I the mid 1990s, a strange article in the local paper caught my eye. The piece was about a statue of Tommy Steele that had disappeared from outside Bermondsey Library. The fiberglass figure, donated by the singer and entertainer himself as a gift to his hometown, may, the paper reported, have been stolen by a chapter of the Swedish Hells Angels, or had been possibly set fire to by vandals. 'Had anyone noticed it had even gone?' The story asked.
Tim Synge is the creator of Seafront Pages, Original Tales from the dark corners of the Kent Riviera, and beyond..
Ringing the news-desk, I spoke to the reporter, who told me the story had come to her via a local character, who was, it sounded by her description something of an amateur sleuth in the Sherlock Holmes mould. I told her I was film-maker and would be interested in meeting him. A few hours later he rang back.
He suggested we meet the next evening at The Mayflower, a famous Bermondsey pub on the banks of the River Thames. Something of a tourist destination in the summer, it appeared to have half-closed for winter, like one of those small maritime museums found in almost all seaside towns that seem to survive on a display of ships in bottles and loose cannon balls.
As the hour passed slowly, I became convinced that he wouldn't show and that I was wasting my time. He was just some 'crank', as the journalist had implied, a bedroom fantasist who'd probably never left home. He arrived just as I was leaving. Late, about a hundred years late, judging by the look of him.
It was rude to stare, but impossible not to. He was wearing a dark cape and a bowler hat that he took off with his gloves and laid out on the table with a walking cane. Glancing at the jeweled pin on his cravat and the watch chain in his waistcoat pocket, I was surprised when he asked for a pint of lager. A fair bit younger than the man I had expected, he explained he'd been delayed by a broken lift at Camden station, where he'd had appointment to keep with his tailor.
He had a passion for architecture and local history, it quickly became clear. A knowledge of London's secret societies and hidden treasures, as well as a reasoned and rather interesting theory on the true identity of the city's most famous Victorian, Jack the Ripper.
He spoke passionately about his white working-class roots and the values his parents had instilled in him. I listened, as he argued his case against council house ownership, regeneration and middle-class football fans, in an articulate, educated way that today's politicians would struggle to fathom and the liberal elite, fear.
Reaching the end of the night, we shook hands and agreed in principal to meet again. Walking to the bus-stop on my own, I realised I had come away without really discovering anything new about Tommy Steele's statue. All I had was a name, some name he gave me from a hundred years ago, that I wrote on a bar-mat and put in a draw for safe-keeping, but can't for the life of me find now.
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