Alfie Page 3

  They went through a couple of houses while the family expanded, before settling for good in the one I was raised in, the same four-bedroom house Mum still lives in. I was the last of nine, and a few had grown up and left by the time I was born in September 1973. She wanted one last boy, to name after Dad, got the rest of the family to pray for one every night. And she says as soon as she fell pregnant she knew I would be a boy. Nothing can stop my mum when she wants something, even nature. She was so sure, she got my sisters Theresa and Anne to go and find a cardboard box and write ‘Alfred the Great’ on it and draw soldiers on it, so I’d have my first toy box ready and waiting for me when I was born. Theresa dutifully went and found a box, outside the off licence, brought it home complete with a rogue bottle of whisky inside, and was promptly ordered to take that whisky back.

  Mum was 41. ‘Don’t worry, we’ll have this baby here today by the grace of God,’ the doctor told her in hospital, which she thought was wonderful, and they did, but not before another doctor marched into the room brandishing a pen and a form. He said, ‘Mrs Boe. Sign this. We want to sterilise you, you shouldn’t be having all these babies.’ Mum said, ‘On your bike,’ leaving him fuming. When she was younger, doctors had told her she shouldn’t have any children because of her tuberculosis. When she finally got rid of it for good, at 36, the doctor who discharged her said all the babies had lifted her lungs up, rested them, and cured her.

  Chapter Four

  BUSTER BOE COMES TO TOWN

  There was another big flood in Fleetwood, in 1977. The sequel. This time, it’s personal. And it was in a way, purely because of the sheer amount of houses that had been built in the 50 years since the first. So while it wasn’t quite as biblical as its predecessor, it did wreak a lot of damage, striking down upon our town with great vengeance and furious anger.

  I was four and don’t quite remember the initial havoc but I remember everybody freaking out. And a lot of rain. Most of the flood was down in Chatsworth and we weren’t allowed to go to the beach. We could see in the distance the sea had come over the wall. Everyone was doing what they could. Nana Boe, Dad’s mum, piggy-backed an old lady across the road. ‘Get on me back, Em,’ she said. sixty-eight years old too. Mum and my sister Anne helped out a lot, drying out people’s carpets in the youth club they used to run. Jim Lynch, the youth leader, who did a lot for Fleetwood, wonderful guy, came a cropper when a tent covering a sizeable roadworks hole had floated away. Poor Jim parked his car, stepped out and fell down the hole. Carry On Fleetwood.

  I used to get called Buster a lot in those days, because that’s what the midwife had called me. I was born Alfred Giovanni Roncalli Boe, named after Pope John the 23rd, who died 10 years before I arrived. Giovanni, Italian for John, even though his actual English name was Joseph; he was born Giuseppe Roncalli, but as Pope he chose John. Buster’s certainly less of a mouthful. ‘Buster Boe’s got the biggest head in the ward and he popped out like a pea in a pod,’ this midwife said – she was enamoured with me. ‘Nobody else is to touch this fella. I carry him through the ward every time.’ Some of my family came to see me at an album signing I was doing in HMV Blackpool last year, and Anne called out ‘Hiya, Buster!’ while I was meeting and greeting. Thanks, Anne.

  We always had a dog. Mum’s gone through five of them. When she was a kid, her mum gave her a collie called Flash, and they were inseparable, best pals. Because Mum was too ill for school, she spent most mornings on the beach with him. One afternoon he caught a rabbit, killed it, and laid it at her feet. She didn’t want to touch it, funnily enough, so he carried it home in his mouth. Her brother skinned it, cleaned it, and they ate it for dinner. Good dog. And since then she always got collies, cross-collies, as thoroughbreds are happier with the sheep, whereas the crosses like to be at home with the humans.

