Posted by Peter Hyland on September 14, 1999 at 10:01:59 from 194.128.172.76:
In Reply to: My shame! posted by Goerge Owdon on September 11, 1999 at 11:39:48:
'I just haven't had the educational opportunities'.
Oh yes you have. You went to quite a good school. The fact that you appear to have forgotten this gives you away as a fraud.
The real George Owdon went either to a minor public school in Norwich (on an assisted scholarship) or, more likely, a fairly smart private school with a charitable foundation. His speech throughout CC and BS shows no trace of local dialect, although he is described as being 'as Norfolk as Tom Dudgeon'. Like Tom the doctor's son, George would have been trained to speak standard English (and to spell). When he is finally cornered in BS, George says 'Look here. I'm not going to stand any more of this. I'm going.' No Norfolk working lad would have said that.
George may have had no living parents, as his guardian was his uncle, or possibly a parent was overseas and George went out to join him or her after the 'shackle' debacle. We are told that he was never seen again.
The idea of George as a sort of Norfolk yobbo is a common misapprehension. He was a decent middle class boy from a disturbed background who couldn't make friends easily. He is a complex character, like all AR's 'villains' (except perhaps for Jemmerling who seems just an out and out stinker).
Peter Hyland
Former Chairman of the George Owdon Society.
PS I still bump into the elderly George occasionally. He is a member of TARS, but is scornful about the mis-spelling of his name. 'And they think I am an ignorant oaf!' he exclaims. He is cagey about the past, understandably.