The title says it all.
Here was a genuine piece of our British history that is fast fading into the mists of time. We just don't create sons (and daughters) like him any more.
Fred was a steeplejack. Even that job title is passing out of use. Now high-rise professionals use the equipment of mountaineers. But not good old Fred. He did it the old way, the hard way. Fred was a curious kind of villain; a game-keeper turned poacher. The very industry that created the north of England during and after the industrial revolution spawned blokes like Fred. Tough, bluff, no-nonsense, but modest and self-effacing, with no desire to be a 'feature' on the sort of shallow-culture magazines that are now proof of worth. He was a man who came to celebrity late in life. But he was a celebrity because of what he did, and what he achieved. Today; celebrity is the goal in itself. You can be the most untried, unskilled, vacuous nonentity, but still lauded for the simple fact of being noticed, of having your photograph everywhere.
But if it was very tall and needed work; Fred was your man. Steeples, towers and chimneys needing repair were his cup of tea. And when that industry declined and the factories closed, it was Fred who brought the things down, using the same old-fashioned methods. Health & Safety was not something he dwelt upon.
This program distilled the essence of Lancastrian working-class pride and strength from a single individual. He wasn't particularly well educated, or knowledgeable or wise. Fred was just a bloke, doing a remarkable job remarkably well, like all of his generation and those who went before, phlegmatic and quite unaware that the natural-wastage of time had rendered him and the constancy of attitude he represented unique, but who found himself in the media spotlight and just carried on equally unabashed. He didn't even invest in a new cap. Or at least, not until his old one became so grubby that it caused an infection! His other passion was steam-engines, and when not up aloft squatting on some vertiginous niche, he was rumbling around on a smoking behemoth, often whilst customers nagged for his services. He was such a rare bird that they just had to indulge his wayward distractions and wait.
The popularity of this eccentric human icon led to a whole new career in television and writing. Thank heavens he was spotted in his lifetime and saved as an everlasting trophy to simple, steadfast achievement.
Whenever I see those wretched advertisements for modern mediocrity like 'Britain's Got Talent', in which the intrinsically worthless desperately crave public notice for the money that can be made from simply being ordinary, I think of Fred, who was extra-ordinary for all the right reasons.
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