THE BALLAD OF SID KIPPER

In 1996 I was asked to write a brief biography of Sid, for inclusion in the above book.  It served as an introduction to a collection of Sid's songs.  Since the book has now gone out of print the Mousehold Press have kindly given permission for the piece to appear here.  I think it will help some people to understand the complexly simple person that is Sid Kipper.

Chris Sugden.

A Star Is Spawned

Sid Kipper was born on a sunny Saturday afternoon in Farmer Trout's barn in the tiny Norfolk village of St Just-near-Trunch.  Which means that Sid is a true Truncheon (and he never has to close the door).  Many people have remarked that Sid seems younger than his age.  Well, every biography needs a sensational revelation, so here's one straight away.  I can now exclusively divulge that Sid is younger than his age!  That is to say, he's younger than he has previously claimed to be.

Let me take you back to 1936.  In that year the whole village sighed with relief when Sid's parents, Henry Kipper and Dot Spratt, married each other, because it meant that nobody else would have to marry either of them.  They set up home on the edge of the village in Box Cottage, and seemed quite happy, in a miserable sort of way.

Henry and Dot never wanted children, but at the outbreak of the Second World War they saw the advantage of the extra rations that a child would bring.  So they registered the birth of a son, Sid, who at that stage didn't actually exist.  This arrangement worked very well, until the end of the war.  When the lax wartime bureaucracy was tightened up it became clear that they might be required to produce the boy.  No longer could they claim, as they had, that he had been "ejaculated to London".  So Henry enquired of the vicar how they might go about having a child and, after some incredulity, they went ahead.  Dot finally, if reluctantly, gave birth to the real, flesh and blood Sid on the twenty-first of September 1946.

But it's not easy being an unwanted child, as Sid recalls.

"I sort of got the feeling that I weren't wanted when the rationing got eased.  What give me that feeling was when mother used to leave me in shops or on buses, or anywhere in fact.  I once spent three days in a cake shop in North Walsham before they managed to trace her and make her take me back.  Of course, that was nothing personal.  Eventually I learned to keep an eye out for her trying to sneak off.  I reckon that must be where I picked up the habit of following women home."

By all accounts Sid was a happy little boy, although something of a loner.  He spent much of his time practising putting his finger in his ear and singing folk songs.  He loved nature and when he was not needed to work around the house would go for long walks.  He knew where every pheasant and rabbit lived, and he sang to them.

It has to be said that Sid and education never saw eye to eye.  The biggest problem was Sid's singing.  It was in his blood, and he had no wish to do anything else.  At the age of five, however, he was dragged kicking and screaming to start his formal education at Trunch Bored School.  It was a day he will never forget.

"I weren't kicking and screaming - I was dancing and singing.  But I do remember we did have a bit of trouble over the singing.  Miss Eels, the teacher, spent all her time telling me not to sing in the classroom.  Well, not all her time, obviously.  I mean, for a start, she used to go home of an evening.  Mind you, I never went home with her, so I don't know for sure she din't spend her time there telling me not to sing in the classroom.  But even if she did, there was one time she didn't tell me not to sing, and that was during singing lessons.  She threw me out for them.  She said I put the others off."

picture by Dominique Saintebarbe Ward

"I got a certificate for Fifty Yards Breast-stroke Theory - the school didn't have no swimming pool, so we couldn't do the practical.  I was very good at the breast-stroking, though I never could get the hang of crawling - Cyril Cockle got a Distinction for that."

On leaving primary school Sid was offered a place at Borstal, but his ambition was thwarted, as his parents couldn't afford the uniform.  So he went, with the rest of his class-mates, to the nearby Knapton Academy.  Here he was not allowed to sing in class.  Nor was he allowed to leave the class to sing, as he had done before.  This was because the boys toilets were situated next to the headmaster's office, and the walls were thin.  So Sid took to truancy.  But in a small village, where everyone knows everyone's business, he quickly had to become expert at evading the Attendance Officer.  He spent a lot of time lurking in the woods - a habit he retains to this day.

"I never bothered none about doing well at school.  Even then all I wanted to do was sing and play the accompaniments, so I couldn't see no point in getting no big qualifications.  My Uncle Walter was teaching me the piano by the traditional method of beating time on my fingers with the lid, apart from which I taught myself the other instruments.  Now that weren't easy, 'cos of course I didn't know how to play them in order to teach myself.  It was like the deaf telling the deaf, really.  But most of all I was practising the unaccompanied singing.  Well, it's not easy to evade the Tendency Officer if you're dragging a piano, is it?"

The Golden Buoy

When Sid left school in 1960 he was apprenticed to his uncle, George Kipper.  The exact nature of George's business is not clear, but it seems to have involved such traditional crafts as 'dealing', 'flogging', and 'following lorries waiting for things to drop off the back'.

