed. lost for ever."

What boy, with access to Eng- 1ish Retion over the last sixty years, has not been drawn into the timeless, precincts of Grey friars School to meet those sex less, clean-limbed lady the Famous Five?

Ram

Singh,

3

dream-weaver, in his black skuli cap and dressing gown. with bicycle ellps at his ankles to keep the draught out of his corduroys.

Mild shock

Who does not know Harry Wharton, Bob Cherry, Hurre Jamset,

Frank Nugent, Johnny Bull; and that It is comforting to find him. fat folk-hero Billy Bunter, the at the chess board; to observe Frabious, Frumptious Owl of the works of Horace and the Remove?

Lashings

·

Bunter with his tight check pants and

circum- Inaredible ference, whose dally-expected postal order never turns who is hurled through Btudy windows and set about cricket stumps with a

Lucretius on the bookshelves; to see signs on the work-table of something being translated from Goethe, and a crossword being -compiled in Latin.

Frank Richards, gentle and scholarly and much-travelled, has a short lead on the fot nublic schoolboy who has taken well over £1,000,000 from the with reading public. He is 03. brlak He may be the thin man in-

heartiness that only a folk-bero, side the int boy, but he is not

could survive?

05.

Bunter, still lively fourth-former

at 73, rolls on agelessly through his ocdles of tuck, dormitory scuffles, jah bings and Lines From Quelch.

trying to get out, "Bunter?" he chuckles, stuming his curved pipe from the big tobacco-jar, "- should feel grateful to him, He's kept me all these years."

There is a mild shock to did

He has been written about all come, though. For where

been Frank Richards tap out all over the world. He has

taken to pieces as A social those millions of words that phenomenon by egghead writers were the tabrie of his lucrative,

iko George Orwell. He has stylised never-novar-land loomed in vast effigy In the Lon- rotters and ducal fags and miss- don Lord Mayor's Show. There Ing tuck-boxes?

are books and an annual, and a In come old panelled study, West End Christmas show about within earshot of the

boyish

Not Jolly likely. In Monia

him every year. He is a British shouts from some school's rug- TV ido), and you can read about ger feki? him in Braille.

You con get twenty-five Carlo, between ruthless all- shillings on the enthusiasts' night stints at the roulette table. market for one of those rare That was where Frank Richards early issues of the little school- Ilked to be, when his luck wai story magazines that sold first running free, to write about his nt a ballpenny, then a penny best-selling public school lada

To many a middle-aged man and their jolly coper

by Simon

BILLY BUNTER Fat folk-hera,

Kavanaugh ·

of them.

Glittering

hotel in Austrlo, guarded by a Iman with a ride because he had' written something about 'Zep- polins in a story posted back to Fleet-street.

He got out of that; and slogged on even when failing eyesight dogged him in the Twenties. He was a writer la the Edgar Wallace veln: bank managers did not wait for in- spiration, so why should authors?

But, with another war, the lucky run ended. There was no paper for stories. Richards' in- come crashed from £2,500 in nothing. He lost his home in a coastal defence area, and his shared uropped. Yet still, in Hampstead, he wrote througn, cach wartime day.

And now the wheel turns full cycle, and Bunter is paying tax again. Not in' quite the same and the way; the fagnet" "Gem" were military casualties that never returned.

But in two books every year,

and an annual and a dramatised 'Billy Bunter's Swiss Roll" for Christmas, the odd archaic slang and the repetitive, un- changing school adventures of those wholesome sons of English gentlemen more than hold their own with the Dan Dares of the spaço age.

Richards still writes the booki and the annual. The chap who writes the current Bunter plays was not even born when first Bunter scoffed a jars turt. He. has never met. Mr Richards,

So why? It is really a bit of mystery, George Orwell, like .» many another social analyst in publications weightier than The "Magnet," once tried to sart it out in a brilliant essay.

A mystery

But he came unstuck when he assumed that of course no one writer, could possibly, hava gam tained so vast a verbal torrent for so long. Of course the hacks had helped.

Mr Richards signed the lotter than cleared that one up,

It is less of a mystery when Bimter & Co. are seen as greet ,comla. Invention," as, memorably. and enduring as the Gilbert -Sullivan. ditties that old "Frank

Richards loves.

Not always about ́a year.

Bunter remains thé name. The schools; the Ro. Kid, Herlock Bholmes and the King of the trouble is 25, someone". polrited out in one of those thoughtful Islands made a nice chao Letters to the Editor, that in the

An Averagely good year meant £2,000; and that way-first-Golden-Age-of-. Greyfriats champagne and caviarer money he was an unmitigated bounder, then. A good year might mean. To modern youth he is un-

**** Implies. who would still read Greyfriars If Bob Cherry had been Then, when the publisher saw covers for one halfpenny the £2,900, and there were several doubtedly a hero. Whatever this Only two years ago, thirty stories openly if he dared, it caught with a bottle of whisky how young he was, the foe was first issue of the "Tho Magnet,"

the chronicle of Greyldars,

old boys of the school that nåver has never even occurred that at a petting party it could hard- cut to 24 a story.

existed met in London to share William George Bunter must ly have seemed more unlikely.

-Bunter was born in 1800, Bunter, in those early days,

memories of old Umes: swggings, have a creator.

But of course the-Billy Bun-

oricket triumphs, stirs in the But there is no difusion- termaga was not always as aged 14, out of Richards' fas- was almost a supporting player einated observation of Tri cadger, not a good chip at all.

And Richards, commuting bo quad. There is a Billy uplos ment imminent. Frank Richards plushy as that,

editorial gentleman overflowing The rugged emphasis was en tween comfortable hotel in society in Birmingham. his chair in a Floot-street office.the Famous Five..

Venice, Rome, and the Riviera, The gap is widening, though. But nobody wanted to know

And Frank Richards (who spus more and yet more of the when rank-Richards sent the him for eight years yot,

was born as Chacies Hamilton) golden words, They owed 350 en instalment of a new Hunter serial written entirely in cakes and tarta ; and bultored Once oven Frank Hichards. Flaws, in 1907, Mr Qichards became Biso Marin Cullford, easily, and life was surene

Cardow, Hilda Unually, the glitering tables Latin last year, they bed,to mend muffins, in his modest little was a boy, learning Latin, from other dream world, was born; St. Winston Bachelor Nouse in

Broadstairs, his father and wanting more Jim's, where Tom Metry of the Richards Owen Conquest, Ralph of Monte-Carlo drew him in the it to their Schools Department

Three enacted the Redway and twenty or thirty and Then there were gruelling, for translation in a road that runs right down than anything to write. He aid, "Terrible

form-coom dramas other busy writers as well; remorseful, extra hours at the Rail on... O Bunter. And to the rod.

too; and in 1800, when he was endless

the Fat Out In Kitglish is folk: If there has to be a slogging 15, an elderly relative put him chronicled for decades. In The. And did very nicely too, kami typowriter making, good his heaves farefend the day whan writer behind Bunter, it is in touch with a publisher and Gem SEND to be for airly years he kool hard darabling losses.

Viral, le ba tog doen for the viewing eeninenlly, right that it should he was paid five gulbene for his And on February 18, 1908 at 11 at the typewriter, braking

public, ber this sprightly littis 'old trap story.

there appeared between orange out his milion and a hal; words World War Found - kis

to everything; si legend-maker-

should be, t

There are usually lashings of

tuck when visitors call on him:

י!

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