Interview with Brian Dakin
- Reference Number: DW-252/2/3
- Date: 6 Aug 2019
- Level: Item
- Extent: 1 file (7884371 KB)
- Format: WAV Audio file
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Description: Summary of interview with Brian Dakin
Interviewee: Brian Dakin
Born: November 1952
Interviewer: Simon Williams
Date of interview: 6th August 2019
[0.00.17] Born Portway road, Oldbury for the first 5 years of life, these 5 years probably shaped who I am now.
[0.00.40] Oldbury was regenerated, family moved on mass to Katemore Road, but still lived with all my family on the same road. Six of his aunties moved to be on the same estate. This maintained a close family unit.
[0.01.33] Dad was a steal worker and mum worked on the laiths in the factory.
[0.02.05] Most of family worked at Accles and Pollock, they would come home at lunch place was full of stories and they would sing. Dad, uncle Bill and Eric sang in a 3-piece harmony group called Murry Brothers. Brother and sister also performed.
[0.02.40] I was like a sponge, listened to stories from the factory floor, the local smoke, Travellers Rest where they would tell stories or sing.
[0.03.40] When in my 40s, I decided to discover who I was in terms of a Black Country mon and I realised how influential those first 5 to 10 years were, first at Nana Polls and then the Katemore estate. It was such an inclusive places in terms of the people you met, the language they used, the culture you were surrounded by. This was all part and parcel in shaping that identity. It wasn?t until I went to Oldbury Grammer School that I realised people were different, spoke different to me and came from different backgrounds.
[0.04.47] We were labelled the council kids for a long time and that shaped you as you had a notion of class then and that marked who you were.
[0.05.02] I went through life adapting. I played professional football for four years, moved away from home at 15 ½ and moved to Swindon. That didn?t work out for one reason or another and again, looking back part of it was my Black Country upbringing. Was a 17 year old lad sticking up for myself.
[0.05.42] I worked in the flooring trade for 38 years. Then when I was about 40 and started to perform and tell stories about my childhood and stuff in BC dialect.
[0.06.20] I went and did a Bachelor of Arts at Wolverhampton University part time. I started to look at identity through place and voice. I did an MA afterwards. Felt tired as this was 8 years studying and was now in his 50s but friend said he needed to do a PhD looking at this and look at place and voice through an arts perspective, a different perspective.
[0.07.20] I was then performing under the name of Billy Spakemon (people in the Black Country identified with this more) and Wolverhampton University offered a bursary for a mature, part-time student to do a Phd of the Black Country dialect.
[0.08.51] Brian was awarded bursary and he decided to look at the education act of 1870 and take it up to 1939 and prove that the education act had little impact on the Black Country community during this time. Interviewed a lot of people who attended school in the 1920s and whether it affected them and ask if it was a hindrance to speak the way they spoke.
[0.09.25] After 8 years, we got the doctorate. The BC has been a massive influence on what he does and see the world.
[0.10.12] Discusses being taught values (respect your elders, speak when spoken to). Father was a singer and put on a pedastol and Mum (seen as the engine room) clothed and feed the children and would go out to work. Father also worked hard and was a talented singer. Parents were the cornerstone, they were incredibly wise.
[0.12.07] Didn?t realise until later in life, Mum was a work horse. She got you up, ready for school, went to work at 6am, came home and did the washing/ironing, etc.
[12.53] Anything my mum told me, I?d just defy her as I knew I could walk over the road and go to my Auntie Glad?s and get a biscuit if I wanted. My dad would say he?d be disappointed with me and that would floor me and be devastated.
[0.14.54] At 7 ½ I was taken to the dinnertime trails for the school football team and I got in as right back for the team. I also played for the borough. All the way through school, I was looked at as somebody who was special. [Being good at sport] Put you in a privileged position. Academically, me and Micky O?Leary (school friend) were always in the top two.
[0.16.30] Remember meeting Micky?s dad for the first time (Micky?s family were middle class and Brian?s family were working class but lived on the same estate). The talked for hours and Brian went on a holiday to Scarborough with Mickey?s family.
[018.45] Met with Micky?s dad again, many years later at a Baggies (West Bromwich Albion Football Club) match.
[0.21.40] At school class difference showed, being called council kids or Provy kids. Given provy cheques to families when they couldn?t afford school uniform. Loved ever y aspect of school, sports, academic and social side.
[0.23.10] Performed house places at Grammar School, performance side always been there. Remember going back to Nana Murry?s Influenced by parents and siblings, Sunday night open up Grandad?s best room, Uncle Eric would play, and everyone would sing.
[0.24.08] Describes what it was like going to university at an older age (mature student). It was hard work but loved it.
