Tony Ward [TW]
Kate Genever [KG]
KG: Okay, so, I have to say this thing. This interview is being conducted for the Scene But Not Heard project. The interviewer is Kate Genever, the interviewee is Tony Ward, the interview is taking place at Tony’s shop, Top Colour, on Hessle Road, on the 31st of Jan 2025. Okay, so, Tony, we’re going to start at the beginning, and some of these things we might have talked about before, but we’re just going to-
TW: Okay.
KG: -start as we start and we’ll do what we can do, because we’ve talked about it, but people won’t have heard it. Okay, so, do you… Could you tell me when and where you were born? Let’s start at the beginning.
Tony Ward: I was born in 01:02 Nursing Home in London on the 15th of September, 1952, which is near Hornsey in London.
KG: Really?
TW: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
KG: Um, and so you were born in the South in London, what brought you to Hull?
TW: : Basically, two years later my parents had two more – my twin brothers, I’ve got twin brothers, and we lived above a radio shop on Western Park Road in Hornsey, and my parents couldn’t afford to get a house in London even then, and, um-
KG: What year was this?
TW: 1956, ’57. ’56-’57, and they decided to move in with my grandparents at the time. He was a radiographer, my granddad, he had a radio shop, and it was too small, so we then moved up to Hull, and my grandma, my dad’s grandma, she had a flat on Newtown buildings on Southcoates Lane, and she moved in with her daughter, which left my dad a flat to live in, to live there for about three or four years until 1959, and then we moved to Greatfield estates.
KG: Council, through the council?
TW: : Yeah, always council, yeah, yeah, yeah. We had council houses up until about the 1980s I think, yeah, I think my parents bought their own council house eventually, yeah.
KG: Tell me something that you might remember from that time, or any of those times. Do you remember anything… you don’t remember anything in London?
TW: I do.
KG: Do you?
TW: I do. My first recorded memory was being down a ten foot with a three foot high wall catching wasps and throwing them in spiders’ webs and watching the spiders come out and gettin’ ’em. I was about this high and I was catching them and throwing them in, wasps. That was in Western Park Road in London when I was three.
KG: Wow.
TW: (laughs) And I liked to sit outside the shops in a pram, my friend would sit outside the shop in a pram, and next door at one to our shop while we were still in London was a sweet shop called Brookers, and Brookers would bring me sweets out all the time, if I sit in a pram outside all day. You couldn’t do that today, could you? No. And further down there was four, five shops in a row, the last one was Reilly’s, O’Reilly’s, which was a, like a general purpose store, and they had a nice tree in the garden, so we always got playing in the tree and climbing the tree in O’Reilly’s garden, next to the little ten foot where I caught the wasps.
KG: Wow. And then you must have, obviously then, have memories of Hull?
TW: Yeah, when we first came to Hull, we lived in Newtown buildings, right opposite the prison. Opposite the prison it was, and I can remember one day I was on me bike and all the prisoners was running past, and the police, the wardens, was chasing ’em, and I was just sat on my bike, watching ’em go past. 04:14loads of men running past, so that was the prisoners, so I only… but then when I got to five years old, I used to walk all the way from Newtown buildings to South 04:26 School, it must’ve been about two miles, by myself, five years old, you know, in the rain and snow and everything, you know, and you just… but that was just the thing then, and so that’s when I was at Southcoates Lane, until we actually got the house on Greatfield, and then the first place was on Radford Avenue, my first school was Stockwell Infant School. Now, I went Stockwell Infant School because the 04:52 Infant School that I eventually went to wasn’t built then, so it was a temporary… I think I was there for probably a couple of years, then I went off to a different school, and when 04:59 Infant School opened, I went there, and I was there ’til I was eleven, I think eleven plus, straight through, I think I went to the very basic school you got to, the crappy schools with 05:13. So I went to Newton Hall then, and I was there until 1969.
KG: And then from there?
TW: And then from there… and first job was in the fruit market. I got off the bus, so I had moved here, we lived on 05:33 Place then, we moved from Greatfield then, and I got off the bus, and you could get jobs easier, you walk off the bus, walk down to the fruit market, and said, “have you got any jobs going?” and I went to the second place and he said, “yeah, you could start on Monday if you want,” so… hmm.. ‘cos I had allegedly had a grammar school education, a chap came to me house that night when I lived with my mum and dad and said, “oh, because he’s done his time, does he fancy being a career as sales man in the fruit market?” so I said, “well, I’ll give it a go,” so I, um, did that for a while, and then I moved on from there, I went to Hardick, the removal people, we used to 06:16 office, but I used to like it out with the lorries and things. We used to go up and down from Hull to London once a week, we’d have three runs down to London – middle, East, and West. We used to go down to London and keeping the lorries overnight in London, and we used to basically go to Gibson Bishop’s, which was like a super super Harrod’s, we used to get all the stuff from there, and we would… we’d work out which way in which lorry, and what we could leave on the way back, we’d leave it on the way back to Hull, and on Monday when we come… we’d go back on the Saturday, on the Monday we’d switch our lorries round and put the loads in to go down to the central, the East, and the Western one down to London, we’d just go down there, and it was… I got fed up with it, to be fair, and, um, it was just after man landed on the moon. Now, when man landed on the moon, I was sat out there all night watching with me mam, and I thought, “Christ, I can’t be doing this all my life,” ’cause I mean, I was up all night, I felt knackered the following day, and, um, I went to, we used to have a careers office in Hull on Albion Street, and I went in there, and I said, “erm, have you got any jobs? I’m fed up with what I’m doing,” and they said, “well, what was you good at at school?” and I said, “well, I 07:31 was technical drawing, and I used to like drawing and things like that,” so they said, “we’ve got a job here for a trainee photographer with Jimmy Marshall on Holderness Road,” so I give it a go, and I’ve loved it ever since, to be fair. I’ve never, ever got fed up of photography, even today, I still think about it 24/7 to be fair, um, and if I see something on the TV, I think, “oh, that’s a good idea.” 07:55 I never, ever get fed up of it, doing it, and, uh, so I went and worked for Jimmy, which was a fantastic place to work was Jimmy’s…. I sort of wanted to recreate Jimmy’s place, because we had Jimmy, apart from his photography, was the drummer at the Westfield Country Club, and it was the Miller-Marshall duo, and we used to get all really big stars, to be fair, they used to come in the studios just for pictures and talks with everything… We had Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, uh… The Peddlers, like you said, Buddy Rich, which you said, and a funny story I can remember from when I went, I used to have to go out for the dinners and things, ‘cos I was only the 08:38last one of us, Jimmy always used to treat us to a Chinese at lunchtime, and I came back with all the images and everything, and there was this 08:44 cover from upstairs, and I remember saying to Christine who was a guest*, “what the Hell is that noise coming from upstairs?” and she said, “oh, it’s Buddy Rich giving Jimmy a drumming lesson. What a row it was! So, and I stayed with Jimmy for about 18 months, 2 years, and, um, after that-
KG: What did he teach you? What were you doing with him in those two years? ‘Cause you went as an apprentice, to do it all…
TW: : Yeah, he taught me black and white printing, basically, I’d do all the black and … It was all black and white then, and we used to do all the work for BP Chemicals, and that was an, uh, it was basically a good 09:19 how to develop things. It was all black and white, all our colour printing went out, we didn’t do any colour printing there, it was all black and white. He taught me how to do black and white, and he taught me how to manage people, we’d manage people out there, and it was, ’cause I was working with Jimmy in the studio and it was great, I was helping him all the time. We had a lad that used to work for us called John Harrison, who was in the 09:39 convention. He came and worked with me, and he used to 09:42 farm, he said, “I’m 09:44 Guinness every day,” and all tearing up the studio and he couldn’t get out of it, and the bins and so I tackled him, and “oh, sorry, Tony, I was 09:49Guinnessed last night,” and I thought, “oh, fucking Hell, he’s stoned,” and he couldn’t get out because he was between me and the door, so… um, and I was with Jimmy for a couple of years. Had a three month spell at Bins, which was a shop then, just to, just basically, ’cause it was… Jimmy’s money was crap, you couldn’t live on it, and I’d doubled my wages by going to Bins or Hammond’s as it was. Basically 10:15 cod roe in the stock. They had a warehouse and a shop, and it was my job to keep the salesmen informed of what stock they had to sell so we didn’t oversell. But I was there two or three months, and then I applied for a job with Butlin’s, and it was Butlin’s Skegness for the season, and, um, I forget what the guy’s name was … I think it was a bloke called G came and interviewed me in my house when I was living on Cadwell10:43 still, and, um, he gave me the job, and I went down on … In May, 1971, and basically worked the full season there, and it was great, I loved that as well. It was a nice way to manage people. I was in the darkrooms then, and, um, I came home, and to be fair, eh, I fell in love with a girl there called Susanne, who was a student at Retford, Eton Hall in Retford, she was there, and I thought, “crikey, how can I can get nearer her?” so what I did, I went to, um, back to college, got some more O-Levels and things, that’s 11:33in line with other places… what they did was they put me in the…There was no places left for, uh, English language, so they put me in the married woman’s class, and I’ll never forget the person in charge of it was a bloke called Charles Altersky, and he’s still alive now, the prat. And what he did, he wrote on the board, “a woman that puts her teenage daughter on the pill is evading moral responsibility,” and there I was sat with 30 married women, and the prat’s 12:07 to start the debate off. I never got over that with him. I did. But I don’t say what I did. Um, but, I got me O-Level, and I got into Lincoln College of Art, because that was the nearest Art College to Retford, 12:26 there, but by that time we’d fallen out. So I did my Foundation, which I loved the Foundation, it was a fantastic year. I don’t, I think now it’s 12:37 oh I think now they do the Foundation afterwards or something, I can’t work out how it works, but that was a fantastic –
KG: Or they don’t do it.
TW: Don’t they do it?
KG: No.
TW: It was absolutely fantastic, you could experience every aspect of art, there was textiles, there was pottery, there was photography, there was fine art, history of art, they gave you a real good grounding to know which way you was gonna go to, and when I finished that, another… I got off with another woman who lived back in Hull, so, 13:05 imagine the cold air, so, ’cause I met her… I met her on the, um, when I was doing me English O-Level at college, she used to buy me sweets and things all the time and put them on the table, so then I had to come back to Hull, because she was back in ‘ull, you see, erm, but that fell apart after a while, she went off with her driving instructor, so that felt a bit… So I was in… I did my… I came back to Hull to do Exhibition Design. Exhibition Design, which, but that was, again, was good, but it was not the same as Lincoln was, because Lincoln was a very informal college. When I came back to here, I remember the bloke in charge was Reg Landers, and I said, “Reg, what going to do 13:43 this way?” and he said, “Pardon? You don’t call me Reg, it’s Mr. Landers to you.” So, and then I did it there, and it was alright, I got the qualifications in Exhibition Design, and that stand me in good stead for doing set design for photography, you know stuff that I do now, I can think of sets and things. Erm, and then when I left college, I was wayward for a few years, to be fair. Erm, I got into drugs and things, on Hessle Road, drugs and drink and everything, erm, left home, had a flat, erm… tried to learn the guitar, which I’m still trying to learn to do.
14:20 Kate Genever: How old were you at this point?
