A CALL TO ADVENTURE

It’s 6.00 am on 25^th December 1957, Christmas morning, and my eight-year-old year self is plunging excitedly into a small pillowcase of surprises which Santa has left at the end of my bed… 

 

It won’t take long to pillage this horde for we are not a well-off family, but ­after registering the ubiquitous tangerine, a handful of nuts and gold-foil-covered chocolate coins – I seize on rectangular package that instantly declares itself to be a BOOK!

 

Shredding the holly-and-robins wrapping-paper, I catch my breath and my eyes open wider than wide… 

 

ROBIN HOOD Annual 1958…

 

 

There are no words to express my joy and delight! Exciting full-page colour illustrations, picture-strip stories, ‘proper stories’ with lots and lots of words and historical information of the kind that every amateur medievalist needs to know! 

 

 

 

 

 

I instinctively know that this book will not just be a Christmas feast, but will be my constant sustenance for many months to come: poring over those glossy paintings of deeds of derring-do, reading, re-reading, and locking away all the stories and pictures in my memory bank…

 

What else would I do? Robin Hood was already the hero of my young life avidly following his black-and-white adventures on TV’s The Adventures of Robin Hood with the dashing Richard Greene as the swashbuckling hero, Robin of Sherwood.

 

Robin provided the favourite game of my contemporaries and myself: running wild as ‘outlaws’ and ‘sheriff’s men’ among the woods surrounding our little country junior school. 

 

Already the aspiring thespian, director and impresario, I plotted and choreographed the various scenarios of our childish play and – with my gabardine raincoat worn like a cloak (and secured with the top button under my chin) ­– I cast myself not, as you might suppose, in the role of Robin, but as the Sheriff of Nottingham in honour of Alan Wheatley whose suave but dastardly TV portrayal of Robin’s nemesis had totally captivated me ­–– doubtless because there was about his performance a certain quality that I would now define as elegant and sardonic camp! 

 

 

Anyway, sadly – somewhere in the mists of time – we were parted, the Robin Hood Annual 1958 and I.

 

One of the personal effects of the Covid-19 pandemic has sent me back, across the years, to relive (and often struggle with) the events of my childhood that would, later, shape my life, my emotional development (or lack of it) and, inevitably, my career…

 

Many of these mental encounters have been painful: reassessing the relationship between my parents and between them and I, or helping me understand my childhood passions for things – especially books, music and films ­– and my youthful crushes that, in the culture of the times, I and the subjects ­of my love, had no way of understanding or managing…

 

In their turn, these meditative excursions have led me to try and reclaim some of those objects that were a pivotal part of the process of mapping the journey of where I came from and how I got to where I am now.

 

I have spasmodically scoured the Internet for a copy of that Robin Hood Annual and now, wonder of wonders, I have secured a copy that is so near-mint as to feel as though it was the very one that I excitedly unwrapped, that Christmas morning almost sixty-three years ago!

 

Turning the pages, I am eight years old again and swashbuckling my way through the chivalric romance of an age that never actually was, but, without question, should have been!

 

I can now also pinpoint perhaps the very earliest recognition of my still-to-burgeon sexuality as (in the very first story, ‘Robin Hood and the Mystery of the Mill’) I read as I remember reading back then with a curious sensation of excitement:

 

“The summer sun shone brightly down upon the lush green of Sherwood, glancing from the dappled leaves and setting the forest streams a-sparkle.”

 

[Not bad vocabulary for a comic book! But to continue…]

 

“Upon this splendid morn, bold Robin Hood peeled of his garb of Lincoln green and scarlet … and plunged headlong into the cooling waters.”

 

 

A page or two later (having lost his ‘garb’ to a passing thief!) Robin, bare-chested and, for modesty’s sake, “clad in pair borrowed breeches” set out to exact revenge!

 

 

I suspect that, even then, the die was cast!

 

Anyway, now we are back together again, after an eternity, and what an unmitigated joy it is to follow the book’s opening invitation to…

 

“Turn the pages and be carried back to… THE DAYS OF ROBIN HOOD.”

 

Lovers of the Nottingham hero may like to tune-in to a radio programme, Back to the Greenwood, celebrating the films of Robin Hood made in the year in which two rival screen versions were produced.

