# Guardian - Ricky Tomlinson Interview



## Zabo (Dec 27, 2014)

A damn good read. 

I don't know about you but I always enjoy the comments section on each article. More often than not the comments can be very funny and are as good as the article.

http://www.theguardian.com/culture/...son-interview-im-a-whingeing-scouser#comments


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## hot air baboon (Mar 1, 2017)

TV star Ricky Tomlinson claims Richard Whiteley was a spook

_Ricky dropped the bombshell after relaunching The Bull & Stirrup in Upper Northgate Street where back in 1972 he and his late Chester pal Des Warren helped organise the first national building workers’ strike in an upstairs room.

Ricky, a former plasterer, and the other so-called Shrewsbury pickets later faced a trial which saw him and Des jailed with an ongoing campaign to clear their names as alleged victims of a political conspiracy.

And the TV funny man believes 1973 ITV documentary Red Under the Bed featuring the defendants, which aired on the day the jury retired to deliver its verdict, may have influenced the decision to convict. The show was presented by Richard Whiteley and former politician Woodrow Wyatt, also deceased.

Ricky, best known as Bobby Grant in Brookside and Jim Royle in The Royle Family, told The Chronicle: “I’ve got documents at home, which are printed ‘confidential’, ‘strictly confidential’, ‘not to be seen’, but it involves the likes of Ted Heath, Woodrow Wyatt.

"And we’ve just discovered that they made a film which went out on television the night the jury were out considering the verdict called Red Under the Bed and it was so anti-trade union that two of the jury changed their mind and brought a majority verdict in of 10-2 guilty._


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## Miss-Shelf (Mar 1, 2017)

hot air baboon said:


> TV star Ricky Tomlinson claims Richard Whiteley was a spook
> 
> _Ricky dropped the bombshell after relaunching The Bull & Stirrup in Upper Northgate Street where back in 1972 he and his late Chester pal Des Warren helped organise the first national building workers’ strike in an upstairs room.
> 
> ...


  but also not surprising


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## Sprocket. (Mar 2, 2017)

The name's Whiteley, Richard Whiteley, Ho Ho 7.


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## friedaweed (Mar 10, 2017)

I'll get back to this as I've not got a lot of time at the mo but there's mixed feelings about old Ricky blue eyes around our way. That's actually my local boozer, and I could piss on it from my back wall  It used to be a very strange old pub, very seedy and full of local nawty boys. I'm glad they haven't knocked it down which is what they've done with every other building in that quarter but spoons ffs 

He's no angel according to my old fella. He says he has a very romantic rose tinted memory of what he and some others were up to at the time. I talked to the old fella about this a few years ago when he called Tomlinson a "Cunt" during the christmas Royle Family show.   It's the only time I've ever heard him use the word 

After he explained his disdain for Jim Royle the conversation went along the lines of the usual "Yeah but you thought Thatcher was the best thing since sliced bread for the self employed man then dad but we didn't have any milk to dip our school toast in" 

That's when he leant over and said "If you think undoing scaffolding tubes whilst a man who's trying to feed his children is working on that scaffolding is fighting a worthy cause then your lot are just as bad as what she did to the miners".

I've spoken to a couple of the older generation who think he's a cunt and having watched him recently on the prog he did on the blitz in Liverpool i kinda get the feeling he's reached that age in life and experienced success that he's become rather largely, a bit up his own arse. What I do know though from talking to people who had first hand experience of what he and several others were up to during that strike is that he didn't do bird for nothing.

I quite like Jim Royle though


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## chandlerp (Mar 15, 2017)

Tomlinson is a cunt and was a thoroughly nasty piece of shit whenever he came into the housing offices back in the 90s when looking to claim housing benefits while out of work.


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## Captain Christy (Mar 20, 2017)

A great lad for laughing at his own "funny incidents"


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## Smokeandsteam (Mar 22, 2017)

chandlerp said:


> Tomlinson is a cunt and was a thoroughly nasty piece of shit



Always had a feeling that he was a wrong un, not because of his far right past, but because of his endless gesture politics and the sense that he was trying just a bit too hard with the 'salt of the earth' act if you know what I mean.


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## friedaweed (Mar 23, 2017)

Smokeandsteam said:


> Always had a feeling that he was a wrong un, not because of his far right past, but because of his endless gesture politics and the sense that *he was trying just a bit too hard with the 'salt of the earth' act if you know what I mean.*


Yup. Professional scousers can be quite nauseating for the rest of the world but even more so for some of us more closer to home. 

Him doing the old crying into a hanky in this one is some of the most cringe-worthy TV I've seen in recent years. 



A lot of local people swallow his "Salt of the earth" visage but there are many older folk, including me old fella (Also a plasterer born and raised in the Pool) , who think he's a cunt. They're not on TV trying to make out they're Karl MarksLA like he is but they do know what happened during that strike


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