by Hector Cook
The little dog was rescued, but the terrified children left Maurice. “We all just ran home and got his dad, and he had to come fish him out,” Barbara Wood recalled. “We were all there, and we panicked a bit, and we just went screaming hysterically. Don’t forget I wasn’t very old myself, and I was the oldest of the lot of us. I got the blame for the lot of it because I was the oldest there.”
Barbara Gibb herself remembers the incident in even greater detail. “Maurice had been weighed down by his hooded ‘siren suit’ so he was unable to lift his head out of the water. The river was only 20 feet from the back door of the cottage, but he’d floated almost 100 yards before Hugh came to the rescue.” It was the second time that Barbara had been close to losing one of her sons before he had reached his second birthday.
Barbara Gibb’s parents, Mr and Mrs. Pass, also stayed in Douglas for a short time. They were equally accommodating, watching over the neighbourhood children who all used to visit them on Saturdays at their flat in Victoria Street over the tobacconist’s shop while their respective parents did the week’s main shopping.
Barbara Gibb described her sons as little rascals: “Yes, of course they were. They were normal kids, you know. Children really didn’t get into a lot of problems like they do today … They were pretty good kids, but they were little devils – they were into everything.”
As the twins grew, Barbara recalled that, “Robin used to call Maurice ‘Woggie’, and Maurice used to call Robin ‘Bodding’. It was always, ‘It’s not me, it’s Woggie.’ If you mentioned anyone to them, they used to say, ‘Oh yes, it’s a friend of him.’ If it was to do with the twins, anybody they knew was a friend of him!”
With such a rapidly growing family to support, Hugh Gibb found additional employment to supplement his meagre income as a musician, with Barbara also playing her part by taking on cleaning work at the Quarter-bridge Hotel. Winter months were especially slow for a musician on an island where the entertainment business is dependent on the tourist trade, and Hugh took jobs as a nurse at the mental hospital at Ballamona, an insurance agent and also at Quirk’s Bakery, where he helped ice the cakes at Christmas and drove a delivery van. Young Barry sometimes accompanied his father on his delivery rounds, and was often tempted by the heavenly aroma of freshly baked bread.
“He used to take me to work in the van,” he recalled, “and the most fantastic thing was the smell. You’d sit in the bread van all day … What my father didn’t know, and what the people he was delivering bread to didn’t know was that I was eating out the insides of the loaves, and so a lot of people in those days were getting hollow loaves of bread.”
Barry started school on September 4, 1951, just three days after his fifth birthday, attending Braddan School. Big sister Lesley was his staunch defender in those days. “When he was at school, he was always such a baby, always crying,” she remembered. “You only had to look at him and tears would stream down his face. They used to call him Bubbles at school – it sort of suited him. There was always one girl in the street who would pick on him and give him a belting, and I’d have to go and give her a good hiding.”
Lesley wasn’t on hand the day that an even older girl took Barry’s shirt off though. “I was 11 years old, he must have been five years old,” Pamela Brown (neé Gribben) revealed gleefully. “I had to strip the little ones down to the waist for the school doctor. I think his name was Souter. I remember Barry because his chest was badly scalded. Mr Little, the headmaster, said it was because he’d tipped the kettle over. We used to have the kettle sitting on the hob at the side of the fire then. He had exactly the same smile then as he has now. He’s only aged, not changed at all. My party piece when I was younger was how I’d stripped Barry Bee Gee! I never mentioned that he was only five. I always wondered about his hairy chest, until they said they were chest rugs.”
The following year, it was Tynwald Street Infants School for Barry, and on his seventh birthday in 1953, he went to Desmesne Road Boys School, where he stayed until the family left the island in early 1955.
In 1952, the family relocated to number 43 Snaefell Road in Willaston, which was to become their home for the next two years. The Willaston estate was a close-knit Douglas community, with neighbours frequently popping in for visits. Joan and Ted Hill, the Gibbs’ next door neighbours at number 45, became close friends of the family. Ted, as a merchant seaman, was often away for lengthy periods of time, but when his career at sea ended, he was elected to the Douglas Town Council and later became Mayor of the Borough.
Joan said she didn’t see much of Hugh Gibb because he was working two jobs at that time, playing in the band at night and delivering bread by day. However she remembers that he always brought home cakes and buns, which had not been sold but would have been too stale for the following day, as treats for the children. The neighbours benefited from this as well. “We were all very poor in those days and Mr Gibb was a godsend,” she said. “He used to bring home dozens of loaves that had to be sold before the end of the day – bread must have been much more wholesome in those days, didn’t have all the preservatives it does today. Hugh would then be able to sell these off to neighbours at a fraction of the normal cost.”
She also recalled that Barry, Robin and Maurice loved their jam butties. “I must have made hundreds for them – but that’s the way it was, kids were in and out of everyone’s houses, we all chipped in to help each other.”
There was also the excitement of the very first television which arrived at number 43 just before Christmas 1952. “I think it must have been the first one in the whole Willaston estate, certainly the first on Snaefell Road,” Joan said. “It didn’t matter what was on, the living room would be packed with neighbourhood kids, they’d even sit and stare at the goldfish during the interludes. Bill and Ben, The Flowerpot Men was the twins’ favourite programme.” “Flob-a-lob” thus entered the language of all the Gibb children’s playmates.