 

Written and presented by Brian Sibley

Contributors: Patrick Bergin, Bob Bushaway, Sean Connery, Alan Frank, John Irvin, Richard Lester, Mike McShane, Jeffrey Richards and Richard Todd.
First Broadcast on 'Kaleidoscope', BBC Radio 4, 16 February 1991.

Produced by Adrian Washbourne

 

Follow the golden arrow to this link: BACK TO THE GREENWOOD

MAKING MERRIE!

As you probably know, I am currently grappling with a six-part radio adaptation of T H White's Arthurian romance and like the legends of King Arthur, every generation seems to acquires its own Robin Hood: Douglas Fairbanks, Errol Flynn, Richard Todd, Sean Connery, Kevin Costner, Russell Crowe or their small screen counterparts like Richard Greene (left) who, in ITV's The Adventures of Robin Hood between 1955-1960, started my life-long obsession with men in tights!

With a band of outlaws who included Archie Duncan as Little John, Alexander Guage as Friar Tuck and Bernadette O'Farrell (and later Patricia Driscoll) as Maid Marian and with cameos from such later-film-and-TV-stars as Robert Shaw, Patrick Troughton, Jane Asher, Leo McKern, Joan Sims, Paul Eddington, Harry H Corbett and Wilfred Brambell, Greene swashbuckled his way through 145 episodes of wrong-righting and derring-do.

The theme song was on every kid's lips, mine included...

Those 30-minute black-and-white adventures so fired my imagination (and those of my contemporaries) that Robin Hood became our chief playtime game at primary school which, since I was then living in what was comparative countryside, meant that we played it among the trees, bushes and undergrowth of the un-walled, un-gated school grounds. Those were the days...

I have to admit that I was instrumental in organising these games: devising scenarios and designating roles and it tells you a lot about me that I cast myself not as Robin Hood but as the Sheriff of Nottingham!

With my school mac thrown over my shoulders and buttoned under the chin to form a cloak, I modelled my portrayal on that of Alan Wheatley who played Richard Greene's nemesis with a cold, softly-spoken sneering menace that also had about it, I now realise, more than a touch of theatrical camp!

My prize possessions, aged 6, were my collection of Robin Hood sweet cigarette cards and my first Robin Hood Annual. Although the latter was long ago lost (when my late mother purged my annuals and gave them to a cousin) I can still turn the pages in my mind's-eye.

As for my set of plastic Robin Hood figures collected from packets of Kellogg's cereal (and equally thoughtlessly disposed of), they were so precious that when, a year or two back, a set turned up in a book-dealer's catalogue, I simply had to buy them...

Anyway, all this is but an excuse for me to give you a chance to hear another vintage Sibley radio programme, Robin Hood: Back to the Greenwood. It was first broadcast on BBC Radio 4's Kaleidoscope on 16 February 1991, the year that two new Robins – Kevin Costner and Patrick Bergin – donned the Lincoln green to make their cinematic debuts.

Contributors to the programme include: Sean Connery, Alan Frank, John Irvin, Richard Lester, Mike McShane, Jeffrey Richards, Patrick Bergin and Richard Todd...

This blog post is, in part, reprinted from an earlier post in November 2006.

STOCKINGFELLERS

While checking out some stuff about Robin Hood - honestly, officer! - I 'Googled' Mel Brook's 1993 send-up, Robin Hood: Men in Tights, and stumbled across the website e-MANcipate.net, an on-line 'Hosiery Fashion Magazine for Men', which is chiefly devoted to promoting the wearing of what are referred to as 'mantyhose' - or pantyhose for men.

Their mission statement, answers the self-posed question, "Why do many men do wear pantyhose as a regular clothing item", as follows:

Why? Because there's nothing gender-specific in this garment. It was worn mostly by women during the last fifty years - but it doesn't mean it for ladies only. Since it's not designed to fit any female organs, it's a unisex clothing item by function, just like trousers, gloves or glasses.

OK, so how come I've never seen any in M&S Menswear Department alongside the usual ties, socks and Y-fronts? Well, probably because they aren't there --- yet!

