Cricket Witness No 6 - His Captain's Hand on His Shoulder Smote

76 Greyfriars there was a sisterly, tomboyish sidekick, Marjorie Hazeldene, at a time when, in the Victorian re-writing, Maid Marian had a similar quality, far removed from the sensuous, witch-like Marian of earlier legend. So did the writers of the post-1850s generation contrive, in mystery or imperial or historical format to replicate over and again the configuration of the idealised public school boy and his confrères , with close friendship ever the abiding virtue. Not forgetting Friar Tuck, the greedy cleric and the butt of jokes. Enter Billy Bunter, named after the particularly unsavoury Bunter’s Nervine Tonic. Bumptious, craven, gluttonous and deceitful, he is, beyond the pun, a rounded character, brought very much to life by the artists Hutton Mitchell andArthur Clarke. Likemany other anti-heroes, such as Fagin, Long John Silver, Quasimodo and the cricketing Raffles, the Fat Ass upstaged the good boys and went down in history as probably the best remembered fictional schoolboy of them all. Sometimes his plump sister, Bessie Bunter, made her appearances, whilst Gerald Campion, aged 29, played the part of Billy in 45 television episodes during the 1950s with actors like Michael Crawford and Melvyn Hayes also taking part. Kynaston Reeves excelled as the enemy, Mr Queltch. There were lots of Billy Bunter books and annuals and several Christmas themed productions. Billy Bunter was supposed, of course, to be the laughing stock of the Remove and the foil of the Famous Five. The banquet of humour founded in his obesity and myopia would trouble many observers of a politically correct consciousness today but he ascended to the heights. It has been pointed out that – William George – he shared initials with Dr Grace and he was not averse to cricketing adventures, cricket being a game well suited to showing up vice as well as virtue. In one story Billy inveigles himself into batting against a village team. In the class-conscious chatter of the time and fashion, the village bowler, Parker (please note: no ‘amateur’ initials) is dismissed as ‘an estate-office young man’ who ‘rather fancied himself as a bowler’ but who ‘would not have been very useful against the average The Flood (1) Greyfriars For Ever..And Ever