Picture from Wikipedia

It's very much a forgotten part of Nottingham's history now, but for a while there was a slight wave of controversy surrounding the whereabouts of a tree planted by comedy actor John Inman at some point in the 1970s when he was in town appearing in pantomime. When the area outside the Theatre Royal was messed about with to make room for the tram network the tree was uprooted and the council said that it would be replaced. I seemed to be the only one who remembered this, and enquiries to the theatre and the library didn't uncover anything, as if the whole thing had been erased from history, A letter on the subject published in the Nottingham Post unearthed one bit of information  but still I was at a dead end, John Inman's tree was apparently gone forever and nobody knew or cared anything about it. In many ways an apathetic attitude is to be expected in Nottingham as nobody tends to give a shit about anything which is why the place is falling apart, but perhaps there is a darker reason for this very audible silence.

Inman belonged to that tragic club of entertainers who struggled to keep their sexuality a secret, coming from a time when homosexuality was a criminal offence and the revelation of which could damage a person's career. Frankie Howerd and Kenneth Williams were equally subjected to speculation and although it seems (rightly) abhorrent now, a person in the public eye simply couldn't come out of the closet. The character that Inman was most famous for, Mr Humphries, was according to the show's writers 'a mummy's boy' whose true sexuality was never disclosed. In 1970s language, Mr Humphries might have been referred to as a 'woolly woofter' but nothing was ever officially said. In 1999 John Inman unconvincingly announced that he was straight and had been in a serious relationship with a woman for nearly thirty years, it wasn't until he became ill in 2004 that he dropped the mask and married his actual partner Ron Lynch. Inman died in 2007, as did Lynch, and aside from the occasional repeat showing of Are You being Served? very little has been spoken about him.

This week is was reported that Operation Yewtree are investigating claims that Inman sexually assaulted a young boy 36 years ago. Maybe at this point it is a rare example of good thinking on behalf of Nottingham Council to have remained silent on the trivial matter of the tree but why? Did they know something? The local BBC current affairs show Inside Out turned down my pitch of a film about the whereabouts of the tree as it was too light hearted (this is the programme that gives airtime to Al Needham and his fake Nottingham accent reporting on such banalities as rude sounding street names), did they have an inkling? After all the BBC hid a lot of stuff that should have been reported.

Whatever the truth is on this story, I can't see how a police investigation will help at this stage. Inman has been dead for nine years so can't face justice. Jimmy Savile was a different case in a way, although he too never had to face prosecution the subsequent investigation did some good in unearthing decades of wrongdoing in the BBC, Parliament, and in several hospitals. However for every successful scalp there were innocent victims such as Jimmy Tarbuck and Paul Gambaccini who had their names dragged through the shit. It remains to be seen whether or not John Inman will be affected by this story, although similar sensationalist reports about Leonard Rossiter and Alan Freeman blew over allowing us to enjoy repeats of Rising Damp and the BBC 6Music's perpetual airing of The Story of Pop in the early hours of the morning.

You could of course wonder why the victim has waited until now to speak about this. I understand that victims don't always feel as if they can come forward straight away, and even 36 years ago children weren't always believed when they tried to accuse an adult of something. So why not at some point during his adulthood, or just after Inman's death? He could also have revealed this incident in 2011 when the Operation Yewtree ball started rolling. We will never know the truth about John Inman's involvement in this crime but it remains to be seen if he suffers a posthumous fall from favour as a result. Either way, I don't think Nottingham Council will be in a hurry to plant a tree in his name.

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