Thursday 1 September 2011

2117 Larry Lamb : Who do you think you are?

There is so much to write about, the New Sky series -The Borgias, the awful Blood and Sand Spartacus without Spartacus, several episodes of New Tricks and the Sopranos, several excellent episodes of Do you think you know who you are? With the most interesting and affecting that of Larry Lamb who came to national fame in East Enders at the age of 60, and the creator of Harry Potter J K Rowling with the programmes of another Easter Enders Dot Cotton, June Brown and the Olympic champion Lord Seb Coe. With two excellent films on BBC 2 on Sunday nights 39 and.

There have been other films, The Rebound, Takers, Finding Nemo and other films recorded yet to see Horsemen of the Apocalypse, Johnny Hex, Inception and the Tron Legacy and to adapt parts of the 120 odd pages of work related to the Riots which engaged my attention over the past two weeks, including while I was away in the Midlands.

I need to write quickly over the best couple of days before Treme is back for a second season and then the Boardwalk Empire. There is England at Durham on Saturday and Durham at Somerset on Sunday and then the push for a ticket if we win as well as the last Home Game against Sussex for the Championship, perhaps.

I defrosted the freezer this morning and will need to refill tomorrow although resisting all the stuff that has led to an increase in weight to beyond the worse I have been, at 18 stone considering I was down to 16 and half a year ago about this time.

I need to catch up on project work registrations, clean the house, do some ironing and check on personal budget issues.

The situation is Libya appears to be moving forward although fears of another Iraq and Afghanistan are to the fore and Hurricane Irene proved not as disastrous as feared. So where do I begin and do I begin tonight or leave for a fresh start in the morning.

I must begin with Larry Lamb in Who do you think you are? I chose Larry because he echoed my own feelings which are about the book I am already writing in my head about needing to know about myself and my origins although in my case there are many missing bits. The most moving aspect came as the credit’s approached and Larry recognised that he was part of a chain of people thus giving perspective to his own mortality. There was also two great finds about his maternal parents.

Larry Lamb (not Larry the Lamb) real name Lawrence Douglas has kept his Wikipedia entry brief because he has released an autobiography this year although it will be interesting to learn if this also includes the revelations about his mother’s background. From an article in the Guardian on March 1st I did learn that his mother had verbal aggressive relationship with his father when they were married after a casual relationship after the Second World War. What he had not known until later was that his mother hand been adopted after being placed by her mother with foster parents, She and Larry have always been restless souls. Larry with three marriages and a fourth partner. He when 9 and his brother were brought up by his paternal grandmother although his mother would visit with her daughter and then disappeared until he was in his 20’s. Woking out his personal life or that of his mother after that is not possible from the information available on line and my interest does not extend to buy the book. Sorry Larry.

He was married first at the age of 21 and from his he has a daughter Vanessa Clare (1969) but after the marriage ended and divorce and his wife remarried he decided to have no contact with the daughter who had established her own life. I suspect he would not mind if she contacted after the publicity.

He was married again in the USA to a USA citizen and this aspect of his, living in California, is brought back in the programme. It was his second why that encouraged him to make contact with his mother and reassess his feelings towards her because of the brainwashing from his father and family. It appears his father remarried and then there were more problems so the second wife followed by his father after a major row and they lost contact for 15 years at the end of which the man died.

His has a son by his third wife who he regards as stronger because of the stability of her family. He admits that while he adored Linda (Martin 1979-1996) they could not live together but lived close by. And he has two daughter by his present partner Eloisa Alexandra 1999 and Eva Mathilde 2003.

He found regular work as a TV actor in the New Avengers, The Professionals, Minder, Lovejoy, A Touch of Frost, Kavanagh, Casualty, Spooks, Midsomer Murders, the Bill, and Taggart often as a Villain is my impression which could be false as he was an engineer in he Marine Soap Triangle 75 episodes and in various films and in some stage plays. It was however as Archie Mitchell in 150 episodes of Eastenders that he became nationally known. He also appeared in 20 episodes of Gavin and Stacey during the same period. There have been about 15 film parts and various stage plays so he appears to have been an actor in demand and able to financially support his life style.

This brings to the story of his biological maternal grand mother and father and what a tale it was. His mother was born to a 17 year old whose earlier family background was not explored. She disappeared from her mother’s life but then was found to have remarried (technically bigamy) after a slight change of name to a Jewish man in the East End of London, and he was asked to meet a Jewish historian at a Synagogue here it was revealed his grandmother had been married again after conversion to the faith and where she had a son hence the marriage. So Larry discovers that his mother had a half brother. There was then no trace in the 1950’s and this led to find that the family had emigrated to the USA and Los Angeles. The husband had died but the mother had remarried and she had died in the later 1980’s aged 84. Therefore his mother’s slim hope of finding her mother alive failed. However he was able to met her half brother and put through a telephone call to her. Of course it was all staged and there was reference to the two meeting, The brother and therefore Larry’s uncle looked well set up as part of a extended family but had always seem himself as an only child.

The unusual and interesting came when investigating the background of the maternal father. He had been from a well known family of show people one of six families who had operate menageries, mobile zoos in effect bringing wild animals to the people for the first time something which has been restricted to the wealthy travellers in the past. The interesting aspect is that father had himself become a mystery to the family who remain show people to this, living in their permanent quarters in trailers to this day. They were clearly as delighted as Larry to find the link.

There were several moving moments such a photo of the grandmother showing what an attractive woman she was and the grandfather in his first World War army uniform and then was the sentence about feeling he was part of something which stretch generation but which also brought home individual mortality.

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