"I come under the influence with Uncle George, when he was back in the village after a spell away, pleasing Her Majesty.  He's a lovely singer is George - much better than my old father.  It's a shame he has to help the police so much with their enquiries, or he could be famous without the 'in'.

George taught me all I knew at the time.  Mind you, that weren't a lot.  I mean, George knew a lot, but he always used to say 'If I told you all I knew then you'd know as much as I do, plus anything you might have picked up for yourself, and then I'd have to be your apprentice, so you'll just have to find things out the hard way like I did, young fellow-me-lad.'  He always used to say that.  Unless you offered to buy him a drink, of course, and then he said 'A pint of the usual'."

But, as much of George's business seemed to revolve around pubs, and in particular the Old Goat Inn in Trunch, Sid had lots of opportunities to hear his Uncle sing, and with his keen ear he rapidly learned all that George knew about that.  As an apprentice he was not allowed to sing in the pub himself - singing was considered to be man's work, and until a Truncheon had gone through the strange ritual which took place on his twenty-first birthday he was expected to keep quiet and buy the beer.

"Kid's nowadays have it soft.  At that time of the day they used to say 'One boy is worth half a man, two boys is worth half a boy, and three boys aren't worth nothing at all'.  But they couldn't stop me singing in the privy of my own house, although they wished they could when they wanted to go in there for a sing themselves."

In 1964, at the age of 18, Sid began his National Service.  This was a very difficult thing for him to do, not least because National Service had been abolished some years earlier!  But Sid has never been one to shun a problem, and he managed to get the Mundesley Dark Infantry to take him on for a year.

"I got fed up with people going on about how the army made them what they were.  I mean, looking at some of them, you'd think they ought to go and ask for their money back.  Howsomever, I thought I'd like to give it a go.  I thought wrong as a matter of fact, because I hated every minute of it.  Well, I tell a lie - I didn't hate every minute.  I hated every minute except for about twenty minutes in September, with the Colonel's daughter.  I quite enjoyed those minutes."

Actually Sid and the army got on surprisingly well, in fact.  He has always been a smart dresser, so the uniform was no trouble to him.

"I was always one for dressing smart and up to the minute.  I mean, I was the first person in Trunch to wear drain-pipe trousers - that would have been in about 1964, as far as I recall.  Then again, they all laughed when I moved on to flares in 1978.  I'm a bit of trend settler, as a matter of fact.  Of course that's where a lot of these modern folk singers get it wrong.  You see, I was brought up to dress in my best for the singing - it's a mark of respect.  But these new people, a lot of them don't even wear a tie!  It's all Aran sweaters, which are only correct for singing Scottish songs.  It's a shame, 'cos some of them aren't bad singers.  It's just the clothes that let them down."

He was also very good at soldierly activities like creeping about at night with a gun and shooting things.  Square bashing took him some time to come to terms with, but once he had worked out that it was really just a flat footed sort of morris dance he quickly got the hang of it.  Consequently he marched with bells on his ankles, but no-one could find a regulation that actually banned it, and the years of training under his Uncle George had made him an excellent barrack room lawyer, so they couldn't stop him.

"Every now and again I got leave, so I kept in touch with what was going on in the village.  There was a new vicar, who we've still got, except, of course, he's an old vicar now.  That was Rev 'Call-me-Derek' Bream.  We didn't get on too well at first.  He was having Hops in the village hall, and that sort of thing.  I never went - I was too busy having hops in the Old Goat Inn.  But over the years he's made quite a difference to our village.  Well, either that or it's got different of its own accord, and he just happened to be there."

Derek (known to some as Dingley Del) has been an important influence on Sid's career.  His songwriting, in particular, brought other sorts of music to Sid's attention, and over the years Sid has sung a few of Derek's songs himself.

"Well, sometimes I get bored with the old songs and fancy something a bit more groovy and up to date.  More often, though, it's the audience who get bored, and need waking up.  That's when I give them one of Del's numbers.  By the end of one of them they're begging me to go back to the old songs again."

Tour dates 

May 5th              ROCHESTER Sweeps Festival (01634-338109) [VW]

May 6th              HASTINGS - Jack in the Green Festival - Stables Theatre (01424-423221) [VW]

May 16th            BLACKPOOL - Clarence Folk Club (01772-683027) [VW]

Jun 7th               SADDLEWORTH - Greenfield Conservative Club - Saddleford Festival of the Arts (from May 5th - 01457-877878) [VW]

Jun 22nd            LINCOLN Folk Festival (01526-352153) [IS]

Jun 24th             HANDLEY Village Festival (01246-246330) [IS]

Jun 30th             BUNGAY - The Fisher Theatre (01986-897130) [VW]

Jul 7th                 ELY Folk Weekend (afternoon performance) (01353-669985) [VW]

Aug 25th            TOWERSEY Village Festival (01629-827016)

 

[VW] = Vaughan Williams Stole My Folk Song

[KF] = Kipper Fillets