Window Cleaner!

[franklinmarsh]

Confessions Of A Window Cleaner - Timothy Lea - Sphere 1971.

Another kind of pulp classic? Coming (oo-er) about a year after Skinhead, and a year before Edge - The Loner, this cheery little smutfest can claim to be possibly the most successful paperback of the SSD genre. Curse that Justin for mentioning the Lady Chatterley trial in his Gor article! Curse that Philip Larkin for making me think that the LCL trial took place in 1963. My 'less than 10 years later' comments are now completely scuppered by the trial taking place in 1960. However, 'just over 10 years' is still a comparatively short time.
Penguin publishers were all about bringing literature to the masses via cheap paperback editions of good writing on sale at railway stations and the like. D H Lawrence had done them proud, but they were in a bit of a dither about Lady Chatterley's Lover. Lawrence died in 1930, and Penguin wanted to publish the complete works as a 30th anniversary tribute. They always brought out unexpurgated works and, owing to the1857/1959 Obscene Publications Act, they had to consider what would happen if they went ahead with LCL. It was the bookseller who tended to be brought up before the Beak charged under the act, not the publisher. (As happened years later with a record shop displaying the Sex Pistols album). Penguin didn't want any vendors to get done because of them. The way around it was to prove the work in question was of redeeming social and literary merit, therefore unlikely to deprave and corrupt. Penguin decided to go for it - they printed up 200,000 copies, sent 12 to the Director of Public Prosecutions, then sat back and waited for the effluent to enter the air-conditioning - which it duly did.
Most people probably know something about the following events - especially Penguin's greatest asset - the counsel for the Prosecution Mr Mervyn Griffith-Jones. His comment to the jury of 9 men and 3 women (of whom 5 apparently had difficulty reading) "Is it a book you would wish your wife or servants to read?" is an all-time great. It was followed with a corker about leaving the book around the house, and your daughter might pick it up - for girls, as well as boys, can read. Can you believe it? A Lord called as a witness said he wouldn't mind his daughter reading the book, as long as his gamekeeper didn't. (Incidentally one of the chaps who approved of the books literary merit was one of the chaps who was behind the 1959 OPA.
The book was publshed, and, as the poet wrote, sexual intercourse began. A scant just-more-than 10 years later, your servants weren't just reading about it, they were appearing in paperbacks, doing it.
With a debt to Stanley Morgan and Leslie Thomas, Christopher Wood's Timothy Lea was to become the working class lothario of the 1970's, running up a respectable 19 books (one more than Richard Allen!)
The LCL trial notes that Lawrence's book contains 30 f***/f***ing, 14 c***, 13 b*lls, 6 sh*t, 6 arse, 4 c*ck and 3 p*ss. Many of these sexual swear words appear in COAWC, but were much less likely to cause the kind of offence 10 years on. Offensive words in Window Cleaner include w*g, w*p, ch*nk and c**n. A sign of the times - Wood wasn't writing about rabid right wing neo-nazis, it was just his take on ordinary, British working class people - but is it any wonder the National Front would rise to Britain's 4th most popular political party within a few years?
If you can stand the above, plus the occasional lapse of taste (despite the Permissive Society air of breaking taboos there are some farcical throwbacks. Not once but twice do cuckolders resort to hiding in a bedroom wardrobe - one of these is Tim, who, on realising he has been made a fool of, thumps the young lady involved) there are some great laughs to be had.
Check out the left hand cover below. Despite Sphere miscalculating Tim's age (Robin Askwith was more appropriate) that bloke will always be Timothy Lea to me. Note the classic 1970s double standard - fully clothed male, scantily clad (or nude) female, displaying (hopefully!) at least one erogenous zone. What were Futura thinking in 1977/78?? And there are at least two other covers - a film tie-in and a cartoon.

[franklinmarsh]

Tim's looking for a job. Fresh out of Bentworth Grange borstal (fitted up on a nicking lead from church roof scam) he has no qualifications and no prospects. Pregnant sister Rosie and her husband, would be enterpreneur but currently window cleaner Sid Noggett are also living with the Lea parents at Scraggs Lane, Clapham. Sid is finding the window cleaning and extra-curricular activities a bit of a strain, so is contemplating taking on an assistant. Tim has unfortunately blurted out to Rosie that he has not yet known a woman (in the biblical sense). Sid picks up on this, and is not convinced that his brother-in-law is up to the job. He arranges a couple of trials for Tim (on the nookie front) which our hero fails miserably. In a no-pressure situation, Tim breaks his duck (very well handled in the film version - Askwith leaves the house to a burst of the Hallelujah Chorus ) and we're off on his sexual sleigh ride. All manner of bonkers bunk-ups follow (with a fair dash of Bill Naughton's Alfie style addressing the reader) which Mr Lea explains are the 'good bits' - for every bedroom romp, there far more actual window cleaning. Even a slice of social 'realism' a la Stanley Morgan (ie a non-sexual episode). Although I assume a series was always intended, unusually for a scene-setter,there's an element of everything-but-the-kitchen-sink in this novel - bondage,flagellation,lesbianism,transvestitism,all manner of role-playing- which makes me wonder if Woody thought he'd better go for broke.
At one point Tim, who has taken up with virginal good girl Elizabeth (what a great name for a heroine!), wonders if he'll only be able to make it standing in a bowl of custard, with a rose behind his ear.
Suffce to say, Elizabeth playing hard to get and the ceaseless grind of non-window cleaning tasks, make Tim question his lifestyle - is he just being used by all these birds he ends up in bed with?
He decides he's had enough, and will propose to Liz. Not without attending one last party/orgy, organised by a previously encountered character. All manner of booze and drugs are available. Things are going swingingly, what with all and sundry weaving fluorescent wool into their pubes and ignoring the skinheads lobbing bottles outside. As the police raid the house, Tim retrieving only his trousers, runs through numerous back gardens in a cleansing rainstorm, determined to make Elizabeth his.
It all ends in disaster - but sets us up for Driving Instructor and the series proper.

[dem bones]

Blimey FM! Now we've got some smut in here it's starting to feel like home again! Bloody horror. Never could stand the stuff really ....

OK, seeing as you're the only available expert just now, which are the, say, five 'best' to look out for?

[franklinmarsh]

Smut? Shurely in depth study of British Working Class leisure habits 1971 - 1979? Although I've picked up all the Leas, I haven't actually read them all. The first two (Window Cleaner and Driving Instructor) are more or less essential - after that you can pretty much pick and choose. Last year I found that Pop Scene wasn't quite as great as I remembered, and Private Soldier was a whole lot better. Haunted House is a must have for this site, though.

[dem bones]

Tsk! Can't have ... Window Cleaner and not use the cover. Classic sizzling cloth cap action for the ladies!

Seeing as how ph*t*b*ck*t have decimated our lovely ....Confessions gallery just because they've never had a shag in their lives, i reckon it's time to try our luck with this stuff elsewhere and a host that doesn't strike me as being quite as .... stiff. Yep. Looks like poor old WordPress are in for yet another pounding very shortly .....