Banana Boy [antikvár]

Frank Norman was born in Bristol on 9 June 1930, He was illegitimate. Handed over by his mother to a Church of England adoption society, he was sent out on trial to a succession of foster parents but they all handed him back. The last, an aristocratic lady in Kensington, delivered him to Dr Barnardo's Homes. He was then seven and did not leave the orphanage until 1946, when he was sixteen. Barnardo's found him a job in a nursery garden, but he hated it and ran away with a travelling fair. He soon discovered London, and Soho in particular, where he worked in various spielers (illegal gambling dens), worked his apprenticeship as a burglar and discovered the charms of shopping with a stolen cheque book. He spent several short spells in prison culminating in three years 'corrective training\ The experience was so appalling that he decided to go straight and write a book about it, Bang to Rights (alsó published by The Hogarth Press). Stephen Spender published an excerpt first in Encounter in 1958 and Raymond Chandler wrote an introduction to it. Although he had no grasp of grammar or speiling, Frank Norman did have a hilarious gift as a raconteur, and was quickly taken up by literary London. His first stage play, Fings Ain't Wot They Used The, written for Joan Littlewood's Theatre Workshop at Stratford East, was a smash hit and made him famous. He went on to become the author of thirteen books, several plays, television and film scripts and various articles. Frank Norman's marriage in 1971 to Geraldine Keen, a 'posh' journalist on The Times, outraged somé, surprised everyone and proved an enormous success. He died of Hodgkin's Disease in 1980.