The book picks up the story at the point where Robson has decided
to leave his "proper" job at the Swan Hunter shipyard, to join Live
Theatre, a semi-professional company of actors with a small theatre on the Quayside
in Newcastle. His father, Robson senior, was not impressed. His father was alarmed
by Robson's decision to leave. "In the north-east", he said, "with
the years of depression, the unemployment and the hunger still a vivid nightmare
and with the uncertainty that existed over the future of the colleries, a man
with a good job in a shipyard was very lucky. And Robson, a skilled draughtsman,
decided to leave! I wouldn't have been so concerned if he'd wanted to be a professional
footballer or darts player - but an ACTOR. I thought he was mad"...
Some
time later Robson had landed a leading part. ''.....while Jerome was impressing
theatrical agents in London, Robson was wowing the critics in Newcastle with his
performance in Tom Hadaway's The Long Line - a play that fitted perfectly
with Robson's own tough north-east background.
The Robson and Jerome story
is one without and ending. It is a remarkable tale of two ordinary guys, one from
the north-east, one from the south-east, who met for the first time in a popular
TV drama and discovered, despite their contrasting upbringings that they shared
many of the same tastes and many of the same passions. Most important was the
passion for life and the need to celebrate it. That feeling was infectious and,
from the ranks of the King's Own Fusiliers, it seeped out into 17 million British
homes.
