Another Calmer - "Ask'im refereeeeeee"

Hello there

So, you may recall back in Novemeber when  I was spouting off about things that I found to be “calmers”.

I discussed Boston Legal and the Rugby League World Cup.  Well, the RLWC is long over (and much missed in my house) and Boston Legal threw me a forgotten curve-ball with Michael J Fox’s ongoing storyline, which meant I ceased my rewatch.  I’m going to go back to it, but I need to have a sift through episode guides to get me past that particular story-arc.  Was a touch too raw for my sensitive little head at the minute.

However, it has meant that I have been sifting through some of my other comfort viewing (some old, some new) and there was one particular event that I am shocked I’ve never mentioned to you before.  I mean, it’s a proper one that I put on when gloom has descended, safe in the knowledge it will always give me the strangest of cuddles.  You’ll have a fair idea what it is from the header image, and would be forgiven for your confusion, so let me explain…

In fact, I’ll explain quick that it’s not wrestling.  It’s a sort of wrestling, and really a specific wrestling match, but I’ve never been a fan of the “American” wrestling.  All of the WWF avalanche passed me by entirely. I’m aware that it isn’t called that now but haven’t a clue what it is actually called.  I really didn’t like it.  Not even the fact that the "British Bulldog" was related to a girl in my class at school (he actually was, this isn’t one of those “Paul McCartney’s my cousin” boasts that you can find from every third person you speak to in Liverpool).

It's a curious thing my dismissal of the American Wrestling, because if anyone was going to be hooked in by a toy collection it was me.  I had, however, been a fan of the ITV Wrestling on Saturdays, and was still a little sulky about the demise of that.  Maybe I was practising some early form of solidarity with the underdog.

Now, again, let’s get it straight that when I say I was a "fan" of the ITV Wrestling, I mean that I watched it.  I wasn’t specifically invested in any ‘fighter’ beyond the whole Big Daddy versus Giant Haystacks storyline.  That was really what I was always holding out for.  In fact, I was pretty disappointed if neither of them put in an appearance.  I didn’t have a clue if it was real or not, despite my Dad regularly pointing and laughing and saying there was three foot between them when it was supposed to be a slap, and I didn’t have any desire to one day be a wrestler.  Nor did I “play” wrestling with my friends after the show had ended.  The whole thing was relatively passive, but I enjoyed it.  So, "fan" probably wasn’t right.

It was year’s later that I started to make sense of what the appeal was.

So, a history lesson for the uninitiated, ITV Wrestling (or World Of Sport) was broadcast every Saturday for decades and decades.  It had started in the mid-fifties and was a main-stay of the channel. Then, in 1988, it was axed.  It was still popular, still had viewing figures that shows would literally kill for now, and there was a bit of an outrage when it was dropped. It – of course – made not a jot of difference, and the show was killed off for good, never to return. The wrestlers carried on wrestling at town halls and civic centres, just as they always had, but they’ve all faded now too.  Most of them are no longer with us, and whenever you saw one of the old guard interviewed in those final years, there was always a glint of disappointment in their eyes.  Not being the big tough fellas any more, they just looked forlorn and sad.  Like the most important thing in the world to them was no longer there.  Which, it wasn’t.

This coincided with the rise of the WWF, and all the colour and razmatazz (yes, I said razmatazz, it’s too late now), and nobody seemed to be stamping their feet about how this new craze had left other folk on the scrap heap. I think I’ve always been overly-empathetic really.  Or maybe the exact right level.

I felt sad for Big Daddy.  I even felt sad for Giant Haystacks.  I liked telling people that the bloke Indiana Jones fought with was Pat Roach, and that he used to be a wrestler.  Whenever Brian Glover was in a movie or on TV, I would say the same about him, but sometimes admit I didn’t remember him.  That changes, as you'll see. I liked feeling a weird solidarity with a group of people I never met, and I liked sticking up for them when Hulk Hogan was gurning out, all bronze, oil and veins, from an increasing number of T-Shirts. I was sticking with the traditional.

Over time, I filled in my own gaps.  I read about it, and watched videos.  They started repeating them on late night satellite channels, and I got into the habit of putting it on for background company.  Something evocative from childhood, which soon became clear was really rather magnificent from time to time.  Magnificent in its mundanity that is.  I was, and remain, equally fascinated by looking at the crowds.  A sort of retrospective people watching.  The sheer amount of men in suits, and women in their Sunday best.  A miasma of reflecting bifocals. All of them completely invested.  I have long maintained that the only reason there was ever any doubt that this pantomime may not be completely fictional is because of the reactions and emotions of the people sat there watching it.  They’d a better view than us at home, and they seemed pretty convinced it was real.  Surely that many old ladies moved to umbrella/handbag assault meant something?