In 1953 the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II was televised and number 43 was packed to capacity, with the overflow standing in the garden peering through the window at the Gibbs’ tiny 12 inch black and white television. Later that day a street party was held in the next street, Keppel Road, coincidentally the same name as a street in Manchester where the family would later live. This might explain Barry’s confusion of later years when he would tell Bernie Quayle that he had watched the Coronation in Manchester, when in fact it was probably the Isle of Man Keppel Road street party that he recalled.
Joan Hill reflected, “When I look back at those days, I realise how very kind and generous the Gibb family were, and from what I’m told, they’re still the same.”
Another neighbour from the Willaston estate was Marie Beck, who was friendly with Barbara and her sister Peggy. They all popped in and out of each other’s houses regularly. Sadly, Marie passed away in 1995 and is no longer around to tell her story, but her good friend Helen Kenney, although then living up at Douglas Head, was a frequent visitor to the Beck household.
Helen recalls, “Barry and the twins used to come into Mrs. Beck’s house and we would mind them. Barry often used to sing and always had a tennis racquet across himself, strumming and humming or singing. Robin once said to me, ‘We’re going to be rich one day, we’re going to form a band!’ Little did I realise he meant it.
“We’d cook chips for them and Marie Beck used to love the company as her hubby was away doing his guitar night, and Mrs Gibb had gone to meet her hubby for an hour out with him. The boys were lovely and I can still visualise them smiling and putting little shows on even then. I think Barry was about seven or eight and Robin and Maurice five. Lovely children, full of fun.”
“Robin had a lovely smile, and he was very lively and took some watching, but brother Barry, still strumming on his tennis racquet, said, ‘I’ll get him!’ He used to watch over Maurice and Robin even then. They were good days,” Helen said.
Elsewhere on the Willaston estate, close to Snaefell Road, stood an old barn w
hich was connected to the old manor house (now a pub). This became the favourite place for the neighbourhood children to play. “There was a gang of us,” recalled Robin, “and I remember one day Barry had a Scout’s knife, a pen knife, and accidentally cut a boy’s finger off by throwing it into the ground. They were doing one of those games, you know, but we were just young kids having fun … It wasn’t actually cut off, it was just badly cut …”
The boy in question, Brian Walton, also chose music as a career in the Sixties becoming the lead singer for a local band called The Cheetahs. They were one of the very first bands to be featured on the fledgling Manx Radio which began operations in 1964.
Brian, who was just a couple of months older than Barry, remembers the knife incident even more vividly – he still has the scar to remind him. He recalls that it was a game they used to play called ‘Split The Kipper’, in which a piece of wood was placed on the grass and the boys took turns throwing knives at the wood to see who would be the first to “split the kipper”. When excitement was running high, sometimes a knife couldn’t be retrieved quickly enough. Brian stooped down to pick up his knife when Barry, all too quickly, threw his. The knife almost severed Brian’s finger. Brian was rushed to hospital where he received a number of stitches to repair the wound. He says that he looks at the scar today and thanks Barry for a permanent reminder of all the good times they had as children.
Brian also remembers playing commandos, where they would go on raids. In the weeks leading up to Bonfire Night, November 5, these raids were often to the “dens” of other kids who were storing up rubbish for the bonfire. There was always stiff competition for the biggest and best bonfire.
“I remember Barry getting a rocket up his trouser leg on Bonfire Night,” Barbara Gibb said. Rockets were the fireworks of choice among the Gibb brothers and their friends, small rockets which cost about sixpence at the time. “We’d prop them up in a milk bottle,” Brian Walton said, “but one of them toppled over just as it was about to take off. Everyone scattered, but it managed to hit Barry in the leg.”
Robin added, “There was many a great Bonfire Night on Snaefell Road – well, not many because we were very young.”
It seems fitting that Robin would remember the bonfires. “In a quiet way, Robin was the mischievous one. He used to light fires under his bed,” Barbara said. Collections of leaves and twigs would be secretly carried into the house, hidden away under the bed and lit, while the fascinated youngster would watch the bottom of the mattress scorch. Caught in the act, he would attempt to pass the blame onto his hapless twin. “He used to sit there quietly and say, ‘It was not me. It was Woggie,’ ” Barbara added.
Maurice has recollections of a peculiarly Manx tradition. “I remember loud noises of TT bikes and things like that. Our dad used to take us down and watch them in the pits and things … and driving around on Mad Sunday. My dad drove around the TT course and I was on the front of the tank of the bike – I think it was a Norton he had, and I remember it was bright green and I would hang onto this tank and my dad used to fly around that track. That’s probably why they called it ‘Mad Sunday’. It was like yesterday – I can remember it like it was yesterday.”
Mad Sunday was the one day of the year when the TT Races were open to anyone, not just the seasoned racers. This meant that ordinary people who either owned or had access to a bike could participate in – rather than just watch – the races.