[0.31.10] Flooring Trading Company went bust and I was still doing my PhD. Dr Clark asked if I wanted to work with her at the university on a fantastic project called the West Midlands
England Speech and Society Project. Project investigates the notion of language through performance in various regions. I went around the 5 countries and finding performers, famous performers and ask if how they spoke was ever a problem, then asking audiences why they had come to see the individual perform (like Tommy Mundon). Is it because his jokes are funny? Because he?s from the Black Country. The project was for 5 years and I?ve been at the university ever since, working on community projects to do with locality and identity (oral histories, creative writing). I was due to retire two years ago but I?m staying for two more years.
[0.32.40] Phd was called The Social History of the Black Country Dialect - 1870 to 1939 and it investigated the notion of did the education act make any in roads in changing how people spoke in the Black Country. Brian?s findings were that it didn?t. People who did experience it were students who said they went to grammer school and would put on a school voice at school and use their regular voice outside school.
[0.34.32] Brian discusses what about the Black Country dialects intrigues him. Oldest variety of English that?s still spoken, the timeline and story of it (Anglo/Saxons).
[0.36.50] Auntie Glad would tell stories and come out with phrases like ?you core cover up a chicken if your mothers a duck? meaning she may think she?s better then us but she?s not also. ?you bare fair through as a mackerel?, ?big as a bonk horse?. There is colour in the language. Also is someone being pregnant they would say ?she?s all a forid? meaning she?s about to give birth, meaning her belly is through the door before the rest of her.
[0.40.30] Link between Black Country dialect, humour and performance, humour is inbred. Comes from the factories and the mines.
[0.40.50] Managing Director of Accles and Pollock was Walter C. Hackett and he used to write under the pseudonym Can Ya Whack It (check this) and he used to write in the local rags (probably the Olbury Weekly News and/or the Smethwick Telephone) and he?d write humourous ditties about what he?d seen on the factory floor. Walter C. Hackett used to come down on the factory floor everyday and used to walk round with a notepad and the workers thought he was doing time management but he was actually writing everything he heard, banter that was going on. In the factories the machinery was loud and pounding so the workers would be shouting to each other, all this stuff that was going on. Hackett would pick all this up and he wrote The Little Red Book and The Little Blue Book (Brian believes there are copies at the archives) and they are fantastic as all they are, are anecdotes of what he picked up. Little stories of what had happened on the factory floor or what had gone on in the street where people lived.
[0.42.34] The humour is all about life in general. Greta Tommy Mundon, Harry Harrison and Dolly Allen didn?t tell jokes, they told stories of their experiences.
[0.46.44] Most people were illiterate so life was passed on through story-telling. Black country comedians would pick up on these stories and share them.
[0.48.14] To me, Black Country humour is about us. Making fun of ourselves before anyone else does and not worrying about it at all. Brian share as funny story about meeting two old
chaps from Cradley Heath who debates with Brian about not being Black Country because where he lives in the Black Country and his telephone number being an 0121 number (this is the Birmingham code).
[0.52.05] First memories of Black Country Humour. These were of Uncle Sam at family parties. He would come out with the most ridiculous things and sing. You wouldn?t understand but everyone would be laughing. There was always a story to tell about your family, where you lived, the characters on your road or work.
[0.54.38] Tells a story about Mrs Carter at number 21. Everybody in the close, men and women worked at the factories or had a manual job but Mrs Carter didn?t. She didn?t go out to work. She wore Marigolds (brand of rubber gloves) and would be cleaning her windows all the time. The favourite saying was ?if thing says it and we s**t?. This was banter and said to Mrs Carter.
[0.56.24] Created the Boonyheads with Brendan Hawthorne (poet and performer) to replace the Aynuck and Ayli cartoon strip when it came to an end in the Black Country Bugle. The Booneyheads is someone who hasn?t got ?much upstairs?. Brian and Brendan wanted these characters to be modern day philosophers, who would think about mundane things such as the demise of the Mars bar, what aren?t there any adult beetroot in jars on the Asda shelves? That sort of thing. We created these nonsensical, modern characters. The cartoon goes into the Bugle every fortnight and people wait for it and really enjoy the cartoons. A tradition that?s been carried on in our culture.
[0.58.05] Essence of people like Tommy Mundon and Harry Harrison is they told stories one after the other. Nearest modern example is Billy Connolly who tells stories and not one liners.
[1.00.04] Who are your favourite comedians/storytellers? Tommy Mundon was great, Harry Harrison was fantastic. There?s a fantastic performance poet/comedian called Emma Purshouse who I adore. She can do serious and comedic stuff but it?s the way it?s performed, very animated. Brendan Hawthorne writes great stuff. He has two guises, he writes very serious poetic stuff that?s great in its own stance but it?s not his Black Country stuff. When he writes about Black Country, whether in dialect or not, it takes another dimension for me as it?s a lived experience. John Edgar, fantastic storyteller from Wolverhampton. Johnny Cole who?s the next Frank Skinner.
[01.05.20] Where do you got to watch comedy? The Holly Bush in Cradley Heath, Dave Francis platforms every kind of performance. The Artrix in Bromsgrove. Pubs in the Black Country. - Access Status: Open
- Contact: Wolverhampton Archives, Wolverhampton Archives & Local Studies