Glory days of town-centre characters THE glory days of town-centre characters and their amusing, sometimes obscure, nicknames are recaptured with enthusiasm by a couple of veteran elbow-benders.

Picking up on an earlier rogues' gallery theme, our correspondents - hiding behind the pint-pots under the nom-de-plumes of 'Punchy' and 'Town Boozer' - open us up to a lost world of taproom humour and sawdust side punch-ups.

Punchy recalls a dodgy character universally known as The Oldest Teddy Boy in Town. "He lived in a caravan and thought he was the slickest guy in St Helens."

After committing a break-in close by, he headed back to his caravan, well satisfied with his night's work, and fell soundly asleep.

An hour later the law was banging on the door to feel his collar. It had been snowing that night and the policeman had followed his winkle-picker footprints from the scene of the crime to the caravan.

It was splashed all across the local papers . . . an incident that the previously self-assured veteran Teddy Boy never lived down.

Punchy also recalls a well-known 'fellow about town' who was known only by his surname initial of 'C.'

He was among a bunch sent down from the dole to Fiddlers Ferry power station which was then nearing completion. They were given temporary work as painters on the huge new chimney.

'C' was desperate for some beer money, but unfortunately suffered from vertigo!

The new recruits were lifted to a height where the people at ground level looked the size of ants. And on stepping from the 'lift', poor old 'C' immediately clung on to the nearest hand-hold.

There, with seagulls wheeling close by him, he refused to relax his white-knuckled grip. And when another of the casual painters, working alongside, asked him to move his hands, the trembling 'C' replied: "B----- off! Just paint over 'em!"

When brought down to ground level at dinner time, the sweat-drenched 'C' made a prompt bee-line back to St Helens. Town Boozer recalls the rumbustious era of the 'Crazy Gang' which haunted a St Helens town-centre pub. He doesn't say which one, but supplies a clue by telling us that this particular hostelry was named after a bird. More 'red cards' were dished out there than any soccer ref might dream possible.

It was a clannish sort of establishment where any stranger who happened to pop in would be given a close and combined eyeing-over. Sensing the atmosphere, few irregulars remained for more than a swift gill and were seldom seen there again.

Yet the Crazy Gang loved to soak up that electric atmosphere. At any one time you might find, huddled together, the likes of Bert the Butter, the Mad Professor, the Vicar, old Nail Bender, Camelcoat John, Little White Cloud, Arctic John and the Bar Fly - not forgetting probably the greatest 'stirrer' of them all, Flying Officer M.

He was a great wind-up merchant with tales that would make some of his listeners go purple in the face with rage, veins bulging from reddened necks.

Others took in good humour his tall stories about flying more bombing missions than the rest of the RAF and the German Luftwaffe put together.

He would elaborate this by claiming, straight-faced, that Hitler had once taken his Luftwaffe commander Goering to one side and told him: "If we don't get M, we have lost this war."

And he certainly looked the part, adds our taproom informant. "He was cool as a cucumber with waxed, twirly moustache and smart RAF blazer." Bets were often placed among the regulars over just when the next taproom brawl would kick-off.

And opportunity regularly presented itself.

Like the time when a giant canister of pea soup was hauled in for a darts team treat.

Bert the Butter began his usual chant of: "Has everybody got butter on their barm cakes?"

Without replying, Arctic John, who used to chill out with his regulation four pints in front of him, dunked his unbuttered barm cake straight into the pea-soup canister.

This was a serious breach of taproom etiquette. The butter-man yelled: "Hey, you can't do that!" rushing forward to stop him.

"Next thing," recalls Town Boozer, "all hell had let loose. The pea soup was up-ended and flew in all directions.

"Those nearest to the canister were covered in the green stuff as it splashed up the walls and ceiling.

"It took a dozen men to shove big Arctic John, blissfully plastered and unaware of the chaos he had caused, through the door and out into the damp night streets . . . for his own safety."

SOMEHOW, pub grub never seems the same these days!

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