You gotta pick a Harringay pocket or two

Thanks to Adam for flicking this one over. Ron Moody it seems was a local boy:

By York Membery, 18th February 2011

Ron Moody, 86, is best known for playing Fagin in the 1968 film, Oliver!. He lives with his wife Therese in Southgate, north London. They have six children.

Born and bred: Ron Moody aged about 12 at Southgate County School in north London and he has lived in the area all his life

Here I am aged about 12 at Southgate County School in north London. I was transferred there from Hornsey County, which closed down during the Blitz, and I’ve lived in this area all my life. I was born Ronald Moodnick in Tottenham to a Russian-Jewish father born in London’s East End, and a Lithuanian-born Jewish mother. So I’m 100 per cent Jewish – ‘totally kosher!’

But when I was six, my father Bernard changed the family name to Moody because he found Moodnick difficult to use in business. It was common to anglicise immigrant names in those days.

At that time my parents, who were very loving and protective, had a sweet shop, so I grew up surrounded by boiled sweets, which pleased me no end. My sister Celia – who was a couple of years older than me – and I would help ourselves now and then, but we didn’t take advantage. The funny thing is, if something’s free, you don’t want it so much, do you?

My first school was North Harringay Primary in Tottenham. I’ll never forget my first day there – a bigger kid tried to bully me because I was the new boy, but I swung back my arm and nearly knocked his lights out. He never touched me again after that – once a bully knows you can fight back, he’ll leave you alone.

Nonetheless, I enjoyed my schooldays, be it at Harringay, or at Hornsey County, in Turnpike Lane, the secondary school I went to when I was about ten. I loved to study and if I hadn’t become an actor, I’d have liked to have become a teacher. Perhaps it’s something to do with the Jewish tradition, which places such emphasis on doing well at school.

Ron Moody

I was particularly good at the arts – English, history and geography. I also loved drawing, and still draw today. I wasn’t bad at maths either. I did well at Harringay, and when I transferred to Hornsey County, I was always in the top three in my class. I liked sport too, especially football and cricket.

I also got the chance to do a bit of drama at Hornsey County. We used to do ‘read-throughs’ of plays in class and one day I played Shylock. I’ll never forget the teacher saying, ‘Moody is the only actor in the class.’ But while I was always secretly stage-struck – I loved going to the pictures – and sometimes imagined myself on stage, I never dreamt I’d become an actor.

Despite being a good student, I was full of mischief. I was a bit of a silent ringleader.

I remember my Hornsey County classroom had an air vent, and I used to excuse myself to use the loo, go outside and make scary noises by the vent which created havoc in the class. Disgraceful behaviour, I know, but there was never any malice involved. I was just having fun.

The only time I ever got into trouble was when I said to a kid in class, ‘I’ll pull your periwinkle.’ I didn’t even know what a periwinkle was, to be honest – I just said it as a joke. But he told the teacher and I was sent to the headmaster, who struck me on the hand a couple of times with a cane.

My mother was absolutely furious when she learnt what had happened and the following morning stormed up to the school, demanding to know, ‘Who’s been hurting my son?’ I never got the cane again.

Being Jewish never caused me any trouble, despite people nowadays associating the Thirties, when I was a kid, with Oswald Mosley and his Blackshirts. In my father’s day, you had to be on your guard a lot of the time because there was a bit of hostility towards immigrants. But thankfully I never got any stick. I don’t think there was ever that much support for Mosley, to be honest. Besides, the area where I grew up was very mixed and no one had any time for his sort.

Soon after World War II broke out they closed down Hornsey County because of the bombing. But unlike most of the kids, who were evacuated, I was transferred to Southgate County School, because I didn’t want to be separated from my family. I made some interesting friends at the school, which was full of other London children who didn’t want to leave home.

I left school after matriculating – with six distinctions – at the end of the war and got a job in an accounts office. It seemed like a good career move, and I’d always liked figures. In fact, I very nearly became an accountant, but then I volunteered for the RAF. I would have been called up anyway, and thought the RAF, where I became a radar mechanic, sounded preferable to being in the Army.

Four years later, I went to the London School of Economics to study sociology and psychology on a serviceman’s grant. While there, I got dragged into taking part in a student revue and ended up writing, and appearing in, a few sketches. In short, I got the stage bug. Soon after, I was ‘discovered’ in an end-of-term show by two writers who put me in their stage revue, and I’ve never looked back.

I don’t know how important a part my schooling played in setting me on my career path, despite my schoolmaster saying I was ‘the only actor in the class’.

But I’ve always tried to give the characters I’ve played, Fagin included, the same sense of mischief that I had as a child all those years ago.

A Still Untitled (Not Quite) Auto- biography, by Ron Moody, is published by JR Books, priced £18.99.