TW: I would be… 23, 24, 25ish. Yeah. Um… and, but the person that came to teach me to play the guitar was a kid called Andy Boulder. Andy Boulder was in a band called The Penetrators, and it was with his brother Trevor that was in with Bowie, the Spiders From Mars, and he used to come and try and train me to play the guitar, but I couldn’t play the guitar, and I’m still learning to these days. Erm… well, I was a bit wanderin’ for about four or five years, to be fair, uh, didn’t know what to do, and me dad said, “You need to do it proper,” he said, “if I was you, Tony, I’d get into shipping, ’cause shipping’s always been big in Hull,” so, and uh, I went to the job centre. They had a job… They had a course in shipping and transport at the local college, which was a, I think about sixteen week course, and I went there and I did that, and then when I come out, I had… there was a job in the paper as a sales rep for Benjamin Ackaley, so it was a big shipping company, we used to look after the Arab ships, the American ships, the African ships, uh, and for the next two years, I spent it travelling the country, selling space on ships, to be fair. Um… Er… Which was a good job, well paid, used to get a company car and everything, but it wa’n’t really what I wanted to do, I still did my photography at the weekends and evenings, so I’d done the photography forever, and then after a couple of years, a job came up ’cause Benjamin Ackaley was a bit dodgy, I thought I was in a shit stone 16:00 and then asked my boss who was in Bradford, called, uh, Cliff Henry, I said, “Cliff, what would you do?” and he said, “if I was you, Tone, I’d go, because this isn’t a career much longer.” I then got a job at Mat Transport, which was another transport company, just up the road here, and um, I was there for two years, and then I was walking me dog, me Boxer dog, around Spring Bank West, and I looked in the window at all these photographs in a chemist’s shop, called JC Prints the chemist, and I thought, “oh, hey, it’s got the same dog as me,” and I used to go in and get stuff done, that’s where I took all the nightclub photographs as well, I used to go get it all processed up this JC Prints the chemist and sell them all to the people and say 16:47 and then Jeff had this photographic business in the back of his chemist’s shop was getting bigger and bigger, so he put an advertisement in the local paper for an assistant to join him in, so, and when I went for the interview, he said, “I’m glad you’re… I wanted… I put it in the paper so you would apply for it because I wanted you to work for 17:06 I put it in there,” so he said, so I went in there, and we got together in 1981 this was, in the back of a chemist’s shop, um, and after about four or five months, we outgrew it, to be fair. Uh, we were the first people who had this like same day processing, it was in by 10 back at 5, by 5 o’clock it was ridiculous, people were queuing out the door.
17:28 KG: [inaudible]
TW: Um, so, we went round looking for a premises, but at the time there was a good… Probably the first Italian restaurant in Hull, called Medio’s, it was Anlaby Common, but obviously at Medio’s there was a shop for sale, and it was 17:47 it was on the market for £23,000 at the time, so we looked at it, and for some reason, the chap that was working for the estate agent, he said, “what I’ll do if I was you,” he said, “I know Medio’s put a bid in for it for 24,” he said, “we can’t get planning permission to make it into a car park,” he said, “if I was you, put a fair offer in for 20, and you’ll get it,” so that’s what me and Jeff did. Medio couldn’t get his planning permission, withdrew his offer, and we got it for £20,000. And in 1982 we moved from the chemist shop to the shop on Anlaby Common, and it went great guns for years and years did that. Uh, we took over different.. We used to do, started doing these sticky photographs, and then for estate agents, packages, and all sorts of things, and they want… the ladies of the night18:42 in London, I used to do all those, they used to come up from London, we used to photograph them, do the sticky photographs with their numbers on it, and they’d stick them on the phone boxes in London. Um, and then we got our shop, we got another shop in the town centre, we had a town centre shop down Savile Street, eh, and we used to bring all the stuff up from Savile Street to Anlaby Common and process it there, take it back at teatime and everything, and at the time, at the peak of it, we could do a thousand films in a day.
KG: Huh.
TW: We could process and print a thousand films in a day. We had a massive machinery there, erm, and we had a shop in town, the shop at Anlaby, and then the sticker business got too big, so we had to rent a unit on Wincolmlee to actually store all our chemicals and paper and thing, and then this… 1987, this place, the Hessle Road place came up for sale, and um, it came up for sale because there was a Post Office down 19:46 Road, further down the road, and Brian Levitt had this building here, and he was told by the Post Office that he had to own a 19:55 that one was shut down, the chap retired in the Division road one, and he had to, the told him he had to open up between the two, otherwise he’d lose his license to be a Post Office, so this place came up and he had to be out quickly, so Jeff and I bought this for 20,000, mainly to store the paper and chemical for the photographic business, um, sticker business, which we moved in here, and the lads that were workin’ for me, um, Terry and Colin, um, one day they were sitting in here, and they thought, “right, should we open the windows and see what happens? Open the doors and windows,” so they opened the doors and everybody started comin’ in, so then we thought, “right, we’ll get some other machinery to do proper photographic printing like the Anlaby Common shop was doin’, and it’s gone on from there. Um… Terry used to work for us on some of the, uh, minor, like, TV star named Terry, he used to work in lots of the soaps and things, Coronation Street and 20:51 you know, that sort of thing. Colin now works for the police force, and he’s head of the, uh, forensics department, taking all the photographs there from his education here. Erm, all me staff do keep in touch with me, even to this day, and at one stage we had thirty people working probably.
KG: Amazing.
TW: Yeah. And, um, in-
KG:So were people coming in at that point to have their photographs taken, or were they just bringing in films for processing?
TW: Oh, both.
KG:Both?
TW: Well, we’ve always done both. We’ve always done both. From day one we’ve always done both, I had done me theatrical ones forever, which is what I got from Jimmy, because other time then we, it was all black and white then.
KG: It’s alright, don’t worry.
TW: [inaudible] [phone ringing playing music]21:43 Graham!
Graham: Tony?
TW: I’ll ring you back!
Graham: That’s alright, yeah.
TW: How’s your eyes?
Graham: At least they’re not dead. [inaudible]
TW: Huh, oh, huh. Yeah, yeah. Right, well, I’ll ring you back later, Graham.
22:06 Graham: Yeah, but I did meet another woman… [inaudible]
TW: Oh my good…yeah.
22:12 Graham: Well, okay.
TW: Alright, then, Graham, bye. Graham’s nuts. He’s been for his-
22:17 Kate Genever: He was in earlier.
TW: Yeah. Yeah, 22:19 he was supposed to make a date with a woman and she… he didn’t make a date with her, so she got him back with her eyes today, she reckoned, so… So he’s met another woman, he thinks these women don’t line up over 22:31 oh, he’s just, oh my God.
KG: Is he one of the characters that come… I mean, I asked the question about people coming in for their photos and their processing, but actually, what’s amazing about this shop is the people that just come in.
TW: Yeah, they do.
22:46 Kate Genever: Don’t they, they’ve just…
TW: Yeah, yeah.
KG: I don’t know, and I always wonder, are they your friends from life, or are they just people that you’ve met through having a shop?
TW: Both. Both. I mean, one of the guys who used to work with me used to call them Tony’s cronies. They used to come in all the time, you know, one of Tony’s cronies. And people would come in, and you know, I would say, 25% of them bring somebody in, just be in for a chat, “I was just passing through, 23:08 ” say “mate are you going alright?” you know, and come in. I had some people this morning coming in and putting up a sign on the wall there for me just for their sheds and things and I said, “no, yeah, come in and do that” sort of thing.
TW: Uh… I forgot what stage we were at now.
KG: We were… I was saying do people come for processing and portraits, and you said both.
TW:: Yeah, yeah. Well, we do quite a lot of commercial work for the big companies still. Um… that book we did, that book you’ve got
KG:r: Yeah, yeah.
TW: we did all that for that book, that was good. Um..
KG:: So you were taking portraits?
TW: Yeah.
KG: Of the ladies of the night of London, but also all sorts of people were having portraits done…?
TW: Kids, yeah, kids would take ’em, yeah, yeah, and then one day, I remember, Anlaby Common about… it would be 1992, 1993ish. I was watching all the cars going past, and I thought, “they’re all going to town to get Christmas presents for their… for kids and things for Christmas,” so then I had this bonny idea of calendars of women for their husbands for Christmas and that went ballistic. There was like ten and twelve and people, it was 24:15 we was getting this thing done in that black studio upstairs. Um, it made the Morgan Show, it made the BBC Radio 2 show I did, we did Sky TV come down and interview me, and I was offered to go to one in Birmingham, but I was too busy, I couldn’t go there, so, and, it… Well, thousands and thousands came through, got these things done for their husbands at Christmas. Uh, I don’t think you could do that today, do you? Wouldn’t work today.
KG: It’s different today.
TW: Yeah, different, yeah.
KG: I mean, that’s what’s interesting is that this, the shift, if you think, what has changed, I guess, from when you started?
TW: Yeah.
KG: Like, if you think of Jimmy’s, Marshall’s shop
TW: Yeah.
KG: To what you do now, what has changed in that time?
TW: Well, all the processes have changed. A lot of the people that we used to do then and things we used to do then, you can do yourself at home now.
KG:Mm-hmm (affirmative).
TW: ‘Cause that calendar idea, you can do that stuff online, can’t you? You know. Um, portraits are still busy, there’s loads of people wanting that, and that front projector system is a bit of a one off, in’t it?
KG: Yeah.
TW: Because people can’t do that or something.
KG:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
TW: Which was what I got after the miner’s strike. Um, I experienced a bit with doing two negative joined together with a background, that was easy, and then I saw this front projector system, and there was a chap that bought it during the miner’s strike, and it lasted for about four or five years afterwards, from… Is it Dridlington? Which is near Sheffield, Rotherham way, and it was in the paper for sale, and I went down there one evening and bought it, and I had to do a lot of setting up with the studios and things to get it properly, because it… If you don’t do it properly, the background’s wishy-washy. You have to make sure that you seal off the light from the background, the light’s in one direction, but, you know, it’s like thirty, 35 years later, and it’s still going strong, but I’ve now adapted it to do it digitally. People come in, and uh, they’re quite amazed when they see the result. Even now, it’s quite old fashioned, to be fair, but they still come in and have it done. Erm, oh, back to the shop, in, I think it was 2002, Jeff, you know, he was my business partner, Jeff, was a lot older now, and he wanted to retire, and Jeff’s quite a wealthy man, he’s got lots of other irons in the fire. He wanted to retire to set up a horse ranch in Gruffington, North Yorkshire Moors, that’s where he lives now. Um, I did his daughter’s wedding photographs about five or six years ago up there, and he had teepees in the garden for the wedding reception. Um, but Jeff wanted, so I said … He… I couldn’t… To be fair, I couldn’t afford to buy him out, so what I said to Jeff, I said, “well what we’ll do, Jeff, we’ll split the company into two, I’ll have this one here which is Hessle Road and you’ll have the Anlaby Common one,” and we had some money in the bank, we just did a bit of 27:14 I have this, and then more of it went to him and everything, so, and then about ten or twelve years later, Jeff decided to sell his Anlaby Common branch to somebody else, or let it to somebody else, and the poor kid couldn’t make it pay, so it eventually, I think it went into liquidation or 27:33 you see, this was about eight or nine years ago, and it’s now, um, it became a shop that did mobility scooters and things, and then the poor chap that did that passed away, and it became, it’s a bathroom shop now, so I’ve just got this one now, but to be fair, I enjoy it more now, only because you having thirty people working for you is a headache. They don’t turn in, they can’t turn in, they’re this that 27:59. But that’s one thing, it wasn’t as bad then as it will be nowadays with having staff leaving and things, you know, you think there was no minimum wage then, yeah, so.
KG: Rules and regs.
TW: Yeah. You’ve got to be up to now, got to be up to date.
KG: And so, um, if… I mean, this project, the … We’re kind of interested in thinking about the working class social spaces, and the people that frequent them, and the acts, and all of those things, and so … I know you also, as well as being in a photograph shop, you have also been involved in those spaces as a punter and as a person that photographs, didn’t you?
TW: Yeah, I used to go down all the pubs and clubs and go drinking in the pubs and clubs and things, and for a while I used to sponsor the… there used to be a talent competition called the Talent Train in Hull, and that used to run for weeks and weeks and weeks, and what they used to do, they used to have the heats in probably a dozen pubs around the area, where they used to go, amateur artists used to go and do their … they would get voted through and everything. 29:12 with the grand final in the City Hall, usually about May June time, and I always sponsored it in the tune of doing a photoshoot for them, and um, doing sort of leaflets and flyers and things for the, perhaps the winner, but I also, what I used to do, ’cause the City Hall was a good venue for photography then, I used to make sure, I used to photograph it as it happened, and very often I used to make the posters from the live show, and there was a band there called Dirty Witch, they won it one year. But I used to go photograph every band, and the one that won it, I used to think, and that, yeah, that was great ’cause you have all the lights and proper stage sets there and we would often use the pieces I’d done there for the posters and things, but individual ones you couldn’t really do that, they used to come here and get them done, so I did that for about ten to twelve years.
