‘As always in my youth, I remember the sun was shining and the air was balmy’

The streets of Sunnybank formed a rectangle similar to the grid system used in American cities, creating an ordered, agreeable and wealthy environment. ‘If you were a professional man, were self-employed, or were an executive white-collar worker in the middle income bracket and had to live in Hull, “the Avenues” were the place to drop anchor, Ian would recall much later in life. Number 32 was semi-detached and typically, on the sunny side of the street, with a household that boasted assorted maids and a cook.

Ian was enrolled at his first school Froebel House School on nearby Marlborough Avenue. He was removed after one term because of the alarmingly foul language he began bringing home. His education improved with his attendance at The Lodge School in Pearson’s Park. Demonstrating early theatrical leanings, Ian helped to build the scale model of a set for the musical Hiawatha, winning a mauve bulb bowl for growing the best hyacinths. While at The Lodge, he discovered a love for cricket as well as an early fondness for the (very) young ladies of his acquaintance. On one memorable occasion, Ian deliberately got himself out on the first bowl when he was in to bat so he could return to the boundary and continue to enjoy the company of two young women he had been sitting with.

Perhaps predictably for a cosseted child, Ian was precocious, and before he could even read or write, a party piece of his was the ability to select the records asked for by his father and play them on the family gramophone. Delighted with his son’s performance, Arthur would then play along to the memorable tunes of the day on his ukulele.

Ian’s slightly concerning, premature interest in the opposite sex continued when, on a family holiday in Hornsea, he “married” Maureen, the daughter of family friends, in the front garden of her family’s rented house, wearing a bucket as a top hat. He would lose touch with his early love when he left Hull. A more mature woman who also made an impression on Ian when he was a boy was the aviator Amy Johnson, who became famous when she flew solo from Britain to Australia and was honoured with a celebratory motorcade through Hull.

The 1920s were exhilarating times, and a decade that would define Ian’s developing personality. The particular character of the Jazz Age, with its Oxford bags, plus fours, cloche hats, two-tone shoes, gin and limes, the Charleston dance and George Gershwin’s languid, sweeping instrumental symphony Rhapsody in Blue, would later indelibly colour both Ian’s personal and professional life. “As always in my youth, the sun was shining and the air was balmy,” Ian wrote of the time when, at the age of 13 in 1933, he was sent to Bromsgrove School in Worcestershire, 160 miles from Hull, in a land where the people spoke with a fascinatingly different accent. Recalling this period later in his life, he commented, “I was educated for five years in Scarborough... and then I was moved to a school near Birmingham... where I spent another five years. When I got there, my leg was pulled mercilessly because all the boys said that I had an appalling Yorkshire accent. After my period at Bromsgrove, I was sent to the RADA [Royal Academy of Dramatic Art] and the elocution master there said, ‘Where did you get that terrible Birmingham accent from?’ So, I can only assume I can pick up accents that are around me.”

Away from his dull academic studies, a passion for entertainment of all kinds now consumed the teenage Ian. “I always had a bit of a buzz to do some performing,” he remembered. “For a long time I wanted to be a musician and run a dance band, then I realised I didn’t know anything about music, and I thought it’d be easier to become an actor.” Ian had an encyclopaedic knowledge of his obsessions in his case the British dance bands of the 1930s. The Palace Theatre in Hull became his second home in the school holidays, and as his father knew the theatre’s manager, Ian’s autograph book was accorded a privileged position in the dressing rooms of his favourite touring musicians.

On his twice-weekly visits into Bromsgrove during term time, Ian would make straight for Mr Watton’s record shop. The thin, stooping pensioner regularly had to contend with an enthusiastic Ian rifling through the latest releases and huddling with his friends over a radiogram to sample the latest sounds. The soundtrack to Ian’s adolescence was provided by My Kid’s a Crooner, Boo-Hoo, It’s a Sin to Tell a Lie and Is It True What They Say About Dixie? among many others. The names of bands and singers that decorated his school notebooks included Harry Roy, Nat Gonella, Joe Daniels and His Hot Shots, and Fats Waller.

Possessing an impatient nature, Ian went through phases of trying to learn the piano and then the alto-saxophone. Inevitably, his extra-curricular pursuits also began to impact on his schoolwork, as one of his end of term reports sourly and shockingly reported: “Ian will never make any progress with his studies until he concentrates on lessons and abandons his craving for Negroid music.” One thing Ian did excel at during his time at Bromsgrove was his drumming in the OTC band, a local military cadet troupe whose performances were exemplary models of martial precision.

Luckily for Ian, his artistic gifts were recognised and nurtured by a young, interested games master called Peter Hordern (brother of the famous actor Michael), who sponsored the formation of a Junior Literary and Dramatic Society for younger pupils who were too enthusiastic to wait until the fifth form, the point when they could appear in an official school play.

During Ian’s last year at Bromsgrove (when he scraped a pass in geography in the School Certificate at the third attempt), he was cast in his first stage role as the maid in Oliver Goldsmith’s She Stoops to Conquer (Bromsgrove being an all-male school).

Regrettably, his feet never touched the stage, as on the morning of his first appearance, he woke up with chicken pox and was ordered to stay in bed. Indeed, Bromsgrove would never witness his nascent acting ability at all. 

Ian Carmichael: This Charming Man by Robert Fairclough is published by Aurum priced £20. To order from the Yorkshire Post Bookshop call 0800 0153232 or online at www.yorkshirepostbookshop.co.uk.