Into the headlines

What's more, it was my first day at the grammar school, it was ten to nine in the morning, and I hadn't even reached my classroom. I was 11 years old. So you can see that, at that particular point, I was thinking rather more of the next 30 seconds than the next 30 years.

How did it happen? In my excitement of a new school, I'd scraped a chair noisily at the morning assembly. Forster, a great bear of a man, pointed at me and told me to report to his study. As he loomed over me clasping the cane, he indicated the armchair. Being of an optimistic nature, I plonked myself down in the chair, looked up, and attempted a valiant smile.

"What is your name, boy?"

"Dunne, sir."

"I see you are some form of humorist, Dunne. Now bend over the chair."

All I heard then was the sound of whistling bamboo. It wasn't the last time.

The year was 1948, the school was Ermysted's, in Skipton, and this was in no way unusual. ML Forster spent much of his career in education making bamboo whistle and schoolboys yelp.

It took a coincidence in the Carla Beck milk-bar five years' later to settle my future once and for all. At that time, I was desperate to leave school without any idea of what to do next. One Wednesday morning, I was sitting there wondering when my sister's ex-boyfriend swirled in with newspapers sticking out of his pockets and the air of one who was if not actually at the centre of the universe, certainly one who was pretty close to it.

Bill Freeman was taking a break from the magistrates' court. Everyone gathered round as he passed on news from Skipton's criminal underworld. It seemed to consist mainly of minor motoring offences, but it held his audience. This was it. This was what I wanted to be. Like Bill, a reporter on the local paper. And that was what I became. From there I went on to write for many newspapers and magazines, books even, with the general ambition of raising a smile. Some form of humorist just about covers it. ML Forster was right and, do you know, I never even thanked him.

Talk about chance. My sister's next boy-friend ran a caf in the high street. If I'd followed him, I could easily have ended up spending half-a-century making Welsh rarebits.

Let me tell you a little more about Skipton in the 1950s, just in case you weren't there. Kind people called it sleepy, although comatose would have been more accurate. It had three teddy-boys who would no doubt have rocked around the clock if the town hadn't shut down

at 10.30pm.

It had two minor criminals. When lead went missing off the church roof, the sergeant went straight round to see them. "Why do you always pick on us?" they demanded. "Because it's always you," he replied. He was right, too. Between court cases, the probation office once told me: "We don't have much crime here, but there's a helluva lot of sin." If so, I never found it, and goodness knows I tried.

When the town got its first coffee-bar, it was, to be quite honest, just a little too sophisticated for us. We hadn't mastered the nuances of Italian lifestyle. Summoning all his courage, one of our teenagers marched in and, with casual if misplaced confidence, asked for a cup of chino. Well, he wasn't far off, bless him.

It was a time and place where, if you saw someone you didn't know in the High Street, you wondered about notifying the police.

At Ermysted's, they prepared scab-kneed and snot-nosed sons of the Dales for a role in Empire or, more likely, the SBS. No, not the Special Boat Squad. I'm talking about the Skipton Building Society. I didn't qualify. When I got seven per cent in the annual test, the maths master, "Tich" Cooper, took me on one side and delivered a heart-rending speech. He said he had a long and disappointing career in teaching and he felt that, at this stage, he couldn't take me.

What did I enjoy? The library, I said. Go there, he replied, and I did.

In science, Mr Swainson, gave us the one sex lesson which equipped us for life. He explained the reproductive system of the frog, which probably explains why, all my life, I have had a weakness for girls with long legs, pop eyes and greasy skin. Particularly if they jump a lot.

At least while still at school, I had made two attempts at writing for profit and pleasure. The first was a sexy detective story modelled on a popular author of the time, Hank Jansen. You will grasp his style if I tell you his oeuvre included Don't Dare Me Sugar, Gun Moll for Hire, Broads Don't Scare, and Skirts Bring Me Sorrow. By today's standards, they were about as pornographic as Squirrel Nutkin, although they did contain an awful lot of husky voices, uncontrollable panting, and ripped silk. We had one much-thumbed copy hidden behind a radiator in the science lab..

My target audience was 4B, who were just developing an interest in the contents of high-school blouses, although High-school Blouses Bring You Sorrow somehow doesn't work as a title. It didn't matter. Sadly, after two pages my first book came to a halt. It was the writers' perennial problem: lack of research.

At my next attempt, I actually got into print. I'd developed a passion for New Orleans jazz.

All my pocket money went on Hot Fives, Hot Sevens, Footwarmers and Red Hot Peppers, in Wood's music shop in Sheep Street. I believe I am right in saying that I was the only boy in Regent Road who could sing all six verses of Empty Bed Blues, although the neighbours must have got sick of hearing me lament that mah springs is gittin' rusty, sleepin' single

like ah do. It's not often you hear the songs of Louisiana brothels sung in a Yorkshire accent.

I sent off a piece to the Jazz Journal, which, to my amazement, printed it. They even asked for more. It all came to an end when someone wrote in to tell them that their new authority on the folk music of the American negro was but lately out of short trousers and shaved once a fortnight.

I wasn't deterred. I got a job on the local paper, the Craven Herald, which was then an independent weekly with ads all over the front page. The date at the top said 1953: it could just easily have been 1853.

What happened to these people who shaped my life? Both Bill Freeman and I went on to work for the Yorkshire Post, or the why pee, as we all called it. Bill Freeman became northern editor of a national newspaper, and I ended up writing for everyone from Good Housekeeping to the Radio Times, from The Times to the Mirror, and a few books.

ML Forster? Ah, he gave the Craven Herald one of their biggest stories. In the same week I began work there, he left Ermysted's at some speed. A problem with a Dutch maid, apparently.

He'd maybe found that Hank Jansen behind the radiator.

Colin Dunne's book Man Bites Talking Dog, is published by Revel Barker, 9.99, ISBN number 978-0-9563686-2-1.