Signed W.B.

I've always had a soft spot for Wilfred Bramble - his elegant performances in the great Steptoe and Son are matched only by his iconic and extremely moving appearance in Terence Davies' majestic Death and Transfiguration, playing an aging gay Catholic facing death.
For me, also, there is the added frisson of a marked resemblance to William S. Burroughs - which is always something guaranteed to snare my attention and fire my imagination. Whenever I see a photo of the Steptoes I reimagine it as an image of Burroughs and fellow Beats putting themselves about, on and off the road. Two down-at-heel totters from Shepherd's Bush are magically transmuted into low-life adventurers in Tangiers or Mexico, or speeding along the highways of the America of their dreams.

William S. Burroughs showing Jack Kerouac the biggest load of horse he ever did see

Albert Steptoe on the lookout for junk

William S. Burroughs facing down the critics


Steptoe and Son ... purveyors of fine old tot

Burroughs explaining to a distraught Kerouac that the Naked Lunch ms will have to be retyped


There are a few beguiling points of intersection between Burroughs and Bramble - the facial congruity, the air of the dignified aging queer going gently to seed, the shabby gentility, the sense of a gay identity formed before Stonewall and Gay Lib, even the brief intersection with one Paul McCartney and The Beatles (Bramble as Macca's grandad in A Hard Day's Night (what on earth did he make of Beatlemania?), Burroughs featuring as a Sgt. Pepper's cover star and being loaned the use of a recording studio by the aforementioned Macca). Both occupied an odd and incongruous position in the "swinging Sixties". What a funny old world it is.