But there are, I find, plenty of stockists (or, perhaps I should say, 'tightists') on-line including the German company Collanto who issue the following rallying-cry on their British Homepage:

Free yourself from ancient opinions !
Be man enough and explore new worlds
to get the feeling of wearing real men’s pantyhose and tights !
That piece of clothing is no longer for women only.
We have got the tights for real men !

Real men should, without delay, check out their range of Strumphosen fur den Menn that includes products named 'Filip', 'Adam' and rather reassuringly, 'Fred'!

Going back to the e-MANcipate.net site, I'll leave you to fully explore the extensive content. There's so much there...

You'll find useful hints on how to put on your man-tights (in 8 easy steps, starting from position one, right); and, when you've done that, you can enjoy such True Confessions-type articles as 'Ladies, Does Your Guy Wear Pantyhose?' which begins...

"Sarah was shocked to discover a pair of pantyhose in her husband Jeff’s sock drawer. Her alarm turned to puzzlement when she noticed something very unusual about them. They had a fly opening in front. When she confronted him, Jeff reluctantly acknowledged that they were his, and he’d been wearing them because of nagging pain in his legs at the end of his shift as a short order cook..."

...Despite a side-bar link to 'Macho-Mantyhose', I'm not convinced that this is a trend that is going to be taken up without, if you'll pardon the pun, running into quite a few snags along the way!

Meanwhile, back in the Greenwood...

LOONEY LEGEND

The real problem with the new Robin Hood is that if you are going to jettison all the familiar trappings that have attached themselves to this ancient legend over centuries, then you need something pretty potent to put in their place. Messrs Scott and Crowe simply did the former without having the latter.

However, still on the subject of the ever-(Lincoln)-green movie career of Master Robin, here's one of my favourite cinematic takes on the outlaw of Sherwood Forest: the 1958 Warner Brothers 'Merrie Melodies' cartoon, Robin Hood Daffy, animated by the great Chuck Jones...

ROBIN AND THE CROWE

Tonight on the Radio 2 Arts Show (around 10:30 pm), I'll be talking with Claudia Winkleman about 100 years of Robin Hood on film and reviewing the latest exploits of everybody's favourite outlaw as portrayed by the gladiator from Down Under: Russell Crowe...

Like King Arthur and Sherlock Holmes, every generation acquires its own Robin Hood: Douglas Fairbanks, Errol Flynn, Richard Todd, Sean Connery, Kevin Costner or their small screen counterparts like Richard Greene (right) who, in ITV's The Adventures of Robin Hood between 1955-1960, started my obsession with men in tights!

With a band of outlaws who included Archie Duncan as Little John, Alexander Guage as Friar Tuck and Bernadette O'Farrell (and later Patricia Driscoll) as Maid Marian and with cameos from such later-film-and-TV-stars as Robert Shaw, Patrick Troughton, Jane Asher, Leo McKern, Joan Sims, Paul Eddington, Harry H Corbett and Wilfred Brambell, Greene swashbuckled his way through 145 episodes of wrong-righting and derring-do.

The theme song was on every kid's lips, mine included...

Those 30-minute black-and-white adventures so fired my imagination (and those of my contemporaries) that Robin Hood became our chief playtime game at primary school which, since I was then living in what was comparative countryside, meant that we played it among the trees, bushes and undergrowth of the un-walled, un-gated school grounds. Those were the days...

I have to admit that I was instrumental in organising these games: devising scenarios and designating roles and it tells you a lot about me that I cast myself not as Robin Hood but as the Sheriff of Nottingham!

With my school mac thrown over my shoulders and buttoned under the chin to form a cloak, I modelled my portrayal on that of Alan Wheatley who played Richard Greene's nemesis with a cold, softly-spoken sneering menace that also had about it, I now realise, more than a touch of theatrical camp!


My prize possessions, aged 6, were my collection of Robin Hood sweet cigarette cards and my first Robin Hood Annual. Although the latter was long ago lost (when my late mother purged my annuals and gave them to a cousin) I can still turn the pages in my mind's-eye.

As for my set of plastic Robin Hood figures collected from packets of Kellogg's cereal (and equally thoughtlessly disposed of), they were so precious that when, a year or two back, a set turned up in a book-dealer's catalogue, I simply had to buy them...

