They gave generations of us a barrel load of laughs

I’m not sure where I first knew him and even trying to recall that brought a host of memories flooding back. He ran what I think was a tobacconist’s shop on the corner of Bond Street and Broad Street, just a door or so up from where the British Hotel was.

The mere mention of that location reminds me that if there were taxis on the nearby rank but an absence of drivers, some of those could be found in the bar of the aforementioned hotel – I presume they served tea, coffee and soft drinks in addition to the hard stuff – or along Broad Street in the opposite direction at the Chick Inn.

On the opposite corner to Teddy’s shop – at the main entrance of what was Lloyds Bank (the TSB was different and in New Street) – there used to be a bloke who in the early evening would be selling the three London evening papers. I can hear his cry now – ‘evenin’ papers, Star, News and Standard, racing results’.

Of course, the racing results wouldn’t include the starting prices – well, they couldn’t because gambling was illegal and so punters didn’t deal with bookies, they entered into transactions with commission agents, usually through a middle man behind the bar at their local.

I don’t think the chap who flogged the London evening papers was the same fellow who used to sell the Sunday papers from that recessed doorway of what used to be the JEC showrooms and offices just next door or so to Lloyds but I can’t be sure.

That talk of the racing results reminds me that in those days this newspaper’s ‘early’ edition was on Thursday – half day closing for virtually the whole Island – and the Saturday paper’s publication was delayed until the football results (Football League Division One and all that) came through so that readers such as my mother and my old Granny could check the football pools. Incidentally, their joint investment with Littlewoods was one and six (seven and a half pence today) a week, which was ninepence each.

All that said, Teddy Noel was better known as someone who gave generations of theatre goers a lot of pleasure and a barrel of laughs in successive Jersey Green Room Club pantomimes and I’m almost certain the first of those I attended after the Liberation was at the Forum Cinema which in those days hosted the panto from the matinee on Boxing Day onwards. My sister and I were sent there each Boxing Day, presumably because by the day after Christmas Day we’d broken the toy and eaten the orange or tangerine. I hope the spoiled brats of today noticed that I referred to both toy and orange in the singular.

I have a feeling also that one of the first panto dames I saw was George Brasford who, with his wife Noreen used to run a tearoom on the land side of Victoria Avenue – something also recalled, Herself has just told me, by former JEP editor Mike Bisson on his Jerripedia website; a site which for old fools like me who certainly dwell on the past if not live in it, is an absolute joy to peruse.

I think George came before Harold Michel (who also lived in the Millbrook area) as a panto dame and I have a feeling that both preceded Teddy Noel. It matters not because they – along with the many who joined them on stage in a huge range of productions – gave generations of us enormous pleasure. Teddy Noel’s passing is another link with the past broken.

THE mention of Lloyds Bank reminds me of the £20,000 donation made recently by the Lloyds TSB Foundation to Community Savings – a little known (to me, at least) organisation which helps those who sometimes have difficulty in budgeting their household income and expenditure.

I am indeed fortunate in that Herself doubles as social secretary and financial controller of Chez Clement and to be honest neither of us has ever shown any inclination to spend money quicker than it comes in. But not everyone is that fortunate and this, so I am told, is where Community Savings comes in.

Years ago I remember talking to someone who just couldn’t cope with prioritising when it came to spending and as a result was forever in bother with either utility bills or rent and sometimes even both. This chap told me how a then Member of the Big House – who probably won’t thank me for naming her but I don’t care because it was Shirley Baudains – spent hour after hour at the kitchen table with him and his version of Herself going through what they earned and what they were spending and teaching them some simple but effective budgeting rules.

He told me that he would be forever grateful to the then Deputy Baudains and added that as a direct result of what she’d taught his family they were well on the way to saving a deposit to enable them to buy a home of their own – something which, I have since learned, they managed to do.

From what I can gather Community Savings offers some very practical help to those who do (or perhaps have in the past) get into a bit of a tangle financially and I applaud their work.

And finally,

I see Jersey Finance is telling us what a wonderful bunch of outfits the finance sector is. Forgive my cynicism but I wonder if the cost of the advertisement telling us this came out of the millions we taxpayers give them each year to promote themselves?