Author: Suzanne Beard

A parade of attentive local residents wound their

way through the streets of Palmers Green and Broomfield Park last Sunday, in the company of Jaywalks tourguide Joe Studman.

Joe regaled his audience (including our two competition winners Patricia and Suzie) with high living tales of Billy Biscuit of Cullands Grove (the alleged coiner of the phrase ‘readin, riting and rithmatic’), John Donnithorne Taylor’s one man green belt policy, and Palmers Green’s links with the Spencer family of Cannonbury Tower including a touching story of kindness from Elizabeth 1.  As is traditional for any gathering of Palmers Green residents, we lamented the sorry recent fate of Broomfield House, and the similar slow decay of Truro House.

If you have got the walking bug, there are more opportunities to pound the local streets in August.

On Sunday 19 August, Joe sets out for Southgate to lead a walking tour entitled Welds, Walkers and Watering Holes. The walk starts at 2.30 at Southgate Underground station. Further information from Joe at www.jaywalks.co.uk

On 26 August, you can learn more about Bizarre Bowes Park, on a walking tour by Peter Berthoud of the highly recommended Discovering London website. Peter will be leading a small, intrepid group to encounter Ovi the dinosaur, an odd collection of eagles, and to see London’s most interesting underpants, as well as taking in a local hostelry. The walk starts at 11 from Bounds Green tube and lasts about three hours. You can book on Peter’s website  and also find out more about other walks he runs in London.

Well, not Alf Garnett of course, but actor Warren Mitchell.

Born in Stoke Newington in 1926 as Warren Misell, Mitchell was nevertheless schooled in Palmers Green. He was a pupil at Southgate County School in Fox Lane from 1937 to 1943, and (though I have not yet been able to verify this for sure), it appears that he may also have attended primary school in Bowes Park. Quite a long daily journey – had his family moved into the area?

Mitchell was interested in acting from an early age, attending Gladys Gordon’s Academy of Dramatic Arts in Walthamstow from the age of 7. He met Richard Burton while studying chemistry at Oxford, who encouraged him further in his acting ambitions. His premature baldness meant that Mitchell could play a wide age range of characters – he first played Alf Garnett in 1965 in a one off play aged just 39.

The BFI website Screen Online explains how Mitchell and writer Johnny Speight’s intention was to ridicule Garnett – left leaning Mitchell’s political views could not be more different to Alf’s. However, the quality of writing meant that Garnett became a well formed character, and was seen by some as a working class hero, something which caused Mitchell and Speight some soul searching.

Though he is most famous for Alf Garnett, Mitchell has had a very varied and successful acting career, winning two Laurence Olivier awards for his roles in plays by Arthur Miller.

• Warren Mitchell in action: Jesus was English, according to Alf Garnet (“Mary – you cant get a more English name than that, can yer?”)
• see also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alf_Garnett

The Olympic site has today confirmed that the torch will be leaving Southgate College at 3.58.

As previously reported, it will then be heading past Southgate underground station before turning down The Bourne and into Palmers Green. So we should be seeing it a little while after 4.

If you cant quite make it in person, you can see the relay live at http://www.london2012.com/torch-relay/video/live.html