Old friends

An unexpected consequence of running my own web site and blog has been the occasional messages I get from old friends who I haven't seen for years. A couple of weeks ago I heard from Melvin Holmes, station manager at Mirfield Fire Station. You have to have brains and brawn for that kind of job and Melvin is lacking in neither.

We first met at Carlton Road infants school in Dewsbury when Melvin beat me up in the playground. After that we were inseparable for six years. Well, not quite. I was also great friends with my cousin Andrew who also beat me up on one occasion although that was more of a full blown fight. Andrew and Melvin tried to beat each other up once. I recall it was quite a bloody affair, not much quarter given.

I was a very good swimmer as a child but Andrew was always a better swimmer. Melvin couldn't swim much at all when I met him. Then he learned and became good enough to beat me. Has any of this left me psychologically scarred, cast in the role of perpetual loser? I think it probably has which explains why I have a dog in order to know what it is to exercise some power. Except that the dog ignores me most of the time. He's made it pretty plain that he's a dog, not an underdog.

Melvin's message had me thinking about Arch Dyson. Melvin and I went to different schools when aged 11 and picked up new friends along the way. In the new school I found myself sitting close to someone called Arthur Dyson who had become Arch Dyson by the sixth form.

Arch never beat me up. He wasn't a beating up kind of guy even though he could have packed a punch had he been that way inclined. He used his wits, and wit, to keep on the right side of the bullies.

Everyone, apart from the loners, had their own school "rat pack", kids who hung out together. Arch was part of mine in early secondary school, a little less so in the sixth form when he had formed a band that elevated him to rock star status at least within the school bounds.

In those early years, along with Arch, there was Geoff Crummock, Simon Dormand and Andy Bullivant. Geoff went in to graphic design, Simon is a school head now and Andy is a finance director. Arch got a job shifting the stage props around on Noel Edmonds' Swap Shop. The next thing I knew he was producing Top of The Pops.

He invited me down to a recording once. I was wearing a pin-striped suit and with my grey hair looked far too old to be gyrating in front of camera. I couldn't believe how small that set was. There were camera booms crossing the tiny dance floor all the time, knocking down dancers like nine pins. It's amazing what they achieved with a lot of smoke and mirrors. Arch went on to produce the Paul Whitehouse Experience and he's still working in light entertainment as far as I know.

In fact I Googled him and saw that he had produced a game show called "Classic Comeback" for TV Gold. Someone wrote this about him: "We recognise the director credit for Arch Dyson, a proven master of turning low-budget programmes into entertainment, and it's great to see that he's lost none of his magic."

With the others we did a lot together as kids. School would let us out at lunch time and we would roam around looking for things to do. We found a dilapidated farmhouse once and set about demolishing it. We'd taken down a few of the walls using a big beam as a battering ram before a farmer appeared at the other side of the field who did not seem to appreciate our efforts. So we left the scene quickly. But what a great way to let your hair down. I suppose there'd be a law against it now. I suppose there was then.

Another source of amusement was to climb through a trapdoor in the geography room and walk around in the eves. You could even get out on to the roof. One of the boys, Steven Gray, known to everybody as "Gibber", went up there one day and painted "Gibber" on the roof. It didn't take the most painstaking of detection work among the teachers to identify the culprit. Happy days.