KG:Mm-hmm (affirmative).
TW: and then COVID came, and people didn’t do it anymore… um… uh… people basically lost interest in it, to be fair, and it did die a death… The chap that did it, called, uh… 30:22 ‘s wife, 30:24 first name, can’t remember his first name. Yeah, well, yeah, they used to organise each year, and they, I suppose it lost a bit of interest, really, and it was too hard gettin’ sponsorships for things and everything, but it, when it, the fact that it was basically the final.
KG: Mm-hmm (affirmative). [crosstalk]30:40
TW: The 30:40 rail club used to sponsor it as well, so yeah.
KG: So you’ve always been interested in photographing celebrities or nightlife?
TW: Yeah.
KG: ‘Cause you said before when you saw the advert in the shop you had, were taking in images of nightclubs?
TW: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
KG: Was that hobby photographs or…?
TW: Well, it was both, really, it was a good way of making some money, but I loved doing it anyway.
KG: So what were you doing? Tell me what it was.
TW: What I would do, I would go around 31:06 because people didn’t have cameras and things those days, and I used to have what was called a walkie-book. You buy these from Kimber’s in Brighton, 31:13 I don’t know. Basically a book, with a little receipt on it, and you used to write, take the first picture, go out and “d’you want picture taking?” “yep,” so then you needed to say, right, um, put the address on the tickets, postage was cheap then as well, but that’s put a lot of businesses out of business is the post office charges really. You used to right down, you know they had a little thing, G a spot, and a L and a spot, three ladies, one gent, so many copies to so-and-so so-and-so. I used to do the Rayner’s Pub on a nighttime, then Rayner’s Pub used to close… when pubs used to shut early, I used to go from Rayner’s to Romeo and Juliet’s in town, and then I crossed to Odyssey after that, which was underneath, under, which was above the old Hofbrauhaus, and I used to do the Hofbrauhaus pictures sometimes earlier before Rayner’s on a Friday and Saturday I used to do Hofbrauhaus, take the photographs of all the people in there and just post them on afterwards. Take me films into Jeff, and I’d just write on there one copy, two copies, so then he’d bring ’em back and post ’em off to the people. Uh… I used to, basically worked a full time job, I used to work clubbing two or three nights a week ’til one of two o’clock in the morning.
KG: And people were out having good times, I guess?
TW: Yeah, yeah, yeah. We had disco dancing competitions, um… Lots of hen nights and stag nights in Hofbrau where they used to go and dress them up as ballerinas and stuff like that, used to have to dance round, which I’ve got the pictures up there for. Um… Lot of the sailors used to come in, that was the first place they used to make, it was a massive place, and they used to have queues round the corner, you know, it was unbelievable. I reckon… I reckon on a good Friday or a Saturday, there’d be over a thousand people in there.
KG: Amazing.
TW: Unbelievable. They had all these tables with like 33:06 on the tables where you stand things and drink them, ’cause there was 33:09 wa’n’t there?
KG: I don’t remember it.
TW: Yeah there was, there was one in Lincoln as well, yeah, yeah. Um…
KG: And then… So I guess we’re interested in Hessle Road, Anlaby Road, this kind of part of time, so, can you tell us what it was, what do you remember from Hessle Road, in terms of the pubs and the clubs, you know, when you were going out and taking photographs, what do you remember seeing, or who do you remember meeting? Is there any particular characters?
TW: Quite a few characters. Um… I remember going into Rayner’s once, and, um, Tommy Roe was in there, I think Tommy Roe is still with us, not 33:48 still with us, yeah, um, and I saw him at the bar, and he had this lovely pair of dealer boots on, and I said, “oh, Tommy, I like your boots,” “are you fucking taking the piss or what?” I said, “no, I like ’em, Tommy,” he said, “well what do you want 34:01” I said, “I like them,” he says, “right, meet me here tomorrow night and we’ll have you a pair for you,” and he used to work at Rosen’s Shoe Factory. So I went into Rayner’s the following night, and there he was with this brand new pair of dealer boots, which I had for donkey’s years after that. Um, and there was… Oh, God, I can’t think of… Well, 34:20 Windass was there, 34:22 Windass was in there, all the Windass lads was in there, there was, uh, John Othory, um, but they’d become friends. I’d helped (dealt?) with them doing the pictures, and now they’re coming here because I’ve got all their pictures on there, they come and ask me, “have you got a picture of me granny there,” they say, “oh, that’s me granny there can I have a one of that?” “yeah, darling,” um… And it was good, it was good. Better times. Um, there was fights and things, but there was no knives ever, never any knives ever, and I could remember once going to a pub in Hornsea with all me mates, and one of ’em, one of me mates, he wa’n’t 100% there, this person, and the locals was taking the piss out of him, so we had a big massive fight and a brawl in there, I can remember gettin’ knocked on the head and falling down this 35:10 the chair and breaking the chair, but after it, we gave ’em all lifts home in our cars. You know, we didn’t, like, fight anymore, we’d sorted ourselves out, give ’em a lift home in the car, and that was it, you know, it was never knifey, the fights, very many a fight we used to have, um, but, you know, we just got over it, yeah.
KG:: And so did you see other people fighting?
TW: Yeah, they were always fighting, there was fighting. I remember once I was coming home from… I was in Anlaby Road there, and there was this bloke bringing his wife up or girlfriend up in the doorway, and I remember the doorway, because it had a mirror in the doorway, mirror in the doorway, so I jumped in to try and stop him, and they both started bringing me up. [laughs] I could even see myself in the mirror, thought, “Christ, I’ve got to get out of here,” that was near New York Hotel Anlaby Road there. Yeah. Yeah, it was a funny thing. We used to go to Beercat then, all the time, Beercat, what a difference to Hofbrau, Beercat was different, yeah, so.
KG: And so when you were out taking photographs, what… Obviously these people you now knew through taking photographs were out socialise… You were getting to know them socially.
TW: I think with photography made me get to know them.
KG: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
TW: Because you have to speak, you have to engage with people all the time, and that’s where my experience working at Butlin’s Holiday Camp used to step in, because you had… You think about it, it was commission only, you didn’t get a wage or anything, um, if you didn’t take pictures, you had no wages at the end of the week, so you had to engage with people to get them to take their pictures. Um… a good week was you had Glasgow Fortnight, when you had all those Scots coming down from, uh, Scotland over to the Filey 37:00 I was, had been at the Filey Butlin’s in ’76 or aught, um, you had all these people that were like, “how can you get all them?” but I used to just sit back and watch, and if you did watch, one would be a ringleader, and you’d go to get the ringleader and said, “oh, do you fancy your picture taken?” said, “yeah, well, I guess so,” “get all your mates together, and I’ll do them all with a big group picture, and you can have yours for nothing,” “oh, great, mate, go on then,” and then they’d do your job for you basically, and they would get all these people together, and sometimes you’d get groups of 30 or 40 people, and you get 30 or 40 people having their picture taken. I can remember in 1976 I actually came home with £7000 from doing that for the season, but you’ve got to work at it. Me and there was a kid there called Alan Gray, and we used to have competitions so we’d say, “right, see who can get the most tonight,” we used to say, “what have you done tonight?” we used to meet in the café by the end of the night and see how we’d done, so, yeah, it was, if you were prepared to work then, you could make money, but nowadays, you won’t be able to do it because people have got their own phones, they’ve got their own, everything on the phone, so, times changed, but then it was great, you know, ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s was you could make money doing photography. You still can now, but it’s not 38:11. I mean, if I was to be 23, 24 now, I don’t think I’d go down this route, I don’t think that route exists anymore for somebody in this position, because, um, now we do a lot more framing and then 38:32 and things like that, but the thousand film a day stuff’s gone, and um, yeah, it’s 38:41 the whole, the thing’s changed completely what it was then, and, you, well, I’m lucky really because we made enough money when it was good to buy the premises now and things like that. If you had to set up now, had to pay rent-
KG: Yeah.
TW: Or buy somewhere, or buy the equipment and everything, you just couldn’t afford to do it. You know, the, some of the 39:03 back up, um, so, yeah, I wouldn’t, I couldn’t, I couldn’t… I could still do me… What I’d probably do, well, I’m 72 now, so I wouldn’t probably be working, but what I would’ve probably done was have a job during the daytime and go round the pubs and clubs after, but I don’t think the pubs and clubs thing, you don’t see people going in the pubs and taking photographs now, do you? Half the time, they’ll think you’re probably a pervert or something, wouldn’t they, doing that? You know, so, and that’s another thing you have to be careful with now. George come across that, with, um… You know, if you photograph a park or something and somebody’s in it, they’ll ask, “what you doing? What you doing there? That’s my kids in that picture there,” but you know, so, yeah.
KG: So you got to… So do you think, because I know you did the commercial photography and for bands and acts and stuff, now even that doesn’t exist really in the same way does it?
TW: : No, ’cause people just email them. Yeah, they’re… They are very seldom do they print photographs out and send ’em to the pubs and clubs. They just probably I think what they do they do it via email and send the file to the pub and the pub print out and put it on the wall, you know, that’s gone. Um, some of the… I mean, going back then, we used to use like line negs 40:26 have you ever come across a line neg? What you used to do was get, take the picture, and then leave a space at the bottom which was plain white, and then do lettroset onto a piece of paper, photograph it on a 40:41 which was basically a reversed image of the lettering, and you’d expose every picture in a box the correct way up once for the actual picture, and then again for the actual writing on the bottom, double exposures, double expose each one, and then develop it all in the dark.
KG: Amazing.
TW: Actually, it was a red light in there, put a light in there, red light in there, but yeah, so you’d say 41:07 make sure, right, take every one out, put it in the right order in your box, and get the line neg, do that same thing and everything, and then after that, we got the line neg,which you could put the line neg on top of a negative, so basically, the writing was always white, we’d whited out the actual, um, picture part of the actual negative, and they, I used to do hundreds of them, but they were a, always a problem because it’s bad enough keeping two negatives, two surfaces of negatives clean from dust and everything, but then you’ve got four, ’cause you’ve got the image and the line neg on top of that to keep them clean and sometimes we’d do like ‘undred pictures on the machines and you’d have a bit of a hair on one of them and think, “oh my goodness me,” put it on them again and everything start yeah, so, but…
KG: And who… So who were these people in these photographs that you were doing this for?
TW: I did, well, all the local pubs, all the local artists. There was a Hewey Armstrong, there was a Morris (Maurice?) Solway, there was a …. Crikey, can’t think of ’em. There was, um, I did Carlos and Kandy Lee Barry stuff forever, then there was the Dreamgirls I did once upon a time, there was, um…. There was a lot of the Clive Hunter, the bloke on radio, I must’ve had Cleary, going back, he died about 30 years ago now, but just all these local people I can’t remember it was that many used to come through.
KG: Promo shots?
TW: because photography wa’n’t as good then as it is now, so nowadays, you get better shots, I think, in, on location, um, and it’s easier to do than it was then, I mean, because and then the shots we did on people just like in a black or a white studio, plain background, and they’re boring, aren’t they? They are boring. But when you get live stuff with the cameras you can get now you can get good stuff, like I prefer the live stuff, so I do, I still do bands, I still enjoy doing bands, um, because you become, I don’t know, you’d be, you seem to get immersed in the situation. It’s not a job, it’s just an experience, and you prittle43:31 with a digital where you can look at it on the back of your screen, “oh that’s good, we’ll do that again,” and you can do things like experiment, a lot more experimental than you used to be able to. Um…You can do things like drag the shutter and stuff like that where you get like two images together and one’s blurred, you know, and, uh, I can remember the earliest thing we did which I thought was really clever when I was at Jimmy’s, there was a chap called Reg Klukuss, and he invented a way of welding underwater, and he wanted some pictures doing to implicate that. Well, we rigged it up to do… It was actually… It was actually out of the water, though we did it in a real dark situation with all the stuff on that it gave the impression that he was actually working this welding tool underwater, that was 1971 we did that.
