NATIONAL LIFE STORIES ARTISTS’ LIVES Bruce Lacey Interviewed by Gillian Whiteley C466/99 Thi s transcript is copyright of the British Library Board. Please refer to the Oral History curators at the British Library prior to any publication or broadcast from this document. Oral History The British Library 96 Euston Road London NW1 2DB 020 7412 7404 [email protected] This transcript is accessible via the British Library’s Archival Sound Recordings website. Visit http://sounds.bl.uk for further information about the interview. © The British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk IMPORTANT Access to this interview and transcript is for private research only. Please refer to the Oral History curators at the British Library prior to any publication or broadcast from this document. 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Should you find any errors please inform the Oral History curators ( [email protected] ) © The British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk The British Library National Life Stories Interview Summary Sheet Title Page Ref no: C466/99/01-11 Digitised from cassette originals Collection title: Artists’ Lives Interviewee’s surname: Lacey Title: Interviewee’s forename: Bruce Sex: male Occupation: Dates: b. 31.03.1927 Dates of recording : 16.05.2000; 18.07.2000 Location of interview: Interviewee’s home Name of interviewer: Gillian Whitely Type of recorder: Marantz CP430 and two lapel mics Recording format: TDK C60 Cassettes F numbers of playback cassettes: F8072-F8079; F8506-F8508 Total no. of digitised tracks : 20 Mono or stereo: Stereo Additional material at the British Library : Copyright/Clearance: Full Clearance . © The British Library Interviewer’s comments: . © The British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Bruce Lacey C466/99/01 F8072A Page 1 [F8072 Side A] This is Gillian Whiteley interviewing Bruce Lacey on Tuesday the 16 th of May 2000. Well Bruce... Oh it’s working, OK. Right, we’re on. It would be good if we could start perhaps then with your family history. Yes. What can you remember about your maternal grandparents and your paternal grandparents? Well, I was born in 1927, at Catford in...no, Lewisham Hospital, but I lived in Catford, which is south-east London. And, my father was a house painter, but he collected things. They weren’t like your high class antiques, they were like, poor man’s antiques I suppose. And my mother had been a milliner. And they had met at the Catford roller-skating fancy dress ball one year, where my mother went as a red Indian, because she had played a walk-on part in a production of Hiawatha at the Albert Hall, so she had this costume from there. And my father decided to go as a circular dinner table, with hoops around him, and he cut a hole in one of his mother’s best sheets, and he disguised himself in the middle of the table behind a potted plant, well an imitation one. I imagine he was on roller skates. But he found he couldn’t dance with anyone, so he was sitting in the corner looking all miserable, and my mother went over, and she fell in love with his smile, you know. Mm. So, there was that influence. And as a child, we lived near, well Lewisham Hippodrome, which was a great variety theatre, and we used to go to the Lewisham Hippodrome every Saturday night. And we used to sit up in the gods, and watch all © The British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Bruce Lacey C466/99/01 F8072A Page 2 these different jugglers, comedians, singers, magicians and things like that. But whenever there was a conjuror on the bill, my father would pay for us to sit in the front row. And always the conjuror would say, ‘Can I have a volunteer from the audience?’ and my father would be up there, you know, participating. And they, they’d like, pull an egg out of his mouth and smash on the head, and he’d get into a balloon basket and go up into the flies, and you think, oh my gosh, what’s happening to my father? And then he’d come running out from behind. And so... And then we used to have great parties, and all the family would come, and my father would roll up the carpet, paint the floor, covered it in talc and stuff, and we, my sister and I would then do little performances and acts. And at the age of nine I joined a tap-dancing troupe with my sister, so I started tap-dancing. Well my mother’s father, my mother had come from Plymouth, and her father was a sea captain, master mariner, on windjammers. And he won...there was an award called the Blue Ribbon, it might have been a tea-clipper, but he won it from Lisbon to Newfoundland. And the sad thing is that I don’t know very much about him, but... This is your maternal grand, your mother’s father. Maternal, that’s right. Right. From Plymouth. From Plymouth. And she came to London to work as a milliner near, well, I can’t remember now, anyway, near Lewisham. Now my father’s family, they were fishermen and sailors from Yarmouth, and his father had come to London as a compositor, working for a printing firm. And, he stayed with us for a number of years until he, he died. But then my mother’s brother had been in the Royal Flying Corps in the First World War, and he was also an amateur photographer. So I was brought up with photograph albums of all these aeroplanes. And so I had this aeroplane, and also this sea influence in my life. Well, when the war came, the Second World War came, I joined © The British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Bruce Lacey C466/99/01 F8072A Page 3 the Air Training Corps, and started to learn gliding, because I wanted to be a pilot. And, the big dilemma was, did I go, well, into the Navy or into the Air Force? I didn’t want to go into the Air Force or the Navy, but because of the sea and the air thing, I then wanted to go into the Fleet Air Arm, take off from an aircraft carrier on the sea, but in an aeroplane. And I went up for my air crew selection, and like I’m doing now, I was leaning on the table, all these admirals in front of me, and they were asking me questions about, ‘What sort of plane would you like to fly?’ And I said, ‘Well I’d really like to fly a twin-engine bomber.’ And they said, ‘Well we haven’t got twin-engine planes in the Fleet Air Arm.’ And then they asked me a question on trigonometry, but because when the war came, and all my fellow students all evacuated, I stayed home, and had odd bits of teaching from odd schools where a few students were left behind, and then went down to Wales where my father was working camouflaging explosives factories, I’d missed out on trigonometry. And in the waiting room a guy said, ‘They may ask you questions on trigonometry, which is to do with navigation.’ So he said, ‘If they do, there’s a little rhyme you can say, which tells you what the sign and the co-sign and the tangent.’ And so I suddenly thought of this rhyme, when they asked me this question, and I started saying it to myself but also out loud. Got half-way through and forgot, and one of the admirals carried on with the rest of it. Obviously they knew I knew nothing. So I went out, and when I came in again they said, ‘Well we don’t think you’re quite officer pilot material. We’ll offer you a job as a telegraphist air gunner.’ And so I then got a little badge, I was able to go back to my fellow Air Training Corps people with what was then, you could put a white flash in your hat to say you were accepted for air crew. And then, the war was coming to an end, so they said, we’ve stopped all training, which was just as well, because the Japanese used to go for the telegraphist air gunner first, so I wouldn’t have lived long. And so I decided to go into the Navy. Right. Well, going back to when my father went down to Wales, I did have some private tuition, and then my father was working in this explosives factory, camouflaging it... This is... Just take me back. You mentioned he went back to Wales. When was that then, what sort of time was it? © The British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Bruce Lacey C466/99/01 F8072A Page 4 This was about, three years after the war started. Right. OK. And so, we as a family all moved down and lived in this... You all moved to Wales? We all moved to Wales. Except my sister, who stayed behind. Right. Was she older than you? Pardon? Was she older than you? She’s two years older. But she stayed behind and had one or two illegitimate babies and things like that, you know.