A Monthly Publication

By Dick Melton

In the late fifties the late Rocky Thompson, a travelling showman who was based in Hunstanton, was at an Easter fair on Wanstead Flats in London. Rocky travelled with a Helter Skelter (Slip) and a sweet trailer. A young man, John Thorpe who was in his twenties came along looking for work and Rocky gave him the job of looking after the Slip. When the fair left Wanstead, Rocky asked him if he’d like to come back to Hunstanton to work on the Slip for the summer season and this he agreed to do.

Nobody really knew where John came from. He said that he’d been brought up in a children’s home in West Ham. He had the West Ham football team of the late fifties tattooed along his arm. Rocky gave him a room to live in but he was a bit dirty and rough so after a while, Rocky threw him out but continued to employ him. John lived in all sorts of places – the old gas works cottages, the skating rink hut, under the pier, the coal yard pump house, the old signal box and a derelict house in Hunstanton.

John liked to listen to Rock and Roll, especially Elvis. He always carried a portable radio with him, you could hear him coming! He liked to sing and every evening in the summer he would get up on the stage in the old Kit-Kat public house and sing a few Elvis songs. John also liked to drink and most nights he could be seen wandering home, rather the worse for wear.

Sadly, in the seventies, Rocky Thompson died. His son, William (young Rocky), took over. John stayed with him for a year or two and then he cleaned cars and did some painting jobs. One winter he was painting high up in the Kingsley Centre (now the Princess Theatre) when he fell and broke his arm and his leg. The place was shut at the time and it was three days before anyone found him. When he was found he was taken to hospital but he discharged himself after a few days and after that, John always walked with a limp.

Now John was a thief, but not a very good one as he always got caught. One day he was walking down Church Street when he saw a whole leg of pork that a lady had laid on her window sill to cool off. John took it. When the police caught up with him, John was walking down the High Street eating it. John always tried to get caught for thieving in the autumn so that he could spend Christmas in prison.

In the latter years of his life, John started to take drugs as well as drink so the Council decided to house him in a small Council flat in Chiltern Crescent. A home of his own – something that John had never had. Unfortunately, after about eight months the drink and the drugs got the better of him and in 1993 he died. No one ever knew how old he was or where he had come from but John Thorpe R. I. P. was one of the real characters of Hunstanton.

When he died he had no money but he did have a lot of friends, especially from the fairground, and they clubbed together to pay for his funeral. When his coffin was carried down the aisle of the Union Church it was to the music of Elvis.