Have I possibly uncovered a major cover up involving Nottingham council, the tram company, and the Theatre Royal? There is something very strange afoot and I am at a dead end trying to uncover it.

At some point in the early 1970s, John Inman (camp comic actor best known for his portrayal of Mr. Humphries in Are You Being Served?) planted a tree outside the Theatre Royal in one of those civic ceremonies where a visiting celebrity is asked to do something to make them look good. He would have been appearing in pantomime at the time, and little public relations jaunts like this are often employed to put bums on seats during the pantomime run. I assume that the removal was approved as part of the upheaval while laying the tramlines, but I can’t get this confirmed. This was going to be the main thrust of a short documentary film I wanted to get off the ground and produce independently. It was turned down by the BBC’s Inside Out programme, and I’m starting to see why given the wall of silence that surrounds it. There isn’t any record of it in the theatre’s archive, and the city centre library emailed me to say that they couldn’t find anything on it. Given that the library has an extensive newspaper archive going back to the 1800s, I find this whole episode rather suspicious.

The film was going to be called Whatever Happened to John Inman’s Tree? and would have entailed me talking to people who remembered the occasion, and talking to the theatre, the tram company, members of the council planning department, and various other people to ascertain why the tree was never replaced or replanted in a new location. The climax of the film would have been the staging of a ceremony to plant a replacement tree dedicated to the original tree planted by Inman all those years ago.

Nottingham Council have a history of making mistakes and generally showing a blatant disregard for the heritage of the area with no apology forthcoming for such crass mistakes as the demolition of The Blackboy Hotel, Victoria Train Station, and even the recent Odeon Cinema scandal. With a track record like that I’m surprised that the John Inman tree story is the one that warranted destroying the records.

A few years ago I was granted access to the records of every meeting that had taken place in the Council House (the name for what most places call the Town Hall, not an actual council house) for research purposes, but didn’t find anything about this subject. To be honest, I wasn’t actually looking for any details on John Inman or his tree at the time. What is telling though is that the theatre and the library are council owned, and they are telling me that no information exists, whereas my email to the council itself has remained unanswered. This goes deeper than I expected, why is this secret? John Inman was a popular comedian and one of the best pantomime dames to ever don a dress, as far as I know his life was scandal free. A quick read of his Wikipedia biography points to a prolific television and stage actor, keen golfer, and devoted partner to Ron Lynch; there isn’t a whiff of wrongdoing written about him. I could understand wiping it from the history books if it was Jimmy Savile for example, but not someone who hasn’t put a foot wrong. Maybe the council is hiding something sinister from the public after all? If this is an oversight then there is a chance for redemption for Nottingham Council, simply plant a tree for John Inman as a replacement.

===

My daily blog can be delivered straight to your Kindle for 99p a month (link)

Any money donated to the PayPal account above will be put to good creative use, find out more here.