  When I was growing up we had Chess – Dad got him from a neighbour whose dog had a load of pups, he was the runt of the litter; he’d been kept out of the way, in a shed in the back of the garden. The stories I’d hear about that dog, the things he did before my time. Saving lives every five minutes. Near mythical. He’d lie under the babies’ prams until the prams rocked, and then he’d bark to tell Mum and Dad they were awake. He barked for Mum once and she came into the living room to find little Maria’s nappy on fire on the carpet. It had been put over the top of the fireguard to warm up, and Maria pulled it off while Mum was in the kitchen. Life saved. One weekend my brother John, 10 at the time, was playing football in the road and Mum went outside to find all hell breaking loose. John had bent down to pick up his ball and this Alsatian had jumped on his collar, was on his back biting his neck. ‘Get Chess!’ Mum told Anne, and Chess raced up the street, jumped up, dragged this Alsatian off John’s back. Mum says she’s never seen anything so beautiful in all her life. She tells the story like Chess was some sort of superhero dog. ‘He bounded out the house and in one move he cleared the fence . . .’ you can almost hear the Superman theme as she tells this story. ‘In mid-air he grabbed this dog and pulled it off John . . .’ Some woman in the street told her husband to get a broom to break up the ensuing scrap and Mum said, ‘You leave those dogs alone.’ And she looked at Chess and said, ‘That’ll do,’ and Chess let go and came over to sit by her. And they walked home. And the Alsatian died. And they gave Chess an entire chicken for dinner.

  I’ve got to say though, that dog was something special. When I was little I’d walk down the street with him, and every time I got too close to the road, he’d nudge me back to the pavement with his nose. Before I was born, my brothers used to camp on the beach in a tent, and Mum would insist Chess went with them. A policeman poked his head inside the tent once and Chess bit his hand. Joe apologised and the policeman said, ‘Don’t worry, son, he’s only doing his job.’ Chess was above the law. After Chess we had a little cattle dog named Gandalf, which we then shortened to Dandy. Every morning we’d come down for coffee and would be greeted by him nipping the back of our ankles, just like he would have been doing with the cattle. He died of a heart attack, I buried him in the back garden in a Co-op box, and then we got Boscoe, another dog with higher than average canine IQ. He was around when Dad retired, they were especially close. And now Mum’s got Sully, a rescue dog, good little dude.

  I had a blast in that house and in Fleetwood, despite the town’s declining fortunes. It’s funny when people talk to you about how good the place you live in used to be. I’d think, well why do I get the rotten end of the stick living in it now! But it was a fun place to grow up in, a lot seemed to be happening all the time, everybody seemed to be partying. Chatsworth was dodgy, Mum and Dad lived down there some time before I was around. There were a few dodgy areas in that part. I remember going down there once as a kid and seeing a fight in the street, this fella just smacking an old guy’s head against the ground. It really shocked me. That image sticks in my head today. This fella was on top of this older guy, smacking his head on the ground, relentlessly, and he was limp. It was horrible to see fighting like that. But on the whole Fleetwood was always cool to hang out in. We’d have our veg delivered by this Polish fella called Walter. Mum told us how he was tortured during the war. He had this veg stall on Fleetwood market, and we’d go there on Friday to order cabbages and carrots, and he’d bring them to us in the evening. Those carrots were seriously enormous. Cabbages the size of fruit-bowls. And every single week Mum would get a sack of potatoes, and we’d go through the lot. Full of soil as well. I’ve picked that up, I can’t go food shopping without getting a load of potatoes. We’d be virtually at the end of the sack and Mum would say, ‘Go and get a couple of spuds out of the sack. Big enough for baking.’ You’d have to go fishing around in the soil to get a spud out. But you’d always guarantee there’d be a few in there that would be perfect. They were big old spuds. I can exaggerate, but they were the size of rugby balls.

  Our Sunday dinners were amazing, Mum would put the meat in the oven before we went to church and ah, we’d come back and the hou
se would smell of incredible cooking. She used to bake pies, rice puddings, bread puddings. Somewhat leathery beef, you’d chew on a piece for what seemed like days, but it tasted good. And the fish . . . we’d have bags of fresh fish delivered every Friday by Chas Wilson, a friend of the family and one of the biggest fish merchants around. Uncle Chas. Again, massive bags, big pieces of cod and haddock, and he’d sometimes surprise us with some skate. To add to that, me and my friends would chase the fish lorry through the back of the docks and catch the fish that fell off the back, shove it in a bag, bring it home. Very enterprising!

