‘It’s all the smoke in the air,’ the doctor explained after another examination. ‘His lungs are too weak to cope with it and he won’t ever be able to breathe around here. Isn’t there somewhere else you could go, at least for a while?’
That was all the encouragement my mother needed. She had been up north for less than a year. On balance she felt it had been a year too long. We made the move in January 1949, when I was just three weeks old. I was wrapped up in a big, soft nest of cotton wool and set down on the passenger seat of a huge Pickfords lorry.
‘We’re going south,’ said my mother with a very broad smile. South was her idea of civilisation. Oldham, it’s fair to say, was not. She had been happy enough to give it a go. But the initial signs hadn’t been good. The first time my father came home from work on his motorbike, his face had been so covered in black soot from all the cotton mills, the coal mines and the factories that she hadn’t recognised him. She likes to call herself a Hampshire hog. The Lowry lifestyle simply didn’t suit her.
She tells me she sang all the way down the old A6 when we left town that cold January day. All except for the bit of the journey where we knocked over a water hydrant and left a brand-new fountain in our wake. As an actor I’ve always known the value of making a big entrance. At three weeks old it was nice to have made such a spectacular exit.
Fortunately, my dad was more than happy to give up his job and start a new life down south. He was Oldham born and bred but he’d seen the world in the Royal Air Force, where he’d met my mum before being posted out in Africa. So he was prepared to see a bit more of England now he had a sickly little lad to consider as well.
Our removal van dropped us off in the gloriously beautiful town of Salisbury. I always joked that I didn’t need to be in a Merchant Ivory film (though it might have been nice to be asked). Instead I got to grow up in one. The buildings are picture-postcard perfect. We had the river, the cathedral, the parks, the half-timbered houses, you name it. Trouble was, beautiful surroundings don’t pay the bills – a lesson I would need to learn and relearn many times in the years ahead. Nor did the fresh southern air solve all my medical issues overnight.
The first problem was that I had proved to be allergic to cotton wool. So being wrapped up in the stuff for half a day on the journey south hadn’t been a great idea. It took quite a while for those rashes to pass, Mum says. And I still come out in blotches if I touch the stuff.
And while the doctors in Salisbury weren’t quite as negative as the ones up at Boundary Park Hospital in Oldham, they too thought I needed a lot of work. My main doctor was a man who became a dear friend of the family. Dr Jim Drummond visited us up to three times a day when I was at my weakest, and he saw all of us through a lot of tough times. He helped me build up my strength and let my lungs develop at their own pace. It’s probably because of him that I have made old bones.
Mum and Dad had met in the sergeants’ mess at RAF Colerne near Bath in 1943. My dad, Bill, was a Leading Aircraft Man or LAC, while my mum, Pam, was a Leading Aircraft Woman or LACW. I remember seeing photos of them, proud and young in their forces uniforms. Back then the world was a frightening place. If you found love, you grasped it fast in case the war snatched it away from you. So, when something clicked at RAF Colerne, my parents didn’t hang around. They were married in St Paul’s church in Salisbury within three months of meeting. But wartime love affairs weren’t easy. They tried to have a honeymoon – though going to a home for retired priests in Fleetwood hardly sounds the most romantic of destinations. And the holiday was interrupted by my father’s call-up, which may well have been for the best.
Dad was sent out to Africa. Mum stayed in the forces on the home front, but, although they were both demobbed in 1946, they were left half a world apart. My mother headed back to Salisbury to look for work, and Dad was left nursing an injury in Cape Town while he waited for a space on a boat that could bring him home. Or would a boat take Mum out to him instead? Servicemen could take their wives out to Africa for £100 and get leave to stay for 12 months to see if they liked it. Dad could easily have got a job in a garage out in the sunshine of the Cape but my mother said no. If only she had known that the alternative to Cape Town would ultimately be Oldham.
They moved north for one simple reason: to find work. The krugerrands my father had brought back with him didn’t last long. And his first job, in a post office in Southampton, wasn’t for him. So after less than a year they were on the road. Dad was going to work at Middleton Motors in his native Oldham. My mother was going to have a baby. Everything was going to change.
I was born on 16 December 1948. It was just three years after the end of the war and the country was still coming to terms with how tough victory would be. Mum and Dad were grafters. They didn’t take charity. But, like everyone, they struggled. The ups and down that have always been a feature of my life were already a feature of theirs.
When we arrived back in Salisbury, we were doing well. We moved into a tiny flat above a tailor’s shop. It was perfect because all we had were a few borrowed pieces of furniture from Mum’s family. But even that got lost when a fire in the shop spread upstairs.
Our next stop should have been better. We had a house – Mum’s parents’ old home – on Devizes Road on the edge of town. But it looked to have been a leap too far. Mum and Dad both worked all hours: Mum in hotels and bars, Dad in garages and petrol stations. But it was never enough to keep up the payments, so after a couple of years we moved out of there as well.
This time the three of us were going down the housing ladder. We moved out of town and into a caravan propped up on bricks in the corner of a muddy farmyard. It was a cold, crowded place and we stayed for two cold and crowded years. I don’t remember a lot of it – though putting my hand on a red-hot electric grill and saying, ‘Is this on?’ seems to stand out. My hand bubbled up like an omelette and out came the dreaded cotton wool to patch it up and make a bad job even worse. Outside the van I also remember finding a rat trap. But looking at it wasn’t enough. I had to put my hand in it, to see what it did. ‘It traps you, Biggins, it traps you.’ One of the farm workers heard the screams and rushed over to help release the spring. To this day my fingers don’t quite sit straight.
Self-inflicted injuries apart, the time we spent in that caravan did teach me some pretty important lessons. One was that you can never expect your life to run in a straight line. Another was that life is what you make it. Living in a caravan with a small child is no party. But Mum and Dad did at least try to keep up appearances. Our caravan was clean and we certainly didn’t starve. We made the most of what we had. We survived.
I learned how to put on a show in that draughty old caravan. My mum taught me. I watched her get ready for work at a clothes shop in town and at the High Post Hotel just on the outskirts. She got into character for each role. Every day she put on the performance of her life. She was a glamorous, sparkling woman. Money and make-up were still pretty scarce in the early 1950s. But when my mum was serving behind her counters you would never have known she had got ready in a caravan. She dressed well and knew how to charm the customers. Showbusiness is all about smoke and mirrors, painting on a smile and carrying on with the show. I learned that early. I had a feeling I would end up being pretty good at it.
Dad’s lessons were just as important. He simply never gives up. When his garage work didn’t bring in enough cash during the week, he manned petrol pumps at another one at the weekend. When the River Avon rose six feet, burst its banks, flooded his first premises and destroyed most of his equipment, he just started all over again. And he put on a performance as well. He’s the best salesman I know. He can talk the hind legs off a donkey and win jobs with charm alone. That’s another useful skill in showbusiness.
‘Christopher, I need you to help me pack. We’re moving.’ Mum’s smile was as wide as I had ever seen it. Dad’s was just as broad. It was 1953 and we were