Saturday morning at the "Fleapit" (nobody seems to remember its real name. I think it might have been "The Regal"), in Portobello Road, Notting Hill, London. Between 1948 and 1954.

"Two penn'orth of laugh and scratch", a bag of cherries from the market barrow outside (you ate the cherries and spat the pips at the screen, where they would stick, giving an interesting texture to the picture).

A seedy looking bloke in a jacket that was an obvious hand-me-down from someone much more prosperour, and very much larger.

He was Uncle somebody or other, and used to make announcements, lead a bit of community song, and leave one step ahead of a swarm of missiles, mosty salted peanuts. They were so smothered in salt you could only eat about half a packet, so the rest were for throwing.

Seat mountings so rickety that you could throw yourself back in your seat at one end of the row, and shoot the poor little sod at the other end straight at the front of the stage. End seats were at a premium, and frequently fought over, usually resulting in both contestants being thrown out.

PROGRAM:-

Two cartoons

A Pathe Childrens Newsreel

A serial with cliffhanger endings which were totally unsurvivable (of course the hero always survived......by cheating).

And "THE FEATURE" Always over fifteen years old, with more splices than the oldest mainbrace in the fleet. Usually at least one complete scene had been lost, which was probably beneficial, as it exercised our imaginations, coming up with a theory about what happened during the missing bit.

Once every three months or so we had A COLOUR FILM. These were mostly even older, and usually they were westerns, or Foreign Legion, which actually made little difference. The story was the same:-

Evil Indians (Arabs) being naughty.
Gallant cowboys (Legionaires) holed up under siege.
Pretty Officer's lady (Mademoiselle), and common Saloon Girl (Belly Dancing Arab Girl), who sniped at each other and made bandages out of their petticoats (We never did understand why they were there), before becoming true friends in adversity.
They would fight off two or three attacks, and lose several men, without ever reloading (oh how we craved possession of one of those guns), then, just as they were about to be overrun, in came the Cavalry, bugles blaring, gumns blazing, and the villains were cut down.
The chief villain takes off, hotly pursued by the hero at a pace which, in real life, would cause their horses to spontaneously combust.
Villain tries to ambush hero, and they fight, on the edge of a cliff with a thirty foot drop. Villain overstretches and takes the dive, and he must be very fragile becuse it kills him.

Everybody gathers at the fort, and the two women wonder which of them the hero will choose, but "A man's gotta........" Well you know the rest.

It's off into the sunset, and I always thought "That man's a fool. It'll be dark in ten minutes and he's sure to ride over a cliff.


Then we all leapt to our feet, and ran like hell to get out before the National Anthem could force us to stand stll for an interminable half minute.

Out through the foyer, and blinking into the bright light outside.

Back to reality, and a whole desperate week to wait before finding out just how that fool in the serial manage to survive being locked in an office safe with two hundred rattlesnakes, and you know what?.....We really Cared!

Don T.