'We must have looked a funny pair,' recalls Jemima Dury, the eldest of legendary rock musician Ian Dury's four children.
'I wasn't making fun of Dad, but wanting to be special and different - which is how he seemed to be to me. I still remember that day, moving along behind him, he never realised I was mimicking him. 'I was trying the walk on for size, in the same way as another child might copy their parent's voice or attitude.'
This month saw the release of Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll, a film starring Andy Serkis that celebrates the unconventional life of the singer dubbed 'the poet of punk'.
Dury, who died of liver cancer in 2000, aged 57, contracted polio at the age of ten. It left him with a withered left leg and hand, and he wore a heavy metal calliper that gave him what Jemima calls 'his unique way of walking'.
In the poster for the film, Serkis - as Dury - is seen with the young actor who plays his son, Jemima's brother Baxter. The boy is dressed just like his father. 'Baxter and I idolised Dad,' explains his daughter.
Jemima and Baxter, 37, are his children from his first marriage, to Betty Rathmell. The couple divorced in 1985 but remained friends until her death, from cancer, nine years later.
'We would stay with him for the weekend every few weeks,' says Jemima. 'He would wade in with big gestures, presents from Hamleys and trips round Harrods. Neither of us lived with Dad for any real length of time until we were in our teens and able to take care of ourselves - and him a lot of the time.'
Jemima, 41, a retired professional dancer, who lives in Hastings, East Sussex, with her partner Japhy Turner, a club DJ, and children Milo, seven, Gene, five, and Betty, two, says her father's condition has always been part of her life.
'We had never known anything other than Dad having a calliper - or iron - on his left leg. It was part of him,' she says. 'We knew he had to be careful walking and that he preferred certain chairs because they were easier to get in and out of. The click of his calliper was as familiar as his voice.
'Neither Baxter nor I questioned why Dad walked as he did or why he wore the calliper. I was seven before he explained what had happened.'
Dury told his daughter that in the summer of 1949 he had gone swimming at the outdoor pool in Southend, fairly near where he grew up in Upminster, Essex. While he was there, he had almost certainly picked up the polio virus that paralysed him.
Poliomyelitis - described in medical text at the time as an 'inflammation of the grey matter of the spinal cord' - is caused by a virus, resulting in an acute infection. Polio was one of the most feared and studied diseases of the first half of the 20th Century. It was not possible to predict where or whom it would strike, but most victims were children.
The epidemics of the Forties and Fifties caused public panic and many of the 120,000 people now in the UK who have had polio contracted it then. The disease is transmitted primarily through ingestion of material contaminated with the virus, found in saliva and faeces. This often happened in swimming pools, where young children's hygiene could be questionable.
Dury came down with heavy flu-like symptoms a week or so after going to the pool, while he was holidaying in Cornwall with his Aunt Moll at his grandmother's home. Moll's father had been a doctor and, recognising the symptoms, the family took Dury to Truro hospital where he stayed for several months.
Contrary to common belief, most of those infected experience only mild respiratory or gastrointestinal symptoms, often accompanied by fever, headache and muscle stiffness. Dury was unlucky. Apart from his right hand, head and face which remained normal, almost all of his body was paralysed.
'Dad ended up with arm, leg and buttock-muscle wastage on his left side - his hand was very small and twisted, he couldn't hold things in it easily,' Jemima explains.
'The muscles on his right side were also affected and his feet were different shapes, the left foot was very small and thin. The discharge note from the hospital said, "Still incontinent, almost complete paralysis of both arms and legs." '
Dury then spent three years at Chailey Heritage Craft School in East Sussex, an institute for the disabled that aimed to rehabilitate patients enough for them to learn a trade.
The regime was tough, and both physical and mental abuse were rife. From there he went to art school, going on to become an art teacher himself before finding fame in the late Seventies with The Blockheads.
Their 1977 breakthrough single Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll was followed a year later by Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick, which reached No 1 in the UK in 1979, selling nearly a million copies.
Always out to shock, Dury would often refer to himself as a 'raspberry ripple' - cockney rhyming slang for cripple. The BBC banned his 1981 song Spasticus Autisticus, his scathing reaction to that year's International Year of Disabled Persons, which he thought was patronising.