KG: Wow.
TW: Yeah. That was a…. God, and I remember Reg. Reg… I was late teens, early twenties at the time, and I remember Reg used to come in, a real, like, bloke’s bloke he was, Reg, rough as a crow’s ass he was. He had, like, 44:43 down jacket, he would’ve been about 40 or 50 then was Reg, he’s coming, I thought “wow, he’s a good boy, I wouldn’t mind…” like a role model, I thought, “I wouldn’t mind being like him when I get older,” and, um, he used to come in, did Reg, and sadly enough, about 15, 20 years ago, I went to a pub, the Ship Inn, in Dunswell, and I know Jonathan Parr where they got the ship in, and he said, “you’re looking at that bloke, aren’t ya?” and I said, “yeah, I know him from somewhere,” he said, “it’s Reg,” and Reg had had a real bad stroke, and he walked across the floor, and wa’n’t the Reg I used to know, and it, uh, it upset me, to be fair, and then about a few months later, Reg killed himself in his garage, ’cause he couldn’t live with the fact that he had a stroke. So… 45:35.
KG: Yeah, sorry, that’s sad.
TW: Yeah, well, it was a… yeah, your little icons, you realise that they’re, your heroes are really human beings after a while, don’t you? And that was one of the worst experiences of, like, realising that life was precious, was Reg, 45:55 forgettin’ Reg that day.
KG: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
TW: Walkin’ across that pub, in the Ship in Dunswell, and I didn’t recognise him. Yeah, and 46:03 said he looked like death row. Terrible.
KG:Terrible.
TW: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah.
KG:Yeah.
TW: So…
KG: So, you mentioned Kandy, the Dreamgirls….?
TW: Yeah, yep, Twaddles.
KG: [laughs] Twaddles. Erm… Can you tell us some more about them?
TW: Yeah, they were… Well, I … They were just nice, funny people, and you didn’t… To be fair….
KG: Tell us who they… Tell us what, who they are and what they are, yeah, like what do they do, as acts, what were they?
TW: Well, Kandy’s always been a female impersonator, he’s just done art, acts and things and impersonated people, um, not…. Oh, he just sings a song, he doesn’t sing anything. Everything he does is mimed, and once, one of my old friends called Jim Starkey, who’s, Jim’s passed away, Jim Starkey was, uh, an art dealer, but Jim used to dabble in entertainment, so he once offered to pay for Kandy Lee Barry to have singing lessons, so he could sing the songs, but he didn’t, he wouldn’t take it up, he just said, “no, no, I’ll just carry on with me miming and everything,” which he still does. The Dreamgirls, they were, um, a bunch of three girls, three boys used to come and have their pictures done in my studios, probably 30-odd years ago now, I’ve never seen them since, erm, I did a lot of… I did the first gay wedding in 1992, ’93, and it was two chaps from Vauxhall Pub, and I’ve got a photograph somewhere, I was gonna bring them in to, so I could scan ’em, I’ve got a wedding group of brides, bridesmaids, best man, and everything, and everyone’s a bloke, they’ve got 47:48 on, a lovely dress on, in, erm, a tartan dress, they’re all dressed in tartan, erm, Bobby Mandrell or Kandy, he was best man, erm… I forget who got married, to be fair, but I did see him in Criterion a few weeks ago in there, so…. And the funny story with Kandy, or Ray Millington, or Bobby Mandrell, was I remember one we were in the Anlaby Common shop doing his sitting one night, and we’ve got the shop in the front and the studios were at the back, and funnily enough, that day, we’d lost some money in the shop, but it wasn’t lost, it was… but because of insurance, I had to get some sort of, like, reference number or something for me shop to cover me, so the… Kandy came first, or Ray came first, he was getting changed in the back of the shop, where the studios were, it was like a big red door with a, it was a massive, heavy door, it was basically a fire door, and he was behind there getting changed, and this rather dishy female detective came in and was taking all the details, and I had forgotten that Ray was in the back there, and I was talking to this lady in the back there, and all of a sudden, he kicked the door real wide, it smacked on the wall, and he came out with his stockings and suspenders on, and he said, “Tony, are you gonna keep me waiting here all night, or what?” and I thought, she must think this is a gay den 49:17 or something, so, and he, to this day, if ever I walk in a pub where he’s playing, he’ll tell this story to embarrass me, so.
KG: And Twaddles was an act?
TW: Twaddles… yeah, he, Twaddles was and he wasn’t. The first time I saw Twaddles, he used to work in Miller’s down the road there as the barman, and then he was in Criterion, he’d fallen out with one of his boyfriends or something, and he was going home, and he’d got all these records from the jukebox, from the centres we used to have, for ages that night, trying to play that, it took me ages to try and get them in the middle of the thing without the centre in to try and play “because me boyfriend’s left me,” and he was upset and there I was talking to Twaddles in there, but then Twaddles… His real name’s Gary. Uh, he used to always go into Vauxhall, and he used to to dress up, and at the time, they had a swing on the ceiling, and Twaddles used to swing on this thing, and I remember once going in there and he got his stiletto heel stuck in the ceiling and he couldn’t get down without taking his shoes off, he was stuck in the tiles on this swing, but Twaddles was a … They were all funny characters. I remember going 50:29 De Grey once, cor, in ’71, ’72, was it? No, it was ’81, ’82, and he used to 50:36 round in this white trouser suit, “come on boys, mind your back, they’re coming past, this is Twaddles ‘ere,” “oh, fuck off, Twaddles,” but you see, there was never any animosity. They were there, and we just, that was it. Twaddles was Twaddles, Kandy was Kandy, the… it was just like… we’d pull their legs, but we’d never have been a dick to Twaddles, “fuck off you, you poof,” you know, like that.
KG: But there were… but you were also… It was banter, was it? Between-?
TW: Yeah, that’s right, yeah, we didn’t, you know, we never, um, they were a bit different, that was all. You know, nothing… We never used to, they never used to get picked on at all. They got the –
KG: Why do you think?
TW: : Pardon?
KG: Why do you think people were so tolerant?
TW: Well, we just were, we just grew up with it. We grew up that way, and our parents was that way, um, it’s the same with coloured people that would come up, we knew them, we didn’t, they were just there forever, we didn’t know them as being coloured, it was just them, that’s what they were, you know, we didn’t even think of prejudice at that time, you know, we didn’t 51:42 the prejudice, we didn’t, you know, we didn’t even think of it, we never considered, they were just there. John was John.
KG:Yeah, yeah.
TW: You know, that Ray was Ray, it was a different perspective, we never had a thought… we never considered it, I think that society has created a lot of prejudices which didn’t exist before, it highlighted things with young children that never existed. We all used to play together as kids, never thought who was Black, white, Chinese, what, just, like, their names, that’s all we knew them as, but these days, I think, as I said, society has caused a lot of prejudice in situations. Kids don’t think of a person 52:24 it’s only when they get older and they’re told these things that they think about this stuff, so.
KG: And so, did the… I mean, there’s something I would… I mean, I’d like you to talk more about the idea of the acts in the pubs, the landladies, you know, these… There’s tolerance to you among your friends, but also on Hessle Road, this was also a place where these people performed, you know, these acts performed, and, yeah, can you tell us some more about the landladies or the landlords of these pubs or the clubs, or…?
TW: Yeah, yeah. Well, there was Clarice, she had, um, Rayner’s, then Vauxhall, then she had St. George’s. She was, um, keeper of the roost, did Clarice. Um, and then there was Harry and Carol who had Rayner’s at the time, they were nice. They actually all… 53:34 I used to work in the pub on, uh… 53:39 for a while, and there was one, I forgot what they call it… Bay Horse on Wincolmlee, and to be fair, you got welcomed in the pubs doing this, taking photographs, because A. it was something else that made it a bit novel for them, they liked it. “Oh, Tony, can I have a couple of them pictures for me wall?” and give ’em a couple pictures for the wall, and, uh, they welcomed you in there, and all the… Well, no, I never, ever got… I got helped to do what I wanted to do, you know, they thought it was, even nowadays, that they see, you know, you… I remember going to Ryder’s sometimes, and if there was a function on there, I would go and photograph ’em, bring it back here, take it back, give it all the people, it cost me a couple quid or so, but it helps Peter, the people 54:20 “why you working in there?” But the times I go in there, I went in there about six months ago, and this bloke said to me, he said, “oh, how much are these?” I said, “no, it’s 54:27 ” “no, you can’t do these like that,” I said, “I can,” he said “no you can’t,” I said, “I can!” so he said, “well look,” he said, “I’ve never had this done before, I think it’s fantastic, this, I’ll give you summat,” I said, “oh, well, buy me a beer at the bar then if you want to do summat for me,” and he said to me “do you know, I run a motorbike thing in Spain, so we get people on holidays and we take, motorbike holidays, we have a photographer who takes people as they come past, but we don’t…” he said, “but they aren’t as good as yours. Would you prefer to come out to Spain and work for me in Spain?” I said, “Christ, I’m 72, I can’t really go out there and do that out there,” he said, “no, do you want a job, mate? You give me a ring and I’ll come out there,” so, photography is always giving you opportunities for friendships, and businesswise as well, your camera gives you a good excuse to go talk to somebody. You know, you’re in a pub, “do you want a picture taken? Okay, yeah, well this 55:26 and so-and-so and so-and-so,” and there’s that, uh, well, as soon as they come here, people come in, and I’ll show ’em some old pictures. “What’s that?” I got some bits on there that are interesting, “oh, that’s good, innit?” and you can always engage with people, and it’s a light engagement, even if people have passed away, if we do pictures for funerals and things, you can make a nice job of it, and the people are real appreciative, the number of people that come in and said, “you did this for me granddad’s funeral and I was so pleased, you know, what you did for us was lovely,” and I said, “well, that’s what we do.” And Graham, with his 55:59 order services, he does the same thing, people come in, and they, you know, they… They’re pleased… if you come in here… We often get people coming in, they start crying because they’ve seen pictures of people that’s passed away. But of course, Gloria’s quite good with them, she’ll get them to sit down and have a cup of tea, and you know, and look after ’em. And, you know, they’ll sit next to me then, I’d say, “look, don’t worry about it, you know, sit down,” “oh, I’m sorry for crying,” say, “oh, no, it’s your dad, and you’re bound to cry, you know,” um… so… you know, that’s… It is a fantastic tool to benefit your life in general. You can talk to people, you can do the good times and the bad times, um, and this thing with Kate, this thing we’ve done, this HU3 has been marvellous, because I’ve met people, when we’ve been in the studio upstairs with talking to people, it’s unbelievable how what you see is not what you get, is it? It’s got… The people are 56:54 … See… When we’ve been talking to people, and we’ve been photographing them, for some reason, it lifts the burden off the way they speak to you, doesn’t it? They talk to you. I don’t know why it is, but they unload themselves and tell you very personal things about themselves, whether it’s that room or aught, I don’t know. But it’s got vibes in that room, ’cause we’ve had so many, it’s got funny, spooky places, um, whether it’s something there… I’ve always found that room, people would go in there, but Steve 57:27 this room’s funny. He said, “I think it’s a lovely room, this one.” Um… I don’t know why.
KG: So do you think, in that room, because I’ve always been curious, you know, the photographs of the Dreamgirls, or the photographs of Kandy or Ray or whatever… They are very open photographs…
TW: Yeah.
KG: People are truly being themselves…
TW: Yeah.
KG: And I know they’re performers in the world…
TW: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
KG: they know how to act, but in those photographs, they’re not…It’s not just an act, is it, in those moments?
TW: No, no.
KG: So what … What do you think is happening? There’s obviously, clearly something about you as a kind, open, not… Tolerant, non-judgmental person, and you’re a professional as well, they know that they’re coming for a service and all of those things.
TW: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
KG:So there’s something about that, there’s no judgment, but what do you think is happening in… You know, because it wouldn’t… I guess, in history, I guess the idea of… You know, you’ve revealed to me a lot of photographs that are very unusual photographs.
TW: Yeah.