Although the brothers never saw their father perform with his band on the Isle of Man, music was still a big part of their lives. Barry remembered that, “When we were just babies and Mum was doing the ironing … she used to sing these songs all the time … there was ‘Answer Me’, ‘Yours’ and there was ‘You’ll Never Know’ …” These old songs obviously made an impression – Barry Gibb still loves to sing them at parties.
In the spring of 1954, pianist Jim Caine was offered a job with a major dance band as was another musician in Hugh’s band. It would prove to be Hugh’s last summer season at the Hotel Alexandra. Having lost two of his best players, he put together what was described as a scratch band that summer, but it wasn’t as good. His contract with Carlo Raineri was not renewed for the summer of 1955. “I think a lot of our father’s frustration for not quite making it goes into us,” Barry has said. “We carry on from him.”
By then Hugh Gibb was finding life on the island difficult. With the winter months, his work seemed to dwindle, and at the start of 1955 he decided that his hometown of Manchester might give him more opportunities.
According to an interview Barry gave to the Daily Mail, on their arrival in Manchester, Maurice, Robin and Lesley moved in with their mother’s sister, and he and his father moved in with his dad’s family. “It made me extremely lonesome,” Barry said. Life wasn’t any easier for him when he began at Manley Park Junior school on January 24 either. “I didn’t have any friends,” he reflected wistfully. “It’s a year I’ll never forget. I never understood why we weren’t all split evenly. It left me with a complex that I’d been singled out. I’d be left in the house all alone, playing in the streets with a broken bike that had no tyres.”
Manchester itself was also a bit of a culture shock for eight-year-old Barry. “It was an adventure and, more than that, what was interesting to me as a child was the amount of buildings in ruins,” he recalled. “If you hadn’t seen the war or … if you were born after the war, it was quite a shock. In the Isle of Man, of course, there were no ruins, but when you get to Manchester you’d see all these buildings in ruins and just foundations of buildings, and on the way to school, I would see these ruins and not understand why …”
During the first week of September 1955, the family was reunited on the second floor of a boarding house at 161 Withington Road in Whalley Range.* On September 5, 1955, Lesley and Barry both started at Oswald Road Junior School with Robin and Maurice attending Oswald Road Infants School. Barbara remembers sending the children off to school in the morning, only to have Robin reappear at the door a few minutes later, complaining of the cold or a blocked nose. She would send him off again and he would be fine, she says, but she maintains that he was always the one who was a little bit clingy and dependent on her.
Happy as he was to be back in the company of his siblings, there was one particular aspect of the move which Barry did not enjoy. “I had a very bad experience at school,” he related. “The headmaster was particularly unkind to children and he terrorised me for a good few months. Because of my fear of this man, I started playing truant, and me and about two other kids never went to school from that point. For about a year, we were always being chased by the truant officer who would come knocking on the door …
“I never had the nerve to tell my mother it was because of this headmaster who had been terrorising me, you know. It’s funny what you don’t tell your parents. If I had, maybe something would have been done about it. I would go to school but never get there.”
Lesley became a willing co-conspirator with Barry in truancy. “We were always skipping school,” she said. “We’d get to the bus stop, the bus would come and neither of us would make a move to get on. Then we’d go home and tell Mum the bus just never came.
“Of course, she just sent us off to school again, but by that time we were frightened to go because we were so late and we’d just go to the park. Other days Mum would give us our dinner money and we’d start off for school, wait until she’d gone to work and then spend the day playing at home. Then we’d go out and come home as though we were returning from school. At one stage we were doing that about two or three times a week.
“One day Barry and I were at home and there was a knock on the door,” Lesley continued. “Barry opened it and it was the truant officer, and like a fool, he told him where Mum worked. Of course, the officer went round to see her and told her we’d had so many days off school. She didn’t know and was very cross. We just got one hell of a good hiding and that was it.
“Rows never dragged on in ou
r family; we just got a telling off and then everyone would forget it.”
Barbara Gibb remembers the first time she became aware of the brothers’ budding musical talent. She had come home and heard what she thought was the radio in another room. “We used to bring Hugh’s father over to our place to watch the cricket on television,” she recalled, and she offered to turn off the radio in the next room if it was bothering him.
Their grandfather, who had heard them regularly, replied that it was the boys rather than the radio, so she went into the bedroom and found nine-year-old Barry and the six-year-old twins sitting on the bed singing.
Barry recalled the fateful day when the three boys started singing “with three hairbrushes with cans on the top, pretending they were microphones. That was the same day we found out we could sing in harmony. The three harmonies, as such, was a beautiful sound. We wanted to do that, we started finding out what harmonies were. It was all instinctive. It wasn’t a matter of looking at music or learning in school, though you did sing in assembly.”
In the way of older siblings everywhere, Lesley delights in recounting her younger brother’s mishaps. “I’ve never known a kid like him, always doing stupid things,” she said. “We used to play in this park which had a building in the middle. We were always being told to stay away from there, but of course, Barry wouldn’t. It had a corrugated roof and he just went straight through. We thought he’d broken his back, but he’d only bruised himself.”