But at home, Dury showed a softer, perhaps even vulnerable, side. 'I remember Dad trying to help me with a dressing-up box costume but he couldn't do the buttons up,' says Jemima with a smile. 'We fell about laughing - but I could tell he was frustrated.'
Dury was keen that his children helped him to put on his calliper - which he referred to as 'the leg'. 'Baxter or I would help him pull a long stocking made of very soft material up to the top of his thigh to make him more comfortable once the horribly heavy metal bars and knee hinges of the leg went on,' recalls Jemima.
During the making of the film, Serkis suffered from groin and back problems after wearing a heavy Seventies-style calliper for hours. One can only imagine the pain Dury must have endured.
Despite the disease's legacy, Dury's love of swimming was unabated. As a teenager, he took part in a Paralympic games. Even though he had muscle wastage elsewhere in his body, he built up a huge lung capacity and muscular arms.
By the time Jemima was born, swimming no longer posed the same risk. An immunisation programme that started in 1955 had virtually eradicated polio in the UK.
Jemima says her father was 'incredibly open and confident. He always believed himself to be attractive - which he was'. Indeed, far from letting his disabilities hold him back, Dury led a riotous life - his womanising was legendary.
It was not until the early Nineties that he settled down with his second wife, sculptor Sophy Tilson, who was 22 years his junior. They had two sons, Bill and Albert, now 15 and 12.
'He embraced the trappings of a rock-star lifestyle and if he was drunk and feeling tough he would throw himself around,' says Jemima. 'Baxter and I knew the drill. If he fell over you grabbed his right hand and pulled him up on a slight diagonal. But as Dad grew older - especially once he was famous - I felt increasingly protective of him.'
Although he would rarely admit avoiding anything because of his disabilities, there was an exception - the galley kitchen in his mother Peggy's old flat in Hampstead, in which he lived when he married Sophy.
'It was so narrow that he feared he would fall over and not be able to get up,' recalls Jemima. 'So he never made a cup of tea, washed up or cooked. Maybe it was just a cunning way of getting out of chores.'
Towards the end of his life, Dury became a keen Unicef ambassador. Despite undergoing constant chemotherapy he travelled to Sri Lanka with Robbie Williams and to Africa to promote a polio vaccination campaign.
'Dad saw polio as a positive attribute and retained his wonderful sense of humour,' says Jemima.
'When we scattered his ashes off Hammersmith Bridge we also threw his "leg" ceremoniously into the river. Dad would definitely have approved.'
Dury, who died of liver cancer in 2000, aged 57, contracted polio at the age of ten. It left him with a withered left leg and hand, and he wore a heavy metal calliper that gave him what Jemima calls 'his unique way of walking'.
In the poster for the film, Serkis - as Dury - is seen with the young actor who plays his son, Jemima's brother Baxter. The boy is dressed just like his father. 'Baxter and I idolised Dad,' explains his daughter.
'We would stay with him for the weekend every few weeks,' says Jemima. 'He would wade in with big gestures, presents from Hamleys and trips round Harrods. Neither of us lived with Dad for any real length of time until we were in our teens and able to take care of ourselves - and him a lot of the time.'
Jemima, 41, a retired professional dancer, who lives in Hastings, East Sussex, with her partner Japhy Turner, a club DJ, and children Milo, seven, Gene, five, and Betty, two, says her father's condition has always been part of her life.
'We had never known anything other than Dad having a calliper - or iron - on his left leg. It was part of him,' she says. 'We knew he had to be careful walking and that he preferred certain chairs because they were easier to get in and out of. The click of his calliper was as familiar as his voice.
'Neither Baxter nor I questioned why Dad walked as he did or why he wore the calliper. I was seven before he explained what had happened.'
Dury told his daughter that in the summer of 1949 he had gone swimming at the outdoor pool in Southend, fairly near where he grew up in Upminster, Essex. While he was there, he had almost certainly picked up the polio virus that paralysed him.
Poliomyelitis - described in medical text at the time as an 'inflammation of the grey matter of the spinal cord' - is caused by a virus, resulting in an acute infection. Polio was one of the most feared and studied diseases of the first half of the 20th Century. It was not possible to predict where or whom it would strike, but most victims were children.
