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Sherds adopts a very broad definition of ‘heritage’, so no apologies for beginning this month’s column by drawing attention to the 70th anniversary of the establishment of tiddlywinks as a competitive university-based sport.
The three Christ’s College alumni who founded the Cambridge University Tiddlywinks Club (known as CUTwC, pronounced ‘cutwick’) in January 1955 returned to the university recently to reminisce. Bill Steen (now 91) remembered that ‘we were hopeless as athletes, and we were discussing our dismal chances of obtaining a blue – the award earned by Cambridge athletes competing at the highest level – against Oxford, due to our lack of talent. We decided our best chance was to invent our own sport – and preferably write the rules too!’
Peter Downes (now 86) remembered that ‘in those days, the sportsmen were kings, the real stars at university, and it was so competitive. So I think part of the idea behind it was to send this up – the idea of sportsmen being big and strong and beefy.’
Bill Steen and his friends searched the British Library and Cambridge University Library for insights into the history of tiddlywinks, the children’s parlour game that became so popular in the 1890s that several rival versions were produced – variously called Spoof, Flipperty Flop, Jumpkins, Golfette, and Flutter. It isn’t clear why the name tiddlywinks was chosen by bank clerk Joseph Assheton Fincher (1863-1900), who trademarked the name in 1889: was he aware of the use of the term as rhyming slang for a quick (alcoholic) drink?
Discovering that no governing body existed for the sport, the founders approached the university for official recognition of the club. This was duly granted. Rules and terminology were established, a club tie designed, and challenges were issued to other universities, as well as to MPs, newspaper journalists, and service personnel at nearby airbases. Eventually the challenge was accepted by the Daily Mirror newspaper, and the Club’s first match was played in the Cock Tavern in Fleet Street on 18 June 1955.
Does Prince Philip Cheat?
Then, in 1957, the Club’s members spotted an article in The Spectator headlined ‘Does Prince Philip Cheat at Tiddlywinks?’. The anonymous article was written to satirise the triviality of recent newspaper attacks on the royal family. The story’s intended headline asked whether Prince Philip cheated at Billiard Fives, but the subs changed this to tiddlywinks because the original headline was too long for the allocated space.
This was a gift to CUTwC members, who wrote to Prince Philip’s private secretary, inviting the Duke of Edinburgh to defend his honour against this slight to his integrity by raising a team to play Cambridge. Prince Philip’s secretary replied in the affirmative and the cast of The Goon Show (Spike Milligan, Peter Sellers, Harry Secombe, and Michael Bentine) were appointed as Royal Champions. The Goons signalled their readiness to take up the challenge by sending a leather gauntlet through the post with a note signed by ‘Sir Spike the Milligan’, to which CUTwC’s President, David Arundale, responded: ‘Hear Ye, Sir Spike the Milligan, Be It Known, Mate, that ye Cambridge University Tiddlywinks Club taketh up ye gauntlet and will join battle with ye Royal Champion Goons early in ye New Year’.
The ‘Royal Tournament’, as it was billed, took place at the Cambridge Guildhall on 1 March 1958, and the 600 spectator tickets sold out in two hours. The Reverend Edgar Willis wrote a mock-heroic ‘Tiddlywinks Anthem’ for the occasion, sung by Harry Secombe. Still performed at matches around the world to the tune of ‘Men of Harlech’, it concludes with the rousing words: ‘Through this game of skill and power / England knows her finest hour / And her stronghold, shield and tower / MUST BE TIDDLYWINKS!!’.
The game ended with a 16 to nil victory for Cambridge. Bill Steen remembers that the match was reported in every national newspaper, on BBC TV and ITV news bulletins, and on Pathé News and British Movietone in the cinemas (archive recordings of these can be seen on the ‘Winks Rampant’ website).
The Cambridge team went on to beat their Oxford rivals in the first Varsity match later that same year, and when the first British Universities Championship took place in 1961, the Duke of Edinburgh turned up in person to present a Silver Wink to the winners, a trophy that universities still compete for today.
Great claims
In its ‘Sayings of the Year’ column on 20 December 1959, The Observer newspaper quoted from a speech given at the first World Tiddlywinks Congress to the effect that ‘the Cambridge University Tiddlywinks Club, alone of all Societies in the British Isles, stands between Civilisation and the threat of Atomic Destruction… the progress of Civilisation will depend in no small measure upon the spread of this most noble sport’.
Similar and more serious claims were to be made in 1965 by Jenny Lee, Minister for the Arts in Harold Wilson’s government (1964-1970) in the White Paper ‘A Policy for the Arts – First Steps’. As we mark the 60th anniversary of the first (and, so far, the only) attempt by a government to frame a national cultural policy for the UK, it is instructive to remind ourselves of some of the report’s core principles.
Today’s politicians tend to take an instrumentalist view of the cultural sector. We hear constant demands from the Treasury to demonstrate that heritage, arts, and culture make a significant contribution to the UK economy. For Lee, this was the wrong question: culture is to be valued because it is integral to the spiritual health of the nation. And for the arts to thrive, they must be embedded in the education system: everybody must be encouraged to participate as part of everyday life. To that end, she played a leading role in the foundation of the University of the Air, subsequently known as the Open University – the name change signalling that there was to be no formal entrance requirement.
And while the Civil Service and both Houses of Parliament are stuffed with PPE (Politics, Philosophy, and Economics) graduates, there is very little evidence that they understand the role of government. Lee had no doubts: one of government’s primary purposes is to support activities and services that contribute to public well-being that cannot (or should not) be supplied by the private sector. For that reason, the state has a duty to support ‘arts and associated amenities’, and Lee responded to this by raising government funding for the arts by 30% during her tenure.
TV locations win
The instrumentalist view often includes the claim that heritage has an economic value as the foundation for much of the UK’s tourism industry. In shock news from VisitBritain, it looks as if that is no longer the case, and that film locations are now a bigger draw than historic houses (unless that house happens to have featured on the big or small screen).
Apparently, ‘Instagrammability’ is increasingly important to modern travellers, with so-called ‘film pilgrims’ seeking to put themselves in the frame of famous films using their smartphones. Patricia Yates, Chief Executive of VisitBritain, says ‘our research shows that films and TV shows are powerful motivators for travel and that more than nine in ten potential visitors to the UK are keen to visit places used in filming and seen on-screen’.
Birmingham has seen a 26% increase in visitors (including some dressed for the part) thanks to Peaky Blinders; Cornwall recorded a boom in visits by Poldark addicts until the series ended. Alnwick Castle (Northumberland), Christ Church, Oxford, and Gloucester Cathedral have all benefited from featuring in Harry Potter movies, as have places depicted in Paddington and Game of Thrones. The travel company Skyscanner says that online searches for flights to filming locations soar immediately after broadcasts that feature attractive locations.
The result is that curse of our age: ‘overtourism’. The alternative is ‘regenerative tourism’, designed to benefit host communities and encourage visitors to develop a better understanding of the people and places they encounter. Expect to hear more about this concept as politicians seek solutions to the negative impact of ‘extractive tourism’, where cruise ships, for example, deliver thousands of visitors to destinations where they spend very little and have a negative effect on the quality of life of local residents.