KG: Of kind of groups of… Yeah, the drag acts that are… That you never see those photographs.
TW: No. Well I think … I think, again, it goes back to the Butlin’s thing, where you get people to be your friends, and you don’t… We never set any rule, you gotta sit here, you gotta sit there 59:06 I had a couple came in last Sunday, and it was a coloured couple, wanted pictures doing of themselves, they’d been to church, they said, “we’ll come on the way home,” and I go them all set up, I picked some slides out for them, got them sat there, and the chap said, “oh, I didn’t think about this, he’s miles better than I thought,” he said, “because it’s so easy, you’re not tellin’ us to do this, or do that,” 59:27 like a take, and digi-stores again 59:29 because I can take the pictures, I can show ’em on the… “Oh, what’s that on the screen? Oh can I look at it?” Well then they become involved with the situation, whereas most photographers, you’re the subject and you stay the subject, I like to, in the studio in the shop, involve people in what goes on. If you involve people, I’d say, “what do you think about that one?” here’s a picture of his wife so then, “come on, have a look at this, that’s your next one there,” um, and they get real involved with it.
KG: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
TW: And it doesn’t become a business, it becomes more of a experience. Like, again, Gloria gets them, and she’ll get pictures to frame, and she’ll show them various alternatives and mounts and things like that, frame it that way, I 1:00:09 sometimes I sit on my computer there, and I’ll say, “oh, I think it’d be better if you did this,” and if you engage people, that’s what people like. I think that’s a trick of our success, to be fair, that we engage with people.
KG: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
TW: Like with these things with this HU3 thing we did, Kate, it’s been fantastic when we’ve talked to people there, and people have opened up and told us their whole lives, we didn’t even ask them, they just was tellin’ us these things about themselves, and, um, we never said “yes” or “no,” we just went “can we just listen to them,” and I put my bit in now and then, Kate put her bits in as well-
KG: Yep.
TW: Oh, this happened to me, so-and-so and so-and-so 1:00:46 had this… I liked doing it, it was good.
KG: Yeah.
TW: What you thinking now?
KG: Well, I’m just thinking about how… about the bravery it takes to come to have your photograph taken, and I think it’s quite a brave thing to do… you know, to be, because you have to be vulnerable, don’t you, you have to give over-
TW: Yeah.
KG: Give yourself over in that space.
TW: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
KG: And so… I’m just trying to put myself in people’s shoes, I guess, in…to turn up here and to become, yeah, just to, I guess, to be vulnerable in this space is a brave, has been a brave thing that people have done in the past.
TW: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
KG: And I guess some of them are your friends, some of them…
TW: You see, this is it, yeah, because we, there was, if you look at the pictures, there was no dividing line between the one I knew and the one I didn’t know. Now, quite a lot of people, like DD and Tony Coxton, and George, and Audrey Gill, I knew them, so they were already familiar with us, but the other ones didn’t know us, but we were able to put them… Mainly because I think we were quite casual about the whole situation. Come in, sit down there, we’d chat away and everything and there’s just no, there’s no formality in it, was there?
KG: No.
TW: Which a lot of places, they’re very formal, aren’t they?
KG: And I guess it … I guess that sort of is born for me out of this area and this place.
TW: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
KG: I always say that, to other people, it has its own set of, runs on a whole set of rules that are very unique to this part of the world, to this street, even, and, you know, the idea of being casual, of being tolerant, of anything goes…
TW: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
KG:You know, all stories, everybody’s lives are kind of included, and if I think about what you said around, you know, the acts that you’ve seen perform, the people that have performed, the fact that you know Clarice’s story, her family story, you know all of these…
TW: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah.
KG: What do you think? Do you… I mean, it, because I think the myth of, that’s made around this area is that it was just blokes in fishing, and it was very kind of male, and a bit…
TW: I think it was, to be fair, it was for a time, um…
KG: In the ’80s and ’90s, I guess.
TW: Yeah, yeah.
KG: What does it… you know.
TW: Well, it was the three day millionaires they’re called, in’t they? Because they used to go away and they used to get drunk on the…when they just come home for the three days and go back for the three 1:03:31. I think it was a very, very hard life for both the men and the women. ‘Cause the women used to be by themselves for all that time, didn’t they, so you got three weeks away, and sometimes they’d come home and they didn’t make a lot of money, did they? Yeah they, um, uh…
KG: It’s often described as a wild place. Do you feel like it’s wild? Do you think it was wild?
TW: No, but you bring someone from a more privileged place, say somebody from Harrowgate, who came to spend a weekend with you, “Christ, what’s happened there? You know, 1:04:07 what you doing there? You can’t go down there,” I said, “of course you can.” Even Steve that works with me, um, he won’t walk down Coltman Street, he’s scared to walk down Coltman Street, he’ll come on that Rawling Way. I said, “You’re okay down there, Steve, don’t worry,” he said, “well, it’s, I’ll have the buggers anyway,” so you know, it’s, um… Yeah, I don’t… I don’t know whether I’d too confident to walk… I do walk down the streets in the nighttime now, but I don’t know what it’d be like later on, I don’t know. Erm, you see, what another thing of it I’ve never, that I find difficult, or I don’t understand is there was lots of prostitutes down there, but the prostitutes never give any… I don’t think there’s a… That’s their job, that’s what they do, they choose to do it. I don’t think I’d like it if someone was forced to do it, that’s not the same circus, but they do it down there, and as long as they’re not… 1:05:00 Nothing is when… If they’re all the way in the early morning, they sometimes have got early morning, and you go for your bread cake and everything and 1:05:08 “are you on the early morning shift today?” and what you know so, but they’re no harm to anybody I don’t think, and I think… I think it’s about time that this country made proper recognised areas for them, for their own protection as well. I mean, like, this side of Hessle Road, there’s no houses this side, what harm are they doing? You know.
KG: And were there always prostitutes on this street?
TW: Yep, yeah. The main … There used to be one in town, was, um… Crikey, what do they call it now? It’s near the Prince’s Quay, there was a street there which was always the one, but they always used to go on the corners there, yeah, behind Earl De Grey. But I can remember going Earl De Grey years ago, and the landlord there was a ex… um… Captain of the Northern, and he’d be in there, and then the lasses’d come in, and it’s, “how you doin’ tonight, 1:05:56,” and he’d said, “oh, Christ, I’ve just fallen over,” “oh, come sit on there,” he’d put cream on their legs and everything before they’d go back out on the streets 1:06:02. Yeah, he’d look after them on there, they used to come in, “oh they owe us a couple of quid, can we have 1:06:08” “go on, sit down there, then” and they’d pay it back all the time. I mean, for 1:06:11 they’d basically, ’cause John was a big lad, an ex-fisherman, ex, um, Captain, he was a big lad, any trouble, 1:06:19 just go in, “John, someone’s giving me bother,” 1:06:20 “I’ll go and sort ’em out.” Yeah, yeah. I could remember often seein’ him when they’d fallen over going, coming and he’d put bandages and stuff and 1:06:30 yeah, it was John, he’s dead now, is John. A good friend of, um, Frankie. Frankie used to look out… Used to 1:06:42 he was a student 1:06:44 was Frankie, and he used to look after him, he used to…One of ’em… 1:06:49 Jeff Prince’s sister was married to a chap called Lloyd, now Lloyd was… I don’t think he was the captain of the Northern, but he was a… he was 1:07:02and he used to, Frankie loved Lloyd. Not a relationship, but he used to love Lloyd, and he’d always make sure had his drinks and things and his cabin was 1:07:09 they used to call him luscious Lloyd. Luscious Lloyd, 1:07:17 I’d sometimes say, “I saw Luscious Lloyd,” like, “oh, did ya? Give him my 1:07:19 won’t you, give him regards, luscious Lloyd.”
KG: So tell us… Frankie was…? Is…? Frankie was?
TW: He’s got his pub down the road there and he’s, uh, he’s retired now, which is a mistake I think, was Frankie retiring, because it’s never been the same since, um, and he was onboard the Northern, he went to the, um, Falklands thing we did, did Frankie, and then apparently one day, he told me that, uh, before they got to the Falkland Islands, he had a little bit of a 1:07:53 tet-a-tet with the captain who said, “oh look, you might, we’re going to this place now, you might have to, there might come to a situation where it’s you or an Argentinian” and they pointed at Frankie and said, “could you kill an Argentinian, then, Frankie?” and he said, “eventually!” [laughter] and then on the way down there, they had a practice of putting the lifeboats out, and, um, they were doing, the captain was there to train ’em all to put lifeboats out, and Frankie was on the winch and put his foot with his flip-flops on the thing, and he had nail varnish on his nails [laughter] and the captain said, “Frankie! That’s not what we expect in the navy, go put your shoes on.” Yeah, so, Frankie was lovely. Frankie is lovely.
KG: So… And, so Frankie was openly gay in the…?
TW: Oh, he was openly gay, was Frankie, yeah.
KG: In the navy, and on the boats-
TW: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
KG: and then running which pub?
TW: Frankie’s Vauxhall Tavern down there, and he told me a story about when he was younger, he used to watch TV, and he liked watching Ellen McKogan1:09:01 on the TV, and his mam thought it was lovely because they thought Frankie was goin’ straight, and he said, “I used to watch them ’cause I liked the dresses.” [laughter]. 1:09:11 “Mam used to think I was going straight, then like, oh yeah, that’s what he used to say, is Frankie. Lovely, Frankie, he’s a really funny person, and very warm, and genuine, you know. I think gay people 1:09:23 well, I’d say it’s a lot to grow up with in their life, they are a lot more caring, they appreciate, um, bein’ normal, I think. The people come in, and they’re going to Ryder’s1:09:34 or they’re going to Vauxhall, or they’re going… they don’t… they just…they don’t look round, you know? I remember, um, talking about the gay rep with Brian, 1:09:45 it was a club, that were the first club we got to go to in there, but it was just Brian, you know, we never used to know him. Yeah, I can’t… I said I can’t think of why we’re so anti… But, to be fair, I don’t think the average person is.
KG: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
TW: The average person’s not… I think it’s politicians and things that make us that way, ’cause the average… You know, you go walk down this street and people aren’t that prejudiced. You know, my family aren’t. You know, um… I don’t know. I don’t know.
KG: So can you explain the atmosphere in Ryder’s or Rayner’s when it’s in full… When there’s a… Maybe when Kandy’s playing, or when there’s another act on, or a Wednesday or a Sunday, can you tell me about what it’s like?
TW: Well, Ryder’s and Rayner’s are different kettles of fish we have. Now, Ryder’s is a bit more like the old fashioned working man’s club, um, you have, it’s quite old fashioned, it gets full. You have the artist on, but there’s two or three spots, um, and you’d have Play Your Cards Right, then you’d have your bingo and everything on there, um, then it usually finishes off about 6 o’clock time with the karaoke, get the karaoke machine out. The strippers have gone on a Sunday lunchtime, now that’s gone, that’s definitely years, have you? That was years and years ago, that was, but they don’t get that anymore, I don’t think so, anyway. Whereas Rayner’s is a drinking 1:11:26 but I think Rayner’s is a better, um, representation of what the pubs used to be on Hessle Road, and Ryder’s more like the clubs used to be. Um, ’cause once upon a time, when Ryder’s was the West Hull Liberal Club, it took you… You had to put down on a list, a waiting list, to get into there, and you had to be, um, interviewed by the committee there see whether you could join there, it was quite a difficult place to get in there, you had a waiting list for there, whereas Rayner’s has been 1:11:58 because anything, Rayner’s is the Hessle Road pub, and I think it always will be.
KG: And so, yeah, I mean, what’s the atmosphere like when it’s in full flight?