I can't help wondering of Russell's Robin will remain in the memories of a generation in the same way as did my man in Lincoln Greene?

If you miss my chat about the various Robins in the 'hood, you can catch it again for a week on the BBC's i-player.

Image of Robin Hood figurines © Brian Sibley 2010, uploaded from my flickr Photostream.

FEARED BY THE BAD, LOVED BY THE GOOD

R Hood Esq of Nottingham was, I notice, recently back on the box in a new drama series… I didn’t watch. In fact, I couldn’t have brought myself to do so, having allegiance, as I do the 1955-59 independent TV series that was one of my favourite childhood programmes.

At the time I had still to see both Errol Flynn’s 1938 movie, The Adventures of Robin Hood, and Richard Todd in Walt Disney’s 1952 film version, The Story of Robin Hood and His Merrie Men. As a result Robin of Locksley was - and always will be - Richard Greene leaping through the perils of life in Sherwood Forest with sword and long bow for no fewer than 143 swashbuckling episodes in company with his outlaw chums, including Archie Duncan as Little John, Alexander Gauge as Friar Tuck and Paul Eddington as Will Scarlett.


There were - and this was a tad confusing - two Maid Marians: Bernadette O’Farrell who, after almost 50 programmes, suddenly turned into Patricia Driscoll who, before moving to Nottingham, had been the presenter on the ‘Watch with Mother’ kiddy-winky's show, Picture Book.

There were also any number of famous (or soon-to-be-famous) guest stars among them Donald Pleasence, Leslie Phillips, Jane Asher, Leo McKern, Nigel Davenport, William Mervyn, Hubert Gregg (reprising his role from of Prince John from the Disney film), James Hayter (Disney’s Friar Tuck, now Tom the Miller), Geoffrey Bayldon (subsequently Catweazle),Wilfred Brambell and Harry H Corbett (later Steptoe & Son) as well as Patrick (Dr Who) Troughton and many others - including John Schlesinger (before he took up directing movies) as Alan-a-Dale!



I had the annuals, collected the sweet-cigarette cards and the plastic figures in Kellog's Corn Flakes packets - oh, but where are they now?! - and, of course, was word-perfect on the theme-song which followed the ever-thrilling whizzzzz! of an arrow and the satisfying THUNK! as it buried itself in the trunk of Ye Olde English Oak!

All together now...

Robin Hood, Robin Hood, riding through the glen,
Robin Hood, Robin Hood, with his band of men,
Feared by the bad, loved by the good,
Robin Hood, Robin Hood, Robin Hood…

He called the greatest archers to a tavern on the green.
They vowed to help the people of the king.
They handled all the trouble on the English country scene,
And still found plenty of time to sing.

Robin Hood, Robin Hood etc etc.

Even more popular than the obligatory childhood games of Cowboys and Indians, my schoolmates and myself played at being Robin Hood and his Outlaw Gang. Being lucky enough to go to a school the playground for which was a large swathe of Chislehurst Common, our break-time deeds of derring-do had an amazing woodland backdrop that would been the envy of many a TV and film director of the time!

And in these games, you ask, did I play Robin Hood, you ask…?

Most certainly NOT!

Oh, no! My infatuation was not with Mr Greene in his Lincoln green, but with his co-star Alan Wheatley, who played the cruelly sinister, yet archly mannered Sheriff of Nottingham.

Wheatley was an incomparable nemesis for Robin and a true successor, had I but known it at the time, to Basil Rathbone’s Sir Guy of Gisbourne in the Flynn movie. And, like Rathbone before him, Alan Wheatley infused his unforgettable portrayal with the true essence of high camp villainy.

So it was that every lunch hour my school-chums and I swished through another improvised adventure with me brandishing a tree-branch sword, wearing my blue school mackintosh as a cloak with the top button done up under my chin and always remembering to drink from my pretend goblet, when such a moment occurred, with my little finger delicately crooked!

And, since I also devised and directed these games, I’m not in the least ashamed to report that the Sheriff of Nottingham inevitably came off much better (and more often) than he ever did in the TV series!


[Images from the Robin Hood Spotlight]