Another side of a working class hero

Mar 18 2008 by David Charters, Liverpool Daily Post

AT DOVEDALE School, the teachers regarded Stan as a near certainty to pass the 11-plus. But Nellie died from an aneurysm when he was nine. The boy was devastated. His work fell off.

So instead of joining Lennon at Quarry Bank grammar, he was sent to Toxteth Technical High School.

To make matter worse, his father, a romantic figure, allowed his feet to follow his wandering eyes. Stan’s upbringing was taken over by his nan, also Nellie Thomas (“the great engine of the family, a heroine peasant”), and his uncle, Stan Thomas, who had overcome “distressful poverty”, consumption and rickets to attend Liverpool Collegiate, serve as a wartime navigator with the RAF, study at Oxford and play for Tranmere Rovers.

Young Stan still saw Lennon moseying around with gangs.

Uncle Stan helped stabilise life for the boy, who excelled at school, passing A levels in History, Geography and General Studies, entering Liverpool University, where his BA was followed by a Diploma of Education.

In 1964, he began teaching at Elgin Academy, Murrayshire.

From 1968 until ’75, Stan taught at Earlston on the Scottish border, before moving to Fraserburgh Academy as head of the Modern Studies department. He retired in 2001, though he still does part-time work. He and his wife, Elizabeth Cardno, have two children, Donna, 38, and David, 34.

“I sat next to Peter Sissons. Ivan Vaughan was a pal of mine and a great friend of John Lennon. He lived very close to him in Woolton. They used to come in together on the tram,” recalls Stan.

Vaughan, who died in 1994, then went to Liverpool Institute with Paul McCartney, whom he introduced to Lennon at St Peter’s Church fete, Woolton, in 1958.

“We were all neat and tidy with shoes polished and hair slicked down at Dovedale,” he continues. “I remember Lennon because he was significant. You know, he made his presence felt.

"He had a wee gang. You felt it better not to bother with him.

“After my mum died, my aunt in America sent me a cap-gun, a wonderful replica of a Colt 45. Foolishly I was running around with it, riding a pretend horse. He sent a couple of them to nobble me – you know, kicked in the groin.

“Once or twice, not necessarily him, but the people he organised would stick boys against a wall, perhaps for dinner tickets. He wasn’t that terrible personally, but he could organise other people. It was really after Dovedale that our paths used to cross.

“Beth was a real pal. At about 12 or 13, Pete Shotton, a close friend of Lennon’s at Quarry Bank and Dovedale, who played the washboard in the Quarrymen, took a fancy to her. They went out with each other as teenagers, then they got married.”

Britain was poor, emerging from the ruins of war. Life was tough for many children.

Although Lennon’s home on Menlove Avenue was comparatively posh, he was from a broken family and was brought up by his Aunt Mimi and her husband George Smith.

“I went into myself as a child but John Lennon took it out on other people. He was aggressive and suspicious of anyone who came into his sphere. He was the main man, but there was a small gang of them. I would meet him at the swimming baths, Calderstones Park, the shops in Penny Lane.

“I was in the park with Beth. She was probably waiting for Pete, who was nice, a fine guy. Anyway, Pete and John came across and started to set the tone that they didn’t want me to be with them.

“I must have been a threat, though I wasn’t doing anything, so John Lennon took a flick-knife and he threw it between my feet. I got up after that and went home. He was setting out a marker.

‘"If you tried to take the limelight from John or interrupt him in his business, he didn’t like it.

“One day I went to Penny Lane and got my haircut at Bioletti’s barber’s shop and came out. There she was in a cadet nurse’s uniform, selling poppies from a tray round her neck. The memories of childhood are usually black and white, but this is technicolour.

“I went over to speak to her. Within a minute they (John’s gang) came out of Woolworth’s. She was about 12 or 13. Someone asked her if she did operations or serious medical stuff. She said that they made them look into buckets of blood to toughen them up. I thought it was funny.

“So whether it was by intent or subliminally, John gave it as his contribution to Paul’s song.”

His opinion is supported in the next line, “And tho’ she feels as if she’s in a play, she is anyway”.

Beth, who separated from Pete and died in the 70s, loved dressing-up and took part in theatrical productions at the old St Columba’s Church, as Lennon would have known.

In 1964, Stan came home from Elgin Academy to be with his nan.

“I met Beth coming off the bus and she says, ‘you must come to my New Year’s party, John’s coming up from London’.

“I went up to the house on Lidderdale Road, Sefton Park, there was a big limo there, the door was open and music was coming out. I rang a few times. Nobody came. I used to have the run of the house. She was my friend, but I thought that if I went in there uninvited, John could have got at me. John could be intimidating, so I walked away.

“The next day I bumped into Beth again on Smithdown Road, she asked me why I hadn’t come. It had been great. I told her that I just didn’t want to be humiliated or got at.

“But she said that John had been in great form, he had been lovely.”

The book developed from a childhood memoir, which Stan will give as a lecture this summer at Liverpool Hope University at the invitation of Mike Brocken, senior lecturer in creative and performing arts.

The Dovedale old boy rubs the head of John Lennon and there is no witty reply – just the ghosts of song.

* PENNY LANE is in My Ears and in My Eyes is to be published by Pegasus, Elliot and McKenzie of Cambridge in the early summer.

davidcharters@dailypost.co.uk