TW: Just wild, innit? Just wild people all over the place, and you know, you grab all the people they’d say, “ah, Tony, I haven’t seen you in a while [glug] hang on, what’s that there?” and they just grab hold of you and they sit down next to you and they push you out of the way, but no one takes offence, do they? It’s a pushy pub, a very friendly place. Um… When it’s full, I think. I think when it was empty, it’s a bit more… people look at you a bit more when you walk in, when it’s a bit, but they don’t know who you are, do they? I can remember, funny story about Rayner’s. Um, it was a few years ago I was in there, and there was a … the barmaid, they used to make sandwiches and things, and I was stood in there one lunchtime it was, and this chap came in, and asked for a sandwich, “can I have a sandwich?” anyway, this, the barmaid made him a sandwich and gave him the sandwich and he said, “have you got a serviette, love?” and she said, “fucking serviette? Where do you think the fuck you are? This is Rayner’s, a serviette, what’s that?” Oh my [laughter], and I was in hysterics this, sorry, love. [laughter]
KG:There’s a straightforwardness-
TW: Yeah, yeah.
KG:-to it.
TW: No holds barred, 1:13:22 really, you don’t, you know, you… What you see is what it is, what you see is what you get here, really, apparently in there, but like when they came here, they don’t 1:13:29 so you don’t realise, do you? Them people probably aren’t like, there’s a lot more depth to people that we don’t understand or we don’t know, ’cause people don’t go around and tell you all their problems, do they? They do in here.
KG: Hm.
TW: They do in here. They come in here, there’s… Gloria’s… Two chaps today, one he had bad cancer or something, he was telling her Gloria all the stories of how he’s done that and how he’s in remission and everything and he’s done this other thing, another chap came in not long after that, she, Gloria talks to them all the time. It does pick up1:13:56 … ’cause Gloria said and we should have made us like a refuge centre where people would just come and have a chat, and I do believe if we had a coffee machine, then people would be here all day.
KG: Yeah, I know.
TW: Just sit down and have cups of coffee and everything, and Graham comes in and talks to us, because Graham had his 1:14:12 was 1:14:12 today, he didn’t come in, you know, people do come in. Dougie comes in all the time, Billy comes in all the time, and Ray was in 1:14:21 on Monday, he was here when Ray come in, Ray come in with his girlfriend all the time, yeah, he’s a biker, he comes, Friday is Ray day.
KG: Right.
TW: Yeah, yeah. So yeah, it is a bit of a hub for people, it’s very similar to Donna’s place, innit?
KG: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
TW: You had people go in there that don’t, you know, like, you know, ’cause that chap today, I think the order isn’t 1:14:41 very small, and tried to do that for you and said, “oh that’s too cheap, that” I said, “no,” he said, “no, I’ve loved talking to you, and I’m gonna give a big tip for Tony,” he said, “no, take that,” and he said, “no that’s not what it is,” said, “no, take it, I want you to take it, I’d be offended if you didn’t take it,” he says, “oh, fair enough, then,” you know, so, and it is… It is… and I think, if ever I retire, I think I’d miss that. I’d miss being part of this community, and it is a nice community to be part of. Um, and I think myself quite lucky to be part of it. Uh… Well, yeah, where I live and stuff 1:15:18literally, I’ve been South Cave, there’s no community there, you know, and it’s… you know, if, yeah, if I walk from here to Lidl, it’ll take me probably two or three hours, talking to people on the way there, “how you doing? are you doing? what you doing? what you doing? are you coming here?” and so and so and so and so… yeah, yeah, it’s, uh, yeah, it’s good. I will visit when I pop me clogs.
KG: Are you… You’re not planning on closing any time soon?
TW: I don’t think so, I mean, age’ll get to you in the end, though, won’t it? You can’t, you know, you can’t… How long can we last with these all new computers all the time, you know? Erm, physically I feel alright, uh, but you never know, do you?
KG: No, you never know.
TW: : What is disappointing, though, is my daughters aren’t interested in carrying it on, it’d be difficult for them, with the kids and everything, and where they live and everything. It would’ve been nice to, like Maltby’s‘ve done, or like Donna’s has done, where it’s their kids have taken over the business, so Donna goes in there as and when now, doesn’t she? Um, and Maltby’s pet shop, that’s been, I can remember them, four generations of them, they all 1:16:33 and Doug, Pete, who passed away a couple years ago, and now there’s Paul and his kids and everything, but yeah that’s a nice situation to be, because it doesn’t die, does it?
KG: No.
TW: Yeah, because I was just saying the other day, who was I talking to? I was talking to two people, uh, oh! It was Eddie.
KG: Oh.
TW: Eddie the electrician, and, uh, we both said if aught (owt) happened to us two, the business is gone, because the business is us. Um… I had the same conversation a few weeks ago with Mark Hill, the hairdressing, you know Mark Hill the hairdressing guy? He’s quite a famous hairdressing guy, Mark, he does the stars and things, he’s always on BAFTAs and 1:17:11 but he’s a great 1:17:11 is Mark, and I was in Boyes, we was actually discussing underpants in Boyes [laughter] yeah, Mark Hill, he was a massive, he goes on BAFTAs and all that sort of stuff, so 1:17:25 but I said, “you won’t have any trouble, Mark, because your business is you,” he said, “I know,” he said “they’ll come into my shop, even if I don’t do anything, if I go across to pick all this hair up you know, I’ve been to Mark Hill’s today, and he said, and people come in and go, “is Mark in today? oh, I’ll come back tomorrow,” and stuff like that. It is, without Mark, without this, it’s not business, is it?
KG: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
TW: So, unless you… Unless your kids, family take it over, it will die when I die, or when I go, mm-hmm (affirmative.)
KG: What a legacy… I mean, I’m interested in the legacy in a way, as in the people that you’ve served, and the photographs that people have on their walls, and you know, the experiences that they’ve had with you and Gloria in the shop or upstairs having their photograph taken, and I guess, you know, the images that I’m hoping we can look at if you… That those photographs will continue to be in archives and be important things of a time, and I guess you will carry on through your work.
TW: Yeah. The good thing about photography, as opposed to, like, with Donna’s business and the Maltby’s business, you won’t have a bag of seed, will ya? But you’ll have like the photographs that are gonna bring memories back, you see, um, so they’ll always be there, so even when I’m passed away that’s gonna be there, the photographs that we did, still gonna be there, that’s all going to be 1:18:57 it’s forever, i’n’t it? Which is one bad thing about, now with the mobile phones and things, because if you don’t get them printed or done, once you lose your phone, that’s it, so I think as from 2020 onwards, we aren’t gonna have the… I can get pictures in here from granddads from ages ago. “Oh, that’s me granddad” so-and-so and so-and-so, sometimes on the back I put who it is, which we can copy and scan, they’ve got them forever, but once that goes, which I think it will go, in that… ’cause when my kids and kids they’re having’ll take photos on their phone and they’ll lose their phone, they don’t seem to value the history of things. “Oh, I’ve lost me phone, okay, all the kids was on there and that’s gone, so, what 1:19:37” you know what I mean? People don’t seem as, um, what would I say? Er… emotional about more things as was we… and whether they are or not, I don’t know, perhaps I’m making a wrong decision there, um, or judgment, but the people years ago, like, they come in here with their little precious photos… I used to go round the Gypsy camps years ago, into the caravans, and photograph the old photographs on the floor, because they didn’t want them to leave their hand, they were so precious to them that they kept them in their hands, they’d say, “oh, I can’t let this go, it’s me granddad so-and-so and he passed away so many years ago. Can’t you just photograph on the floor? 1:20:16 ” I’ve got my one there.
KG: Amazing.
TW: In the carpets, in the caravans in there, out there, we’ve had photographed them before on the floor, ’cause then, photographs were precious, weren’t they? But no longer. No longer. So yeah, 1:20:30, yeah, so.
KG:And there was a cost involved, as well, wasn’t there?
TW: : Oh yeah, yeah.
KG: A different kind of cost, and an effort to have it done, I guess.
TW: : Yeah, yeah, yeah. I used to go around the, um, Gypsy camps and photograph all the kids and all the things, and I’ve got a fantastic picture on there where we had a donkey 1:20:52 oh, I’ll show you before you go, um, of probably about 50 traveller people, we used to get a lorry, a wagon, a horse wagon, full of beer and go to where McDonald’s is now, when it was Scrapland, and have parties and barbecues and things on there. I’ve got a lovely photograph of 50, 60 travellers sat down with all their dogs and things and all the caravans and things behind ’em, and it’s a lovely picture, lovely picture, one of the best pictures I’ve ever taken, to be fair, uh…
KG: So in a way, it’s an area that’s always taken in all sorts of people.
TW: Yeah.
KG: Or all sorts of people have lived here.
TW: Yeah.
KG:: Whether that’s a Danish fisherman or a-
TW: Yeah, we’ve got a Danish church, haven’t we?
KG: Yeah, or the … But this area, for taking in, like, the, all the Icelandic people, or the, now we’ve got the Mariannes of Somalia and Ruta of Lithuania and…
TW: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I think it’s been… Well, ’cause I think people have always come through, haven’t they, we’re the, it’s the end of the line, i’n’t it, this? And they came through here to go to … 1:22:03 The people who were Jewish came through here, went to America via Liverpool, they came here first, and they were in the, where the station is in town, and, um, they went from there, so there’s always been a mixture of people in this town, I think, um, that’s probably why, what’s really, what it is.
KG: Well, yeah, I mean, it’s an interesting, um, place… It’s a dock, isn’t it? The idea of a collection of-
TW: : Yeah, and because it’s the end of the line, sometimes when I’ve had girlfriends come to see me from different parts of the world, they get off at Paragon Station, and think, “hang on, how’s it stop now?” 1:22:44 ‘Cause in other places, the line’s straight through, don’t they, whereas we don’t. Lincoln does it, Lincoln has 1:22:49 does it go through Lincoln?
KG: Yeah.
TW: Yeah.
KG: Okay, so, I’ve got some photographs that are your photographs. Um, and I was hoping that you might be able to just … I’ll just share a few and talk to me about those photographs.
TW: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Well these photographs, these, I don’t know what to call them. Ray Millington, Bobby Mandrell, or Kandy Lee Barry, he had to change his name from Kandy Lee Barry because there was another drag act called Kandy Do Barry and he put De Barry 1:23:20 it’s still objective, that’s why he calls himself Bobby Mandrell, so he’s never been there, and this was … I photographed him before the digital photography. What I did was we rigged up in the studio. Ray before his makeup, and Ray with his wigs and makeup on. And it’s a photograph of Ray doing… Ray, normal Ray, with Ray with his stuff on, wig on and everything and that, in the mirror lookin’ at himself there, and it’s, you can see where I’ve stuck two negative together there, and, um, it was his publicity photograph. But he preferred one with his head back to front. There’s a photograph of him, I did the same thing with superimposed him looking one way as Ray and him looking the other way as Kandy, with a misting over the two. I’ve got that one somewhere, which that was, uh, that’s the one he shows, that was done in the black studio. That’s Bobby in, um, St. George’s on St. George’s Road, which looks like he’s in the front room, i’n’t it?
KG: Tell us what’s can you see in the photograph?
TW: Well, there’s TVs, there’s the bar right behind us, there’s pictures on the wall, and the [laughter] the gas fire in the corner, because it was a converted house, wa’n’t it? Yeah, that was what it was, yeah, next to a converted house, the pub bit was there, that was normal 1:24:43 then next to it was a converted house, this was Clarice’s place, look, it’s little speakers in there, it’s changed, yeah, oh the cat looks funny, innit? I was once in… I don’t… I think it was in St. George’s, when Ray was doing his act, and I forget what they called his partner at the time, ’cause his partner, oh, I forget, his partner was doing the sound, and he kept getting mixed up, and of course, Ray went to sing a song and then he says, “for fuck’s sake, 1:25:23 for fuck’s sake, get your act together!” and he used to go down there, he’d come out again, and start doing again, and “for fuck’s sake, fuck, what you doing? What you doing with that thing there? 1:25:32 I’m trying to sing here,” and he’d do an act for about ten minutes, quarter of a hour, and I would… That was, for me, funnier than the act, because I couldn’t stop laughing. People knew he was in there, and, um, I was watching him do this, and, uh, they were saying, “oh, I like it when he does this one,” they’d, yeah, I remember he’d kept coming out, but it happened a few times he did it, was that, and another thing was, um, with Ray, he had a Boxer dog once, I mean a Boxer dog, and, um, I had a Boxer… He had a Boxer female, and I had a Boxer male dog, and we mated the two together, and, um, he had some puppies from my dog, and I 1:26:09 think it were the cobbler, I think it was Phil the cobbler he was with at the time, on, uh, Boothferry Estate building and everything, and, um, they had some puppies, and sell the puppies on, and my first wife’s parents were quite, um, well rich, as they were 1:26:26 Seventh Day Adventists, [coughs] and Peter, lovely 1:26:29 Peter had had, wanted to see these puppies. Well, I actually took ’em down to Ray’s house, and, um, well they, what they thought about gay people I don’t know, [coughs] this bloody cough, anyway, we walked in, and Peter and Eileen, me wife’s Seventh Day Adventist, um, mother and father-in-law, Ray came in, and they said, “you wouldn’t fucking believe this, I come down this morning, there was fucking shit all over the bastard place, and I said to Phil, get that fucking cleaned up,” and I thought, “oh my goodness,” and I could see their faces, I could see their faces thinking, “what has my son-in-law brought me into here?” So they weren’t there very long1:27:15 but I can never forget that, yeah, “fucking shit all over the floor when I came down this morning, I said, fucking Phil, get this bastard cleaned up,” yeah. That was in the same place.
