School Days

Continued from http://regvarney100.blogspot.co.uk/2017/12/a-close-knit-family-in-strong-community.html

Reg attended Star School for Boys in Canning Town’s Star Lane ‘less than thirty seconds from our street door’ as he says in his autobiography The Little Clown.

He writes vividly of his early schooldays, but hardly in a positive vein. School bullies ‘on the rampage’ are one of his memories as a seven-year-old. ‘Being a very timid boy, I was scared to death.’

The head teacher or ‘Governess’ is ‘a terrifying sight’, known as ‘the vulture.’ His form teacher Miss Atkins is not much better. Her repeated ‘Now pay attention’ seems to have been his chief memory of her. ‘It didn’t take long to learn that phrase,’ he writes. ‘I heard it God knows how many times a day from that first day at school till my last day at the age of fourteen.’

A photo of Reg with his classmates at Star School for Boys   

Here’s a photo of him with his classmates. Can you spot Reg? He left aged 14. It was the normal school leaving age at that time for children from a poor background.

‘My teacher was very good at art and therefore he encouraged me, teaching me a lot,’ Reg wrote in his autobiography. Aged only 13, he produced this study of two dogs. 

Had his maths been good enough he would have gone to art school, and perhaps chosen a different career.

Reg’s handwriting was better than his spelling. He sent this letter to the BBC in 1935, aged 18, asking for an audition. ‘It has been my only wish to be on the air so that I can make a name for myself,’ he wrote. 

His handwriting was just as impressive in old age. Here’s the inscription he wrote in the copy of his autobiography which he gave to his grandson Ryan.

































Two other well known names from the entertainment world went to Star Lane School.  

One was the singer and actor David Essex OBE, pictured here. Born David Albert Cook in Plaistow, East London, he moved to Canning Town with his family at the age of two in 1949.    Image credit: Margaret Morley

The other was the actor and comedian Marty Feldman.

The school building is still there, but is now called Star Primary School and it takes girls as well as boys. It seems like a really happy and successful school. Click on http://www.star.newham.sch.uk/ to read more.

You can read more about Reg Varney’s amazing life in the book Our Little Clown by Michael Downes, obtainable at Fairlynch Museum. See http://fairlynchmuseum.uk/publications.html

Continued at 
http://regvarney100.blogspot.co.uk/2017/12/discovering-gift-of-music.html