“The first thing they had me for,” says Dick Dawe describing his initial stretch in prison, “was peacock and cockerel calling.” He closes his eyes and launches into an impassioned and impressive peacock cry. Dick’s criminal career, which has encompassed running at sheep and waving his stick in a threatening manner, might not make the history books but I’ll be damned if I want to live next door to him.
Dick’s criminal USP is that, along with a handful of others all featured on Britain’s Oldest Crooks (Thursday, 9pm, ITV), he is of pensionable age. For some people, retirement is a dream of taking apart and then putting back together consumer electronics, collecting screws in old tobacco tins, endlessly polishing golf clubs, or finding every meme that meets the intersection of “tenuous Minions reference” and “mild to moderate xenophobia” and posting them all on Facebook. Not for Dick. Dick gives the rest of us something to aim for.
It’s often the smallest acts of subversion that make a difference in this world. The Bird Man of Morecambe, known to his friends as John, is an example to all mavericks and rebels, those who go against the grain, who value freedom above all else. Each morning, in defiance of the asbo served against him by Morecambe Town Council, John loads up his specially adapted walking frame with bird seed, heads slowly to the promenade and yanks at the shackles of the British legal system by throwing handfuls of food at the gathered pigeons. While Dick disproves myths that OAPs are timid, obsessed with propriety or even particularly sensible, John provokes all sorts of patronising aww-ing.
He also inspires concerned handwringing regarding the wisdom of putting anyone as grandfatherly as him behind bars. His story could be one of depraved prostitution rings and heavy crack use and I’d be out there, campaigning for a Werther’s Original-based scheme of restorative justice for John, inspired entirely by his neatly groomed moustache and mutton chops combo. “We have a very proactive police force here in Morecambe, when it comes to pigeons,” says John’s friend Robyn, the absurdity of his situation not even slightly lost on her. Sixty-six-year-old John spent six weeks in prison for breach of his asbo, which along with forbidding his excessive pigeon feeding, stops him from aiding, abetting or inciting anyone to chuck seeds at the birds.
Another who perhaps never should have seen the inside of the slammer is Eric, 72, a man who started growing weed after finding it to be the only thing that relieved his rheumatoid arthritis. I would argue quite firmly that if anyone deserves to spark up a fat one, it’s Eric, whose mining career was interrupted first by a stint in the army and later by a physically taxing one in the building trade.
Of all the subjects in the documentary, I feel worst for Eric, whose prescription pain relief was withdrawn after it became apparent suicide was one unfortunate possible side effect. I can say with supreme confidence that there has never been a more heart-wrenching bit of TV than poor, lovely Eric explaining that, in the depths of despair, the only thing that made him walk away from the cliff’s edge he found himself walking his dog along one dark day, was the knowledge that Fido would follow him over. And this, in what is otherwise a light, frivolous ITV doc.
There are probing questions somewhere in here about whether the stereotype of meek pensioners is out of sync with the reality, but they’re never quite asked. Has Eric suffered a greater injustice by being sent to prison over a bit of medicinal cannabis oil than someone a quarter of his age doing the same thing? Looking at him walking his staffy on the beach bleakly, saying he’s waiting for the scythe, and comparing this to the average stoner, wearing grubby weed-leaf socks and getting really good at GTA, I think: yes, maybe he has. Eric, love, there’s a bifta and two paracetamol with your name on ’em round at mine whenever you need.
