Farewell, My Lady Nickerteen

 

D.J. Taylor, who celebrated the songs of Allan Smethurst, AKA the Singing Postman, in a 2010 radio documentary, announced today on social media that the troubadour's muse Molly Bayfield (the Molly Windley who "smokes like a chimbley" in his most famous song) had  died. 

Smethurst's songs have considerable charm although the simpler world he describes seems so remote now that for a moment it seemed astonishing to think that the woman who inspired his most famous number had still been around for the first quarter of the 21st century.

 A BBC News article by Laura Devlin describes the day, momentous only in retrospect, when Smethurst visited his old schoolfriends, Albert Bayfield, and his wife, Molly, in the seaside village of Mundesley, on the North Norfolk coast:

They shared a few roll-up cigarettes over lunch and a walk on the beach, with Molly thinking "nothing more of it".

Some years later, she had been bathing toddler Mike while listening to the radio - which at the time would have been pumping out the likes of The Beatles and The Rolling Stones.

She heard Hev Yew Gotta Loight Boy and "nearly dropped the poor little fella, because I realised he had written it about me," she told a BBC documentary in 2016.

The song refers to Molly Windley - "who smook like a chimley" - and her repeated plea of "hev yew gotta loight boy?"

... The ditty was the Singing Postman's best known hit and won an Ivor Novello award for best novelty song in 1966. In Norfolk, it had briefly outsold The Beatles' Ticket to Ride.

Allan Smethurst was born in Bury, Lancashire, but his family had moved to Norfolk when he was very young; at the age of twenty-one he began to write songs about his life there, attracting the attention of a local radio presenter, which led to a recording contract with Allan billed as "The Singing Postman" - he had indeed been a postman for twelve years, among other jobs. 

Hev Yew Gotta Loight Boy (there are variations in spelling depending on how faithfully the dialect is phonetically reproduced) may have made him nationally famous but, like Jake Thackray, he suffered from stage fright, leading ultimately to alcoholism. His biographer Keith Skipper, a journalist on the Norwich Evening News in 1965, was aware that Smethurst's drinking was already a problem during a Summer Season in Great Yarmouth that year:

"This will not affect his recording, radio and TV career …" was the official bulletin, but those who popped into his dressing-toom during that brief 1965 run in the spotlight knew life at the top would soon turn sour unless rations of Dutch courage were reduced dramatically. He left the music industry in 1970, admitting he had a serious alcohol problem and was penniless. The Singing Postman spent his last years quietly in a Salvation Army hostel in Grimsby.

Perhaps a gentle entertainer who didn’t fit into any obvious showbusiness niche encapsulates the dilemma let loose every time our [Norfolk] dialect is up for debate. There are those all too eager to dismiss him as an embarrassing reinforcer of the yokel stereotype shuffling across a pantomime stage built on national misconceptions and cosy nostalgia.

Others, like me, feel his life and work, however flawed, add up to an intriguing and valuable chapter in our local history. He deserves hearty applause for putting his homely stamp on a national reminder that Norfolk is not wedged somewhere between Devon and Dorset.

Skipper's book, entitled Hew Yew Gotta Loight, Boy? after the song, isn't a full biography but consists of pieces written by people who knew him in some capacity, whether as a journalist, backing musician, manager, producer or whatever. He doesn't seem to have had a partner or surviving family but the material here, including a Guardian article written around the time of his fame, does provide a reasonably full portrait, at times tactfully so. And while he may have ended his life as a recluse it's cheering to read that he seems to have been well-looked after in the hostel, with people running around trying to find the only brand of soap he favoured. 

Allan Smethurst also made it into the 21st century, though only just: he died in 2000. He is pictured below in 1994, around the time Hev You Gotta Loight, Boy? was adapted for a TV commercial for Ovaltine; asked about possible royalties he replied: "My needs are simple and I’m well looked after here. I’m quite happy and I have my pension."

 

 [Peter Robins]

Even though his songs have been made available on CD in recent years I suppose, as far as most people are concerned, Smethurst is merely a one-hit wonder, and a novelty song at that. But in that radio programme mentioned earlier D.J. Taylor, who grew up in Norfolk, makes the case for his songs as: 

plaintive celebrations of a kind of lost, rural life that had begun to disappear, even as it was committed to vinyl. His songs are firmly rooted in the traditional ballads of Norfolk. His work is the last gasp of a genuinely popular art form, before it went down amid the onslaught of post-war mass culture.

Which is not to say he wasn't influenced by the wider world, even if he abjured rock'n'roll. Smethurst was a fan of George Formby, Frank Crumit and the American country singer Jimmy Rodgers, known as "The Singing Brakeman" because these perfomers all delivered their songs with a plain guitar or banjo or uke backing and the words were the thing. 

The book also includes sheet music for three of his most famous songs, including Hev You Gotta Loight, Boy? and Miss from Diss, plus lyrics of many more. Even read as poems these work well, and there is a strong strain of nostalgia despite one poignant lyric acknowledging that, as its title says, "Yew carnt keep livin' in the past": the singer sees his partner standing staring at her reflection in the mirror and tells her: 

Little grey hairs may make yew frown
But yew carnt keep livin' in a wedding gown

Which is a pretty compact summation. Allan Smethurst's novelty hit was only the tip of the iceberg; his work is worth investigating further. The wife in the song is also named Molly, presumably the same character as the one featured in that famous song, though in real life he and the future Mrs Bayfield had only been childhood sweethearts.

 

 

 

As for that long-lived high-tar sandy muse, Molly remained married to Albert, a teacher, for more than fifty years. She worked as a secretary at Cromer Hospital then later as a chiropodist and for social services. Perhaps her long life can be attributed in part to the fact that she seems to have forsworn the delights of nickerteen soon after being immortalised in song, according to that BBC News article:  

 

 

My son said "if you don't give up smoking I won't sit on your lap anymore."

So, end of.

Links: 

Singing Postman's "Nicotine Gal" dies aged 92 (BBC News article)

In Search of the Singing Postman (this is a link to the BBC iplayer page for D.J. Taylor's radio documentary; at the time of writing the programme isn't available but possibly Molly Bayfield's death might prompt a repeat) 

[UPDATE 2/3/26: The above programme was repeated on 2nd March 2026, and will be available for 30 days from that date. Though short - thirty minutes - it is exceedingly well done, setting Smethurst in context and, like Keith Skipper's book, conveying a sense of his life through the testimony of a range of people who knew or admired him. And Taylor himself doesn't make inflated claims for his work but makes clear the reasons for his own enthusiasm for this neglected figure and why he merits exploration.]

Singing Postman (article on the winterton-on-sea website with more details)