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When I was a kid I had several jobs that earned me enough pocket money to help me indulge my passion for books and magazines, records and the cinema.

The theatre was a passion too but even in the late1950s was far too highly priced for the likes of me, and if it meant getting my hands on the latest Miles Davis LP, or James Bond novel, the theatre lost out. I did get over to the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre as often as I could to sit in the cafeteria and drink a milk-shake and watch the theatrical world go by – which included Peter Hall in his green Jag – but that’s as close as I came.

At the tender age of eleven I already worked a few hours a week in my father’s bakery, which earned me 4/-, plus an early morning newspaper-round that also earned me 4/- and gave me the chance to read all the dailies, plus The New Statesman, The Listener, and a new large format cultural weekly called The Scene, that had articles about the British jazz saxophonist Tubby Hayes, who had just left The Jazz Couriers to form his own group that went on to record, in 1961, the seminal LP Down in the Village.

That magazine also had the first article I remember reading about The Beatles, where Paul is quoted as saying, “…we are not rock n roll hooligans”. It was a thick and meaty magazine full of stuff about books and the London theatre scene, and the new cinema of Lindsay Anderson and the plays and novels of David Storey and Stan Barstow. For a year or two, until the publication folded (and try finding a copy now), I damn near lived for that magazine, and, after 1962, the sudden blossoming of serious TV drama, where you could actually watch new plays written by new playwrights such as Harold Pinter and Alun Owen. Believe me it was a time to be alive.

Apart from those jobs I also delivered groceries a couple of nights a week (which earned another 10/- ), and worked three evenings, and all day Saturday, for a local butcher, George Cooke & Son, which paid – wait for it – £1 a week, plus tips, and all the ageing sausages and lamb chops I could carry home to my ever grateful mother. All very Dickensian.