I’ll get to the point.  As an adult, I started to understand what it was that had appealed to me, and why I’d felt the need to stay in solidarity with the old British Wrestling versus the new-fangled American craze.

It’s all encapsulated in one solitary bout/show.  Les Kellett versus Leon Arras.  It’s this that I keep returning to, and it holds everything that I adore in entertainment in 27 minutes of television.  It’s incredible, hilarious, and there’s so much going on. The sleight-of-hand arm bandage switching alone makes it BAFTA worthy in my eyes. 

Les Kellett was a big star of wrestling.  Pretty dimunitive and not looking unlike Charlie Drake, he had a reputation for being both hard as nails and a proper clown.  His trademark was appearing to be punch drunk but somehow managing to avoid any further battering by swaying at just the right moment. It’s like watching Chaplin or Norman Wisdom.  I refuse to believe it was tightly choreographed, so the improvised timing is all the more impressive.

Leon Arras was the wrestling moniker of Brian Glover.  Depending on your generation he’s either famous as the abusive games teacher in Kes, the joke telling local shouting “That’s enough” at the Slaughtered Lamb in American Werewolf In London, or as the neighbour whose gas supply is being diverted by Richie and Eddie in Bottom.  He was also a highly regarded proper actor at the Royal Court and the like, but we don’t get to control our legacy eh?  For all the stage and screen credits, it’s his turn as Leon Arras that’ll be top of my list.  It clearly meant a lot to him too, as “Wrestler” is the first occupation listed on his way-too-premature gravestone.

The match itself is an insane rollercoaster.  It’s like watching Popeye versus Bluto, and Arras/Glover dominates proceedings.  If it was a play you’d call him a ‘scenery chewer” (as indeed he gloriously was in actual plays).  From the moment he interrupts the referee at the start to declare “I know the rules”, it’s pretty much non-stop.  A really daft shadow-boxing motif that he repeats time and time again, gloating “How about that then” every time he slips a hold, and – my personal favourite – glaring down at Kellett who is repeatedly kicking his head and saying “You can hit that bugger all night long boy, you’ll not sink me” (see header image).

As a side note, despite being from Lancashire (well technically Cheshire as they moved the border), I’ve always taken a particular delight in Yorkshire dialect.  There was a period of time where I became obsessed with the club-made videos of Rugby League, where they would employ a completely biased commentator to rant at matches.  Saints had the late Ron Hoofe, who would declare tries as “Orgasmic” and say “Lick’em and stick ‘em” and “Pick the bones out of that” after scores, but a firm favourite was Mick Morgan at Castleford.  He has since become virally famous with a particularly irate bit of commentary where he declared “I can’t speyk” whilst calling the referee a “Dick’ed”, but my favourite, which I repeat to this day, was him chastising a distraught Castleford player with the phrase “It’s no good sheckin’ tha’ ead cock, tha were at fault thee-er” (trans: It’s no good shaking your head lad, you were at fault there).  I put Brian Glover’s use of the phrase “You’ll not sink me” in the same poetic bracket.

For all the pantomime drama though, I find it so incredibly calming, and indicative of the key difference in the traditional wrestling to the US frenzy.  As far as I could see, the WWF was all about vanity and posturing.  They were all muscle-bound, bronzed Adonis’, but the British Wrestlers almost all looked like your dad running downstairs at 3 in the morning in his pants, because he’d heard a bang in the garden. Where the American effort was (and I presume remains) a celebration of rewarded pomposity, the British wrestling was almost always about vanity getting a hiding.  I’m sure this will be a trait in all wrestling, where the bully gets a kicking, but I guess a lot of this is how they look.  I mean, it’s all nonsense if we are honest, but for a fat kid in the north-west of England, it was rather engaging to see fat blokes knocking out the posers. The huge irony is that it was the poster boy of power posturing, Greg Dyke, who axed the show in the end.

It's a long time since I shed all my puppy fat and became the magnificent specimen I am today, but I still regularly (alarmingly regularly) go back and enjoy that match. The full bout of Les Kellett versus Leon Arras is easily available on YouTube now, and regardless of any preconceptions or existing thoughts on wrestling, I would implore you to take a look at it.  Don’t skip watch it, wait till you’ve a half hour to spare, when you’re grumpy or down or hassled, and indulge it.  I’m confident you’ll laugh and I’m confident you’ll get drawn in to the most comforting escapism.  

It proper works for me at any rate, and I’ve long known who wins.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXhMHHR4s1k (that's where it is)

Hope your week is off to a great start, fingers very much crossed for a Loopholes episode tomorrow.  We’ve both been proper ill and behind on planning, but it’s firmly on top of both our to-do lists.

Much love to you

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