Denis: Bring back the seaside snaps

Mar 16 2009 By Denis Kilcommons

I WAS approached by a reader as old as myself who said, "You are Lobby Lud and I claim my five pounds."

Not that he had any hope of getting five pounds, you understand, or that I had changed my name by deed poll to Lobby Lud.

"Do you remember Lobby Lud?" he said. "That lot think I’ve made it up."

"That lot" sat in the corner of the bar looking as if they expected me to humour their loopy friend.

Of course I remembered Lobby Lud. Whole train loads of people would go on holiday to the seaside in the 1940s and 1950s, and scour the promenade clutching a copy of that morning’s paper looking for a chap whose silhouette appeared on the front page, ready to grab him, make the famous declaration and, if they had got the right bloke, gain a financial reward.

I am not old enough to have done this myself but I remember my father on the lookout at Blackpool or Bridlington in the hope of striking lucky and getting enough cash for a lunchtime drink and a bet on the horses.

Lobby Lud was invented in 1927 by the long defunct newspaper the Westminster Gazette. The character was so named after the telegraphic address of the paper: Lobby, Ludgate.

Other newspapers adapted the idea and had their own blokes wandering the seaside towns of Britain during the summer.