New Statesman Scotland - Remember the heyday of wrestling?
It has taken a while for the death of Hercules, the wrestling bear, to fully sink in - to connect with memories of his owner, Andy Robin, and the heyday of wrestling before it became purely a media spectacle. True, Kent Walton addressed "grapple fans" on ITV on Saturday afternoons and made figures such as the unscrupulous Mick McManus, the cocky Jackie Pallo and the oh so mysteriously masked Kendo Nagasaki household names. But the "sport" existed independently of the TV spotlight, in town halls up and down the country, like an alternative Music Hall.
Often, the two worlds collided, such as when Jimmy Saville wrestled at the Eldorado in Leith - always, I was told, with a couple of lovelies on hand to massage his joints when times were testing.
The first wrestling show I went to was in the early seventies when I lived in London. A good friend knew a season-ticket holder who had a box at the Albert Hall. When it held events deemed by her to be culturally insignificant, my friend and his chums occupied the box. It afforded a great view of the enraged women swinging their handbags at the baddies. The one wrestler I recall, however, was not one of those, but the showjumper Harvey Smith, riding on a wave of popularity since he'd made the V-sign in public. Harvey's prime move was somehow to force his opponent to kneel and then, sitting astride him, to grab his ears and to ride him round the ring. I tell you, it was almost impossible for his opponent to escape.
It was some years before I attended my second wrestling programme. This one, at the cavernous Loreburn Hall in Dumfries, boasted big names: Klondyke Bill, Big Daddy and Andy Robin and Hercules among them. Roland Barthes, in an essay on wrestling in Mythologies, argues that its popularity lies in it being a spectacle that ritually enacts the fight between good and evil. I tend to think that it also appeals to the child in us; all that romping on the carpet - the feigned hurt, the closeness, the homo-eroticism - that drives parents to distraction.
The audience in the Loreburn Hall, however, had paid good money and were having none of it being a simulacrum. This was the real thing. "Aye, he'll have to watch his forearm smash," someone behind me said from under his bunnet about a hit that appeared to miss by a good six inches, but which sent the opponent staggering across the ring. One after another, the people's favourites fell - the audience feeling most keenly the defeat of the beautiful Indian Princess - until, by the time it came to the grand finale, they were baying for revenge, for right to be done.
Enter, to a fanfare and in a blaze of light, Big Daddy. Even after all these years, I still remember it as a wonderfully theatrical moment. Blond and cuddly like a huge stuffed toy, wearing a spangled top hat and a crimson cape, Big Daddy (real name Shirley Crabtree) boasted the clean sweep of a row boat's lines from his chest to his groin. There had to have been genitalia in there somewhere, but they were not visible to the naked eye, and I fancy that his aesthetic emasculation only added to his attraction. Whatever, Big Daddy was the people's hero.
He was not, it's true, a great mover. He took up position centre-ring and let his opponent - a void in memory - bounce off him a few times. The referee became caught up in the "action" and somehow knocked out of the ring. Now, the law away, there were no holds barred; the crowd surged forward, the better to see its bloodlust satisfied. Scary.
Robin had earlier given a tame exhibition bout in the cage with Hercules. Neither of them was in the same league as Big Daddy when it came to charisma. Robin, one of the good guys (fair but colourless), was famous for having the bear. I recall frequent photo shoots of the pair at home, at the poolside; and I also remember the PR dream, when Hercules went walkabout and the nation worried.
Their attraction didn't rely on the projection of personality. Rather, their relationship recalled a thousand Disney films and the literature that they relied on: the story was of wild nature bending to human kindness and understanding. From White Fang to Free Willy, it is a genre whose popularity reflects a yearning for an idealised relationship with nature - one that, even having outgrown the fantasies of childhood, we find it hard to shake off. In an increasingly technological age, the call of the wild touches us like an elegy.
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