The epidemics of the Forties and Fifties caused public panic and many of the 120,000 people now in the UK who have had polio contracted it then. The disease is transmitted primarily through ingestion of material contaminated with the virus, found in saliva and faeces. This often happened in swimming pools, where young children's hygiene could be questionable.
Contrary to common belief, most of those infected experience only mild respiratory or gastrointestinal symptoms, often accompanied by fever, headache and muscle stiffness. Dury was unlucky. Apart from his right hand, head and face which remained normal, almost all of his body was paralysed.
'Dad ended up with arm, leg and buttock-muscle wastage on his left side - his hand was very small and twisted, he couldn't hold things in it easily,' Jemima explains.
'The muscles on his right side were also affected and his feet were different shapes, the left foot was very small and thin. The discharge note from the hospital said, "Still incontinent, almost complete paralysis of both arms and legs." '
Dury then spent three years at Chailey Heritage Craft School in East Sussex, an institute for the disabled that aimed to rehabilitate patients enough for them to learn a trade.
The regime was tough, and both physical and mental abuse were rife. From there he went to art school, going on to become an art teacher himself before finding fame in the late Seventies with The Blockheads.
Their 1977 breakthrough single Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll was followed a year later by Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick, which reached No 1 in the UK in 1979, selling nearly a million copies.
Always out to shock, Dury would often refer to himself as a 'raspberry ripple' - cockney rhyming slang for cripple. The BBC banned his 1981 song Spasticus Autisticus, his scathing reaction to that year's International Year of Disabled Persons, which he thought was patronising.
But at home, Dury showed a softer, perhaps even vulnerable, side. 'I remember Dad trying to help me with a dressing-up box costume but he couldn't do the buttons up,' says Jemima with a smile. 'We fell about laughing - but I could tell he was frustrated.'
Dury was keen that his children helped him to put on his calliper - which he referred to as 'the leg'. 'Baxter or I would help him pull a long stocking made of very soft material up to the top of his thigh to make him more comfortable once the horribly heavy metal bars and knee hinges of the leg went on,' recalls Jemima.
During the making of the film, Serkis suffered from groin and back problems after wearing a heavy Seventies-style calliper for hours. One can only imagine the pain Dury must have endured.
Despite the disease's legacy, Dury's love of swimming was unabated. As a teenager, he took part in a Paralympic games. Even though he had muscle wastage elsewhere in his body, he built up a huge lung capacity and muscular arms.
By the time Jemima was born, swimming no longer posed the same risk. An immunisation programme that started in 1955 had virtually eradicated polio in the UK.
Jemima says her father was 'incredibly open and confident. He always believed himself to be attractive - which he was'. Indeed, far from letting his disabilities hold him back, Dury led a riotous life - his womanising was legendary.
It was not until the early Nineties that he settled down with his second wife, sculptor Sophy Tilson, who was 22 years his junior. They had two sons, Bill and Albert, now 15 and 12.
'He embraced the trappings of a rock-star lifestyle and if he was drunk and feeling tough he would throw himself around,' says Jemima. 'Baxter and I knew the drill. If he fell over you grabbed his right hand and pulled him up on a slight diagonal. But as Dad grew older - especially once he was famous - I felt increasingly protective of him.'
Although he would rarely admit avoiding anything because of his disabilities, there was an exception - the galley kitchen in his mother Peggy's old flat in Hampstead, in which he lived when he married Sophy.
'It was so narrow that he feared he would fall over and not be able to get up,' recalls Jemima. 'So he never made a cup of tea, washed up or cooked. Maybe it was just a cunning way of getting out of chores.'
Towards the end of his life, Dury became a keen Unicef ambassador. Despite undergoing constant chemotherapy he travelled to Sri Lanka with Robbie Williams and to Africa to promote a polio vaccination campaign.
'Dad saw polio as a positive attribute and retained his wonderful sense of humour,' says Jemima.
'When we scattered his ashes off Hammersmith Bridge we also threw his "leg" ceremoniously into the river. Dad would definitely have approved.'
• Ian Dury, The Definitive Biography, by Will Birch, is published by Sedgwick & Jackson at £18.99
thanks for the article and the photos!
ReplyDeleteJust saw the film by Mat Whitecross and now did some research on background.