There used to be row upon row of hardback Jennings
books in library when I was a youth. Having tired
of Harry The Dirty Dog, and Madeleine And The
Bad Hat, (both were borrowed on a weekly basis for about 3
years), I graduated to the Teenage Fiction section of the
library, to discover such forgotten classics as Z For
Zachariah, and G For Glue Sniffing.
The Jennings books all looked identical; they had the same picture on the spine of a schoolboy, the eponymous hero, biting into an apple. The titles included Jennings and Darbishire, Take Jennings For Instance, and interestingly, Jennings' Little Hut. There are about 500 other titles, but you get the general idea...
When I was reading these books in the
1970's, (oh all right, and the 1980's), the world which they
depict was already a dim and distant land where young boys said
'Oh, fish hooks!' and 'Lobsterous wheeze!', and 'What a mouldy
chizz!'. All the characters were described in exactly the same
words in each book - Jennings always had a 'wide awake look in
his eyes', and his diminutive side-kick Darbishire was 'solemn in
appearance' and 'a loyal follower'.
They were always getting
into wizard scrapes involving tadpoles, tuck shops, water
beetles, and all manner of other boarding school high jinks,
apart from mutual masturbation and sodomy. They had two
schoolmasters, Mr Carter, the kindly sage, and Mr Wilkins, the
borderline sociopath, liable to explode into rage when confronted
with one of Jennings and Darbishire's harebrained schemes.
Which was depressingly often. When you remember that
these books were still around at the same time that Grange Hill
was starting, with its attendant drug-crazed, sex-obsessed
kleptomaniac student body, then it is hardly surprising that the
cosy world of Jennings and chums was quickly consigned to
rose-tinted childhood memory, along with Spangles, power cuts,
and Mary Mungo and Midge.
If Jennings were around today, no doubt he would be given more weighty subject matter to deal with than Jennings Follows A Clue, or Jennings As Usual. You can easily imagine Jennings Has Grown-Up Feelings, Jennings and the Rubber Johnnies, Jennings Suffers Acute Amphetamine Psychosis, or Jennings and Darbishire Pierce Their Genitals. He and his trusty pal Darbishire would no longer fear the wrath of the Archbeako, or be interested in tadpole collecting in the accepted sense...but they would be out twocking cars in Linbury, shitfaced on dope and glue, shouting Who Let The Dogs Out?
This is a reader's contribution - from Tom - to contribute your own review, send it to me!
Another view of Jennings and Darbishire can be found here.It's not as funny as Tom's review though!
Last fooled around with sometime around 17 February 2001 12:22