As Joe sings in Show Boat, "You don't dast make de white boss frown". The white bosses of Fife council wore deep frowns when they discovered a local amateur operatic society was using their hall to present the show with - mercy! - blacked-up white actors.
With nine hours to curtain up, on-stage musical became off-stage farce. The council insisted on its responsibility to protect race relations and Glenrothes Amateur Musical Association pointed out there were no black performers available in Fife - and probably no black audience to be offended.
The council relented and, in a compromise, allowed the performances to go ahead with the players wearing "sympathetic brown" (!) make-up. So Fife's Gaylord Ravenal and Magnolia Hawks were able to take the stage, and "Ol' Man River" was sung by a Joe who looked as if he had just come back from a fortnight in Majorca.
Two black members of the first-night audience went backstage to say how much they had enjoyed the show - and were highly amused by the suggestion that they might have been offended. The irony is that the plot of Show Boat is all about race.
My own copy of the definitive version of the show starts strikingly with the chorus "Niggers All Work on the Mississippi", which was changed in the 1936 Paul Robeson film to the cop-out "Darkies" and in later revivals to the even more wimpish "Coloured Folks". Oscar Hammerstein II meant the work to shock and be an indictment. He also insisted on the "dignified depiction" of black people and expected the appropriate leading roles to be played by black actors.
As a result of the Glenrothes stushy, the agents for the Hammerstein estate have imposed a worldwide ban on the use of blacked-up actors. For those of us who come from the Kingdom, none of this comes as a surprise. We know it is the last bastion of political incorrectness. The natives, a race apart, continue to say the most offensive things in the most inoffensive way.
Example: the first division football club Raith Rovers (president of supporters' club, one G Brown, who manages to combine this heavy responsibility with the duties of Chancellor of the Exchequer) has a Trinidadian player called Marvin Andrews.
Built like a pit-prop, he is the linchpin of the defence and a great crowd favourite. At a recent match, my neighbour bellowed approvingly: "C'way the darkie!"
When I pointed out he might be in trouble with the Race Relations Board, he was genuinely surprised. "Aye, he's a darkie," he said, "but he's oor darkie!"
In other words, it was not a term of abuse, but acceptance. No offence meant - and, I am sure, judging from Marvin's rapport with the crowd, none taken.
Fife, like Hartley's past, is a foreign country and they do things differently there. It is surrounded on three sides by the sea, and if we blocked the Forth and Tay bridges and closed a few roads, we could declare UDI. Culturally, we already have.
The old dialect and the mining culture live on, although the pits are long gone. Men are still "neeb", from the "neebor" in the next stint (section) to you underground. Women are, er, well, there is no easy way of saying this, "Ya hoor". The term is also used for emphasis and the English "definitely" is replaced by "ya hoor, sir, aye".
All men are "sir" because that is what Fife miners were ordered to call their managers. By calling everyone "sir", it rendered the word meaningless.
As for women, "hoor" may mean something else in other parts. In Fife it can be a real term of endearment. In moments of extreme tenderness, it can become the positively poetic "ma wee hoor".
This stems from the days when a woman's place was two paces behind a Fifer, ie, one pace behind the greyhound at his heel. When I introduced a girlfriend, from Edinburgh who was not used to the ways of the world, I took her to a pub in the mining village of Dysart. I had warned her not to be offended if she was referred to as "ya hoor", but, when a miner stood up and gave her his seat, she was charmed. The moment, however, was marred when he addressed her: "There ye are, ya hoor, stick yer erse doon there!"
You may think that all of this calls for permanent task forces from the Race Relations Board and the Equal Opportunities Commission. Fifers would be amazed by the thought. It's all in the mind. Fifers know what they mean - and they don't mean any offence. Ya hoor, sir, aye.