  There was a strong DIY mentality in our house. Mum and Dad had me wearing clogs on the ice-rink in Blackpool when I was five, I think we got kicked off. Dad had DIY in his genes. When he was a kid he used to make himself fireworks, a bowl of powder, cardboard cartons, open fire in the living room. Don’t try this at home. Decades later, when we were kids, Grandma Boe came over and told us about the time he nearly set fire to that room with his shenanigans. ‘Did I clatter you for that?’ she asked him.

  ‘No, Mum.’

  And she whacked him there and then.

  Mum would make us ice-lollies, these really sickly sweet orange things, they were fantastic – we’d sit in the back garden and eat them. We never wanted for anything, we never struggled. Always had enough food and clothes, and great toys. Christmases were wonderful. Dad would build toys for us and Mum would paint them. Christmas smelt of paint. And there was always some surprise. I came down one Christmas morning and the curtains were drawn, and Dad said, ‘Look at the snow outside.’ And I threw open the curtains and it was a beautiful sunny day. Snow? What snow? And I looked down and there was a bike for me. Birthdays were the same. Mum always made me a cake. On my 10th birthday she made me this big galleon ship out of chocolate. Massive big galleon ship, big sails, sponge and chocolate, it said ‘Happy 10th Birthday’ on the sails and had little pirate figures on it. I’ve still got them. I put them on my daughter Grace’s birthday cake a couple of years ago, and I’d like to put them on my son Alfie’s 10th birthday cake.

  Halloween in Fleetwood was something to experience. You couldn’t get pumpkins in Fleetwood in the ’70s, so we’d carve out turnips and put candles in them. It was always really hard to hollow out a turnip. And you’d hold these lanterns and your hands and arms would stink of burnt turnip. For days. It was horrible. You’d see all these dead waxy turnips all over the road that kids had abandoned. If Christmas smelt of paint, Halloween stunk of smouldering soggy turnips.

  I liked my train sets. I had pictures of trains on my walls, I wanted to be a train driver, driving a big steam train. And Dad built me a train! From scratch. The size of a sofa. It was amazing. It was a train! It had two compartments, chimneys, a carriage on the back . . . we’d sit in it and he’d pull us down the road, it had big old-fashioned pram wheels off the old Silver Cross prams that he’d no doubt found in a skip. He was always poking around in skips, looking for scraps of wood, seeing what he could make out of this and that. So many times I’d be walking down the road with my mates and they’d say, ‘Oh there’s your dad,’ and I’d just see these legs sticking out of a skip. I’d say ‘Just keep walking, keep walking . . .’ Dad made wine too. One Christmas, all of my brothers had come home for the holiday and took Dad to the pub, and there was a lot of wine in the barrels, he’d been working on it. I wasn’t old enough to go to the pub, I was upstairs on my drums, and I heard all this raucous laughing and shouting. I went downstairs and Mum and my sisters were plastered, dancing, all over the place. They’d got hammered on the wine; they didn’t know at the time, but it hadn’t finished fermenting yet and was really strong. They said, ‘Why should the boys be having all the fun in the pub?’ Dad and my brothers came home and were not nearly as smashed as the girls. Christmas dinner was ruined. We had such a laugh, that was an amazing Christmas.

  The Boe DIY ethos didn’t always work for me. There’s a carnival every year in Fleetwood. Mum and Anne used to help paint the floats; it all came past our house, everyone in fancy dress. When I was nine I was part of my school float, and they made a Paddington Bear outfit for me. Nine years old, a fur head on, big duffel coat, big hat, wellington boots and woollen trousers, in the middle of the blistering hot summer of 1982. Dressed for the Antarctic. And that head was massive, and a bit dodgy. It looked like Paddington Bear had been a bit mangled.