KG: St. George’s?
TW: Yeah, that’s where he did his … That’s where he did his nun things, and he used to put a… This is a 1:27:35 I’ve seen him with a cushion over, so he does the pregnant nun, yeah, so that was St. George’s there with his nun outfit. I think I did him in there. These were the days before we had me back projection, this was the day when that woman, policewoman was there, that’s where 1:27:56 when she came in with that one, yeah.
KG:: So what is in the photograph? Tell us what’s in the photo.
TW: Well, visually, a plain black, plain, um, powder blue background, and massive jewellery, that’s when he was, I think that was when he was at his peak, that, um…
KG:How many times do you think you photographed him?
TW: Half a dozen. Yeah, yeah.
KG: When was the last time-?
TW: In studios?
KG: Yeah, in studios.
TW: Yeah, yeah, I’ve done him loads of times when he’s been on 1:28:23
KG: On
TW: acts, yeah. Well, this is in the… This is in here. With all [laughter] that’s Dorothy, there, when he was doing… 1:28:31 oh when it was a pizza parlour, I think it was, we was doing that as a [laughter]
KG: What’s the pose? Tell me…
TW: I don’t know, [laughter] he does the rest, “what do you wanna do, this?” “what about this one?” so he just goes and does it, I said, “well, do that” and, um, yeah, we just do it, I don’t know what it was, I don’t know why he did it, ’cause he’s got, like, Peter Pan stuff on ain’t he, there?
KG: And there’s outfit changes, isn’t there?
TW: Yeah it is.
KG: -in all of these…?
TW: Well, they change them all the time, yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s a Shirley Bassey one, yeah, that one. Oh, yeah. This was a front projection one, but that’s Times Square, New York, that is, on the bench, which is still up there, yeah. Yeah, I like that one, 1:29:05 you see how relaxed he looked, doesn’t he? He’s always relaxed. Well that’s his Shirley Bassey one, innit? This is a Shirley Bassey, look, with the candles and everything, with the blue background, yeah. No, it’s fully brought a good relationship. Well, that’s your mate’s house. I went to his house and photographed him in his house, once. Don’t know why I did. He must have said… ’cause he hates these. [laughter]
KG: Why does he hate them?
TW: Because he likes himself as that, doesn’t he? He doesn’t like himself as that. Um, yeah, I think … That’s him as Kandy, and that’s him as Ray, and I think he … That’s his ego, there, i’n’t it? That isn’t there, no, he’s … He’s happy when he’s doing his act, I think. Or he used to, don’t know what his feelings now and that, I don’t know, I don’t know.
KG:I think… Um
TW: This is Dreamgirls.
KG:Yeah.
TW: Yeah, this is the Dream… I can’t remember … I can remember these come in, but I can’t remember what we did. They came down one evening, and it was late one evening, if I remember rightly, and they just wanted some PR shots doing, and we did… I think I met them in, um, I met them via Ray, I’m sure I met them, ’cause he used to say, “oh, go see Tony,” and everything like that, and he used to get you sorted out. I can’t remember their names, but it’s funny how time passes, and you look at things, and you think, “how could things you did before…?” you took time to do things before, and like, now, with this, we’ve been doing, it’s coming back to these sort of like standards and things, and 1:30:41 I foundlast weekend I’m doing pictures that I feel proud to show people, and we had a period where they wanted things on ordinary backgrounds, and it was not me, but it was what the people wanted, uh, whereas now, I’m going back to this sort of… I did someone on Sunday, I just did on Sunday, and I was real chuffed with them, I thought, “oh, they’re nice pictures,” and I can do ’em, mainly because I like the results, and it’s different. Monty Zucker, who was a famous photographer from, um, America, I went to a few of his seminars years and years ago, his motto was that it’s difference that makes the difference 1:31:23for your photography. It is the difference, innit? Yeah… ’cause I hate white studios. I’ve got rid of mine, now, yeah, so.
KG: So do you think… Tell us what’s in… Tell me what your… Do you remember anything about taking those photographs or the costumes?
TW: I can remember taking them, but, I can remember taking them, they go to get changed in the, um, staff room, ’cause in … There was no room they could fit in my studio with all their gear, and they kept comin’ out, “what you doing next? What you doing next?” go in there, go in there, go in there, and they were great. It was lovely, a lovely atmosphere. It was a nice experience, to be fair. Uh, I been, I did… No, there was never anything strange about it, never anything… I was a photographer, I was male there, I don’t know whether they were female 1:32:07 but just like, nothing ever, you know, it was just doing a job, we joined… This is what I think the success is, it’s like an experience, we join together for a joint end result together, like you and I have done, um, and everyone that comes in, right, we do this. You see, this is before digital. We didn’t know what was gonna happen with these, did we? We just did ’em on film and everything, and, um, it’s worked. 1:32:35 Yeah, but-
KG: Can you describe the costumes?
TW: Yeah, they’re just over the top, aren’t they? But really glittery, like, peacock-y clothes and everything, and then 1:32:43 it’s a bit like Indian Brackett1:32:45 innit, to be fair?
KG: Of the time, yeah.
TW: : Yeah. [coughs] Yeah, well, I’ll have to get in touch with them two, three, ’cause of Ollie. [coughs] I think he’s still around. Here’s, oh, that’s with a back projector there, with, um, 1:33:03 I can’t remember him. [coughs]
KG:And then, just, hang on. There’s some more of those… Now these are the?
TW: These are all the, um, theatrical people that came through.
KG:So would you have made these posters using these photographs?
TW: Yeah, yeah, yeah. This was Silver Hail, I think, this was the one where you had the negative-
KG: And you-
TW: -and you’d make a line negative, and you’d put that on the top of it, as long as there’s a black here, and you’d do hundreds of these.
KG: But would you have done that with these photographs?
TW: No. I didn’t do it, I don’t know what I did with theirs.
KG: You would… So the Ray photographs, the Dreamgirls photographs are [crosstalk] 1:33:53
TW: Ray… What Ray used to do, there used to be a company called Denman Repros, and what you could do, you could send your pictures off to them and they would make your posters for you, um, the bigger ones they did that, because they all done thousands and thousands. We used to do hundred. You couldn’t … We couldn’t compete with them with the thousands and things.
KG: No. And so tell me about Denman Reperos?
TW: They were in Nottingham. And you … The artist used to send the pictures to them, Ray’s got a lot of, they had them there, and they used to produce, um, pictures, not of this quality, but they were good enough to hand out in pubs and clubs and things, you see, ’cause you’re givin’ them away, aren’t ya? So it was, these things were about quid a piece, that was a long time ago, whilst they’re coming out to pence. I still got that. I still got that.
KG: Huh.
TW: That microphone there.
KG: So, were people using the one from Denman Reprose, were they using them to give out to audience, or to-
TW: No, they used to give ’em to the-
KG:-landlords or landladies?
TW: Yeah, yeah, they used to come up with the 1:34:55 they put on the wall, Ryder’s does still do that, if you go in there, you’ll see some on the walls in there that they have produced themselves. Yeah, it’s a period here, next Saturday, and things like that.
KG: Okay.
TW: And we used to sometimes do ’em with a band across there, used to have… artists would write next so-and-so and so-and-so up here and here, yeah. That’s… can remember all of that.
KG: Oh, the slides?
TW: Yeah.
KG:Um… Oh, that’s the shop.
TW: That’s my shop in Anlaby.
KG:And I guess this is interesting.
TW: That’s my wall with all the people here that I’ve done work for. That’s Ray there, look.
KG: And can you explain what the wall is?
TW: The wall is actually all the publicity photographs on there, it was all the people who came in for the pictures they wanted for their, um, it was a package, promotional photographs, we used to do a sitting, and what did we used to do? Artwork, 200, full colour, little sticky photographs to put onto people’s walls and things, you know, all of it, 1:35:56 that person, with their name on, all these line neg ideas, that was. And that was looked like a little cartoon that he had clipped, he did, and I photographed the cartoon and made a line neg out of it. You’ve got all these people here, someone came in in the day, the shop, he found himself on here. We used to do business cards as well. I think that’s Jeff. That’s me dog. Uh… Louis De Flack, who’s still around, he comes in now still.
KG:And what date do you think this photograph’s from?
TW: I would think 1984, 1985. Yeah, ’cause it was before we got the next… We had that shop risen in there, look, just that bit there.
KG: Okay.
TW: Just that bit there, and then what we… In, um… when would it be? The girls were 5 or 6 so well 1994, 1995, we bought, that was a baker’s shop, we bought that and knocked it through. So this, this bit here, you can’t see it too good really–
KG: Yeah.
TW: was a wall there, was a wall that we’d knocked the wall down.
KG: So it was before you bought the second shop?
TW: Yep, yeah, yeah. So, it’d be about ’84, ’85ish, I reckon. That was a horrible house, 1:37:14 shows better pictures where you could see who it was, couldn’t ya?
KG: So you were, I guess, you’d been here for so long, and you were out taking photographs, you had a history, even before the shops of going in the bars and clubs and stuff, taking photographs-
TW: Yeah, yeah.
KG: -so people knew you and trusted you, ’cause you were turning up with photographs and you weren’t judging or any of those things?
TW: No, no, no.
KG: So, do you think you were the go to place for people, like, was there other places that people would go?
TW: Yeah. No, when, um, I felt awful about what happened. It wasn’t… Well, I left Jimmy, I set up by meself, uh, in Anlaby, and um, I remember one day, Jimmy rang me up and said, “Tony could you help me out for a day or so?” he said, “have you got any photographic paper?” I said, “yeah, so what do you want?” he said, ” ‘undred sheets,” I said, “Jimmy, I don’t have sheets, I have rolls of it.” I felt awful sayin’ that to ‘im, ’cause I couldn’t help him out, and I’d gone up. I said, “no, Jimmy, I don’t have it, I have rolls, I have ‘undred metre rolls,” “oh, sorry,” I said, “well, I can’t … You can’t cut it out because you can’t do it…” and I felt awful doing that day. Another awful thing, situation that was very similar, was my chemistry teacher at school was called Mr. Hawkins, and his first name was Donald Hawkins, and I looked at all the, I think I put ourselves 1:38:46 in the paper and my chemistry teacher applied for a job with me, and I felt, I was humbled, really, and I felt … And I couldn’t employ ‘im, but I thought, “well, my poor old chemistry teacher,” now the role’s reversed, and I didn’t like doin’ it, to be fair, and it was similar to the Jimmy idea, was he wanted some paper, and I said, “no, I don’t deal in sheets, Jimmy, I have rolls now,” and then that night me, Mr. Hawkins came down for a job from me, and it was horrible, to be fair, I didn’t like it, so.
KG: Mm-hmm (affirmative). I can understand that.
TW: Yeah, yeah.
KG:So yeah, people would know, I guess that’s what I’m thinking is people would know that you were the place, like you just said, didn’t you, that Ray introduced the Dreamgirls to you?
