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Jeremy James Anthony Gibson Beadle was one of those Marmite people - you either loved him or you hated him. I was one of those that loved him. If you only knew him for the practical jokes he played on the public on ITV, you probably hated him. But there was a lot more to him than that. I never tended to watch his ITV shows, but listened to him avidly on the radio, where his other side as an English version of Robert Ripley of 'Believe it or Not' fame would hold sway. The man was a bit of a polymath on the quiet, (he styled himself 'Curator of Oddities') and was also a great fundraiser for an assortment of charities, for which he received an OBE. Lazy comedians looking for an easy laugh would always pick on him, though, not only for the TV shows, but for his withered hand, a disability he'd had since birth. He became one of those people you were supposed to hate because everyone else appeared to. He died three years ago, and the obituaries showed that he was secretly held in a lot more affection than anyone ever dared suppose.
Frame one, strip three: The Woolwich Building Society. We're still drawing real Catford at this point. Ironically for a building society, the Woolwich no longer has any buildings of its own - it was taken over by Barclays in the great financial feeding frenzy that helped tip the economy over the edge. Woolwich in South London is also where my Dad's side of the family came from. My roots are on the Woolwich ferry.
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