  I hated school, and I mean properly hated it. My first year at St Wulstan’s Primary was particularly horrible, and I think that tainted the whole thing for me. I had this teacher who just didn’t like me at all, she didn’t like any of the family – we all went to St Wulstan’s. She only took a shine to the pupils whose families she knew were rich and popular. It was really hard, always a fight, always a battle. She didn’t give me the time of day, and I got overlooked, so I couldn’t do maths, couldn’t add, couldn’t subtract. The only thing I was ever good at was sports day. I was put in the sprint race once and came first even though I set off last because I hadn’t heard the gun go off. Legged it and overtook everybody.

  My second year was much better, I had a fantastic teacher called Mrs Atkinson, really sweet, she taught me baking, helped me a lot, a lovely lady. But she was a glitch in the system. The third year brought me a teacher who used to go around the class and ask everybody to read a page of the book we were all reading, and she’d always leave me till last. And by the time it got to me the bell would go and she’d say, ‘Right, we’ll start with Alfie tomorrow,’ and she never did, I never got to read. That’s why I don’t feel I’m a good reader even now. I didn’t really learn to read for a long time, until I went to juniors. She was part of a big family in Fleetwood, and again, they didn’t like the Boes. There were always issues with people. We didn’t go with the flow as a family, we made our own journey, our own path, we created things ourselves. Quite a strong force in Fleetwood, the Boe family. The church was a big deal for our family. Mum and my sisters did – and still do – a lot of work for the church, fundraising events, jumble sales, things like that, and I think some people felt intimidated by us.

  So my confidence was knocked at school, I didn’t think I was very intelligent. There was a teacher in my junior school called Maria O’Halloran who smacked me across the head for sticking a picture in a book a week early. BAM, right across the head, I nearly fell over. But I didn’t say anything, never told Mum until I was about 16. And she said, ‘I would have gone in, I would have gone in.’ Mum had been through worse herself, she never liked school either. She got her knuckles smacked every morning for being a left-hander. We’d get the cane a lot at junior school. Bamboo on your hand or on your backside, or the back of your legs. They used to say, ‘Put your hands on the table,’ and they’d smack your knuckles with a wooden ruler, bruise your fingers. I’d had it in infant school as well, which was obviously terrifying. I was frightened of teachers, of what they would do and how they would turn on me. They really scared me, until I met some that were nice. Miss Hogborn was wonderful, played piano, and taught the class personably, a really beautiful lady. Mr Sumner and Mr Osmand were smashing fellas, but the good ones were few and far between. Most of them were horrible, really cruel to us. I hated it, absolutely hated it. The amount of times I wanted to burn that school down. Secondary school wasn’t much better. I couldn’t even take music as a subject, because I couldn’t play piano or violin, so they wouldn’t let me. Some of the teachers there were just odd. One insisted on calling me Albert, and not for any comedic value. She said, ‘Who cares what your name is. Albert.’ Mrs Lamb was bizarre, she came in one day and told us all that from that point on we had to call her Mrs Austin because she said she’d married Steve Austin, the Six Million Dollar Man. OK.

  All of those teachers really helped to shape my personality, just not quite in the way teachers are supposed to. I think one of the reasons I hate injustice – which is why Jean Valjean appeals to me so much – is because I suffered it so much at school. I don’t take crap from people
any more. I can be pretty confrontational. I had to learn to stick up for myself. That certainly happened after I left home and came down to London, and had problems with people at music college. I have awful aggression sometimes, and I’ve had struggles with it. I get incredibly frustrated and angry and I flare up, I can lose my temper badly. It doesn’t take much if I think someone’s out of line. My wife Sarah’s seen me get angry with people a lot and she says it’s frightening, which I don’t like, and I try to control that, contain it. I think it comes from Mum’s side of the family. She doesn’t stand for any nonsense. She gave a lad a black eye once when she was 15. She was coming home through an alleyway and saw a boy being bullied, and told this other kid to leave him alone. The kid turned on her and she punched him in the eye. She’s always been a feisty one, my mum. And her dad was like that. When my uncle was a little boy, he fell off his bike, and their dad, old Sam Dutton, picked up the bike, took it into the backyard, bent it double and hurled it over the fence. He was angry that the bike had hurt his son.