TW: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
KG: That’s how they would know is through Ray.
TW: Yeah. It’s all through word of mouth, basically, yeah, come to see you and everything like that.
KG: And you were well known.
TW: Yeah. I think it’s that picture isn’t it, you know?
KG: What’s in that picture?
TW: That’s a picture of Ray… Because when they’re sitting and finished, and then you say, right, and it’s, to me, it is 1:39:51 Marlena and the district pose, that is, and he loves it, and he … that, to me, is the best picture I took of Ray, then he did this stupid thing where he put his, took his hat off and put his scarf round his head, took his wig off, he’s got his, like, bloody, urban scarf round his head, and he did, that was a joke one, but we always say that we’d done the sitting, and I think the best pictures came when we was mucking around at the end with this, that Marlena1:40:15 , I love that Marlena 1:40:15 one, with his, he’s not smiling, 1:40:18 I think it was… and he still says to this day that’s his favourite picture, his Marlena one, so.
KG: Do you feel proud of the work you’ve done over the years?
TW: I do with these ones. The ones of like, the white studio ones, I don’t.
KG: I guess I mean, also, the work of the shop, you know, all of the work.
TW: Well yeah, I do feel proud of it, when people, you know, um, yeah, ’cause it… I think I feel very privileged, the fact that I don’t consider this as being a job. I come here ’cause I enjoy coming in here, I enjoy doing what I doing, you know? If I…this is one of the things that does worry me about, if I did nothing, what would I do? ‘Cause I do love coming here, I love the people coming in, I enjoy the things, even when things go, like my printer went wrong today, but it’s just one of them things you get over, it’s not much, you know? It’s only a printer, innit? If I buy another one, buy another one. Um, but I would, I, yeah, to do nothing, and to be fair, COVID gave me a glimpse of retirement, ’cause if I couldn’t come into here, I used to come in and look after the machines all the time and everything, nobody could come through the door, and I’d just stay at home watching antiquey programs and stuff like that, and car programs, and I’d think, “cor, I couldn’t do this all the time,” do you know this? You know. And I do believe… A lot of people I do know, I know two people, um, I think, ’cause they’re retired, it’s not been good for them, I… admittedly, I don’t think you should carry on at 40 hours a week for the rest of your life, but to keep some interest in what you do is very important for your mind and your physicality’s keeping on. I know a lady, um, who retired two years ago, uh, and um, she just had a stroke recently, and I think it’s because she’s … Doesn’t do anything. You need to keep yourself active, um, long as you can, when you can’t, you can’t, can you?
KG: No.
TW: Yeah, so… Yeah, Kelly there.
KG: You have funny memories looking at them?
TW: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, that wall, that wall became the thing. Funnily enough, there’s funny story about this, because next to here, this machine, this wall was a big photographic processing machine, and all the photographs would come out a real 1:42:48 because unlike now, you’d pre-cut the pictures before they’re printed, they’d cut… It cuts in there. Before you used to put massive rolls of paper on this big machine, they’d come through, it’d come through in the shop, in there, all these rolls and rolls of pictures coming off, then they used to go in the back, we used to cut them down, yeah, cut them down, yeah, um, and one day, the shop was absolutely packed, with all the people waiting for their film, ’cause we used to have this … We started to have an offer in by 10 back at 4, that sort of stuff, and at 4 o’clock people’d start coming in, and these pictures coming off, and there was people in the shop, but they were real calm, 1:43:27 they were just like, came out and just say waiting for the pictures, and this woman named so-and-so and so-and-so and they were all calm and I thought, “that’s strange, they’re all just watching her watching all the pictures coming off,” and there had been a camera club with all naked people and they come and 1:43:40 there was rolls and rolls of naked women coming across and all the lads were just sat there watching them come out [laughter]. Yeah, 1:43:49 I had that machine was just here, and now and then I would [inaudible]1:43:53 come in there, so. Yeah, I had a good staff then, a good staff they were, nice staff, they still, that’s the one we still keep together now. Quite a jokey lot of staff, yeah, we had a lot of, um, funny experiences. There was one funny experience was when John Reddick started working with me, John, and he was a right ace lad, uh, when we were at the chemist’s shop, and, um, I was I the dark… and completely in the darkroom, showing him how to process films, and I was between him and the door, ’cause what you do, I showed him, that you get the clip out, you get the clip there, you’d be… put the clip on that end of the film, we’d put the sticker on there, so we know who’s film is what, and then you get the rubbish and throw it in the bin, and as I threw it in the bin, I grabbed his 1:44:37 by mistake, and I thought, poor old John, he was 1:44:41 , he couldn’t get out there, I was between him and the door. I still know John today, John now works for the police force, but he sometimes says that, “I was shit scared of you in that room there with you, I couldn’t get out because you was in there” I said, “I didn’t do that, I was putting that rubbish in the bin,” ’cause the bin was in the corner there, so.
KG: Um, and then the last question, ’cause I wanted to ask you, is something about how the customers and the street have changed. You’ve been here 40 years, nearly?
TW: Yeah, yeah. Um, yeah, there’s a lot…there is a lot more foreign people coming, an awful lot more foreign people. Going back… when we first started here, I would say, less than 2 or 3% was foreign people, and now I would say it’s about 30 or 40%, now, yeah, coming here. Um, mainly because they want different things now, they want passports doing, and it varies, you know, we have to do, I had a Japanese passport to do, 1:45:48 I’d never met a Japanese woman in my life. I did a passport photograph for a bloke who’s going to Japan because he’s just qualified as a samurai wrestler, oh, sumo wrestler, yeah, he was in the shop, and I said, “are you a sumo wrestler? You’re not fat enough?” and I pointed to me dad, and I said, “your dad is,” [laughter] and that was his, from, Japanese birth certificate for Japanese, yeah, um, and we do a lot of work with people for documents, printing out, and that sort of thing, which we never used to before. Um, yeah, it’s generally, um, English people mainly come for pictures, whereas the other people come for documents and passports and things. It’s a fairly split, really.
KG: Hm.
TW: Um, so, yeah.
KG:: Yeah.
TW: What was the question?
KG: How has the street changed?
TW: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, lot of the old, you see, there was a… Billy Glenn, the fish man, he used to be end of the street, opposite Maltby’s, um, Billy the fish, they called him, and he was like this, he was family did it, um, always went to Billy the fish, and he died about four or five years ago, now let’s digest that, because nobody carried it on, you know, it’s, Billy the fish is no longer. Everyone used to go there, and he was a character, “oh, just give me so-and-so quid for that, don’t bother” you know? And, “you want some of that?” You’d go to Billy and say, “Billy, right, this is what you want, this is what you want,” and to the 1:47:28 same, there used to be a lovely butcher, Ralph the butcher, he was just before you get to 1:47:35on the same side, that was a Pearson’s Butcher’s it was, and he would 1:47:41 I could’ve… He was part of the… His brother was gay, he used to have Vauxhall before Frankie got it, um, but yeah, but they were all part of the community, but they’ve, they’re all gone, and as these people are going, nothing’s replacing them that’s long lasting. These people come and go, now, don’t they? More transient, because I think, the, um, people here are more transient, aren’t they? They aren’t like they used to be, they move on, nothing works, whereas when I was younger, things were there, like landlords was there in a pub for yonks, wa’n’t they?
KG: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
TW: You know, um, the bloke of 1:48:20 through Rayner’s happy years. Nowadays, landlords, they change after just a couple years they move on to somewhere else, um, I remember when Harry and Carol were in Rayner’s they were in there for bloody years and years, you know? They had their own talent 1:48:35 in there as well, did Rayner’s, yeah, really good pub, good pub. The one, the main room in there was that back room, ’cause they don’t use ’em as much now, do they? That was the main room, that was, so.
KG: Who have you seen perform in there? In Rayner’s, who have you seen?
TW: : Rayner’s?
KG: Yeah, who-
TW: Well, Kandy was there, um, Noah was there, with his Elvis Presley suit on that he got from, um, Joe Longthorne. There was, uh, Coochie Coo was in there, uh, they’ve got more of the pictures on there, people used to have this talent thing in there all the time… but, um, Harry put the money up, and it was quite a good thing, and, um, but then, um, Ian on pianos, and uh, his partner-
KG: Michael.
TW: Yeah, Michael, and, uh, Rob, and see, it was Robbie, Robbie and his mate, was, uh-
KG: Laurie.
TW: Laurie, that’s it, Laurie’s mate, they were wrestling in1:49:31 there, every Thursday, Friday, Saturday, they were in there, they used to play, uh, Michael on the drums and Laurie was on the organ, and it was quite funny really, because I remember being there once, when Joe Longthorne came, and he got on stage, and started doing an act for everybody there, and he said, “I’ve gotta get off now,” and said, “no, stay on!” and then Mike and Laurie said, “do you want to give us a lift?” “fuck off” and they went 1:50:01 ’cause they aren’t really…. They were 1:50:04 I could see him getting chased out, because they wanted him back on, 1:50:08 ’cause all they were seeing was that Joe were a big star, wa’n’t he, at the time, and uh, he was doing… ’cause he could play the piano, he could play the guitar, he was quite an all-rounder was Joe, and, um, yeah, but he was, “oh no, it won’t happen with you,” alright.
KG: Did you ever photograph Joe?
TW: Yeah, loads of times.
KG: In the pub?
TW: Yeah, no, I’d go in sometimes, there’s one there, there’s one, look, I took that in 1969 I was at Jimmy’s. See on the wall there?
KG: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
TW: That big picture, that picture there, that was always in his dad’s, um, dad’s wallet. When he 1:50:41 he used to go in Rayner’s, and his dad was in there. He was a nice bloke, was his dad, he used to take, he used to always have bloody string in his shoes even though he had money, he don’t spend it, funnily enough. I remember when we took this photograph, he used to get it out of his pocket, that one, and it was all creased up, “you took that of our Joe,” and I was at Jimmy Marshall’s, and I took that picture when he won his first talent show final when it was in East Park, the outdoor East Park one evening, and um, uh, I took them pictures and they did me roof for me, they did the roof, me and Jimmy, did the roof, yeah, we did a bit of bartering, yeah, “I’ll do your roof for ya.” Yeah, and then, uh, he was at, uh, New Theatre, and he got me then to do it, I was uh, he said, “oh, come and take some pictures, Tony,” “oh, I’ll go take some pictures,” and then I crept on stage… I was taking him across the piano and he said, stopped singing, and he said, “who the fuck are you?” I said, “you told me to come down tonight,” he said, “no, I don’t know,” [laughter] 1:51:45 you know, I decided to turn up, and I thought, “you bastard,” and I was, I’d just got a… He’d stopped singing, “who the fuck’s this guy?” [laughter] yeah, that was funny, that was, yeah. Me and Gloria was there, and she said I remember you kinda crept up real discreetly with your camera, trying to get a reflection of him in the piano top, yeah, and he was, “who the fuck are you? What are you doing on there?” yeah, that was about twelve years ago, that was, yeah. I miss them sort of times, it was good, funny. ’cause Joe was a gay boy, wa’n’t, Joe was gay, but he grew up and he was Joe. Yeah.
KG: And very accepted in the community?
TW: Yeah, yeah. He was 1:52:26 people don’t want him, more lewd, more like, partly, when he died, they brought his body over from Blackpool and took him down the road, didn’t they?Yeah, yeah. Yeah, he’s… His family still live down there. His sister died, not long after. Uh, his other sister lives over there, and, um, yeah, but he knew Gloria, my wife, has got a big affinity with Joe, because he’s always had trouble with leukaemia, did Joe, and Gloria’s brother died of leukaemia, and she’s got a bit of an affinity with Joe, she did have, because of that experience they’ve both been through, yeah, so, she was probably closer to him than I was, because of history, yeah.
KG: Mm-hmm (affirmative). We done? Thank you, Tony.
TW: That’s alright. I’ll show you them pictures, by the way, like me, traveller pictures are very 1:53:25 i’n’t they? Well, tell you, I know exactly where they are… This is as beautiful.
