Читать книгу Tony Hart - A Portrait of My Dad - Carolyn Ross - Страница 7

I have often been asked how it makes me feel to have Tony Hart for a father. Proud, is my reply. Proud of his talent, proud of his fame, and so proud of the high esteem in which he is held not only by his family, friends and colleagues, but also by all those people who have watched him on television over the years, and who right up until his recent death were still stopping him in the street to say thank you.

When my mother died quite suddenly, I told my father that I would visit every week to see how he was, and to keep the accounts books up to date. Thinking that it would also be good for us both to have a project to keep us busy, I suggested that we put together his biography. ‘What a good idea,’ he said, ‘and I know just how it should start!’ But before we start with his words, let me add that this labour of love is as nothing compared to the love, advice, good sense and laughter that he has given me all through my life.

But enough of this sentiment. Let me give you Pa’s own opening words:

The summer sun shone down out of a cloudless sky on to the golden sand and sparkling blue sea of a Kent coast beach. A tiny boy raced across the sand, tripped and fell flat on his face in a pool of sea water. Two strong hands gripped the sodden child under the armpits and lifted him up. ‘Oh Tony boy,’ said a deep and well-loved voice. ‘What is your mother going to say?’

The tiny boy was my father, TV artist Tony Hart, known to pretty much everyone born between 1950 and 1990 who watched television. The two strong hands belonged to his father – my grandfather, Norman Chandler Hart, who gave my father a piece of advice when he was still a young boy. Disliking his office job in Maidstone but compelled to hold on to it in order to meet his financial commitments, he told my father: ‘Never work in an office.’ And he never did.

Although born Norman Antony Hart on 15 October 1925, my father went through his entire life being known not as Norman or Antony but as Tony, at school, in the army, and of course on television. Tony adored his father and spent his early childhood years with him, his mother Evelyn, and his younger brother Michael in a semi-detached house in Hastings Road, Maidstone in Kent, passing much of his time lying on the floor on his tummy drawing on the backs of envelopes. Norman was no mean artist himself, and many years later he and I would spend hours drawing together. He would carefully pencil a beautiful countryside scene – fields, trees, fences and birds – which I would completely ruin by adding a wobbly cow, or a thick-ankled horse with six legs. With Tony Hart for a father, I am happy to say that my drawing has improved since then.