Read more on telegraph.co.uk

The modern-day Teddy Boys still rock ’n’ rolling in style

The aristocrats of British youth culture, there have been Teddy Boys for almost 70 years. Mods, punks, casuals, all have come, grown up, and gone. Yet as these pictures by the photographer Jay Brooks show, the Ted goes on for ever – garbed in the time-honoured uniform of a drape jacket and brothel creeper shoes, hair greased back into an elaborate quiff or ‘pomp’ at the front, the timeless ‘DA’ – or duck’s arse – at the back.

The look was born in the working-class district of London’s Elephant and Castle, a parody of the Edwardian frock coats adopted by Mayfair dandies in the post-war years – in the Teds’ case worn with drainpipe jeans and a bootlace tie appropriated from American westerns.

It was tragedy that first brought the term ‘Teddy Boys’ into the public consciousness, when in 1953 one of a gang of youths, standing trial for stabbing to death another youth on Clapham Common, was described in news reports as wearing an Edwardian-style suit. The Daily Express shortened ‘Edwardian’ to ‘Teddy’, and the Teddy Boy, and a moral panic, was born.

By 1956, when police were called to halt drape-suited hordes jiving in the aisles at cinemas around the country showing the Bill Haley film Rock Around the Clock, the idea of Teds as a menace was firmly established in the public imagination.

Other public menaces – mods and rockers duking it out on the beaches of Clacton, Brighton and Margate – followed. Their moment in the glare of public opprobrium passed, the Teds retreated to the upstairs rooms of pubs, cherishing their Eddie Cochran and Jerry Lee Lewis records.

A revival in the 1970s saw Teds marching on Broadcasting House, demanding more rock ‘n’ roll be played on Radio 1, and the birth of rock ‘n’ roll weekenders. I attended one on a chilly weekend in the early 1980s at a Pontins holiday park in the West Country. Ford Consuls, Zodiacs and Vauxhall Crestas crowded the car park.

There were ageing survivors of the early days, some, their once extravagant plumes of hair thinning and greying but defiantly greased back, drape jackets dusted off, brothel creepers freshly brushed. Fags and pint glasses clenched in their hands, they took to the dance floor with their wives, moving stiffly to the strains of Rave On. There was ‘Waxie Maxie’, ‘Tongue-Tied Danny Cheek’ and ‘Sunglasses Ron’, the king of the Teds, a burly, softly spoken Welshman in a black drape with sideburns as thick as privet hedges. (When Ron died in 1997, his coffin was lowered into the ground to the strains of Eddie Cochran’s Three Steps to Heaven.) A mild-mannered younger Ted, wearing a Gene Vincent cap, introduced himself as Colin, ‘but my friends call me Rebel’.

There were ‘rockabillies’ too – much younger stylists, heretics who had forsaken the drape and quiff, modelling themselves on 1950s Louisiana filling-station attendants, and whom the Teds regarded as interlopers – ‘well up ’emselves’, as one put it. The festivities ended with the inevitable punch-up.

Like Teds, these events have never died. These photographs were taken at a ‘Rockers Reunion’ event in Reading and a ‘Wildest Cats in Town’ weekend at Pontins in Lowestoft, before Covid momentarily stopped the music. Strangely, as Brooks notes, although they slept overnight in their holiday-park chalets at the latter, most Teds preferred to adjourn to a nearby pub to listen to deafening rock ‘n’ roll played on an antique record deck while jiving, dancing on the bar, swinging from the chandelier lights and, of course, drinking. The bar takings were said to be sufficient for the landlord to shut up shop the following week and take a holiday.

Terry Hardy, 65, an HGV driver from east London, was 18 when he first spied a group of Teds in Walthamstow Market and was smitten. Before that he had been, as he puts it, ‘normal’.

It was the music, of course – he repeats the names like a catechism: Elvis, Gene, Buddy – and the style. The suit he’s wearing – like all his drapes – was tailor-made: emerald green with mustard-coloured velvet trimmings. ‘It’s something a bit different…’

He gives me a tour of his tattoos. Aces, swallows, the rock ‘n’ roll skull and the Confederate flag. ‘I know a lot of people now say it’s racist. We’re not interested in all that. It stands for the South where the music originally came from. We’ve got black Teds, Asian Teds. It’s a big family.’

When we talk, he and Maggie, his wife of 37 years, have just come back from the Barnstaple Rock ‘n’ Roll Club weekender at a holiday park in Westward Ho! – dancing, drinking and ‘doing the Ted stroll’, a time-honoured ritual at seaside gatherings where Teds walk mob-handed along the prom, turning heads and ducking into pubs. After 47 years as a Ted, his quiff is grey, but still upstanding. ‘I’m lucky. A lot have lost theirs…’ We pause for a moment’s respectful silence. Time taking its toll.

I have a memory, I say, of my time at Pontins 40 years ago. The Teds there were electricians, bank clerks, council workers, but it struck me then, as it strikes me now, that these occupations were merely disguises for their true and enduring calling as defenders of the faith.

‘Defenders of the faith…’ He pauses on the thought. ‘Yes, I like that.’

Sean Gilbert, 57

From Ilkeston, a furniture maker; pictured left, alongside fellow Teddy Boy Joe Murphy

My dad was an original Ted from the ’50s. When I was 15 he took me to Jack Higginbotham’s, the tailor in Ilkeston, to buy my first drape, and I’ve been living in a drape ever since.

I’ve got 14 now, all styled on the original drapes from the ’50s. The pockets, the position of the buttons, the trouser leg with a split and a button on the side: there’s all these little things that a Ted would see but the general public wouldn’t. It’s not boasting, but it’s unique and makes you stand out because of who you are – who we are.

I did introduce my kids to the style and the music, but over the years they let it go. I feel a bit let down by that. But I still love them.

Gary Bridger, 64

From Newcastle, a retail stock manager

I was 15 and didn’t know what I wanted to be into, but my brother was a year older and got me into this, playing Gene Vincent records. I just loved the image. I knew it was for me.

You get back from work and put your music on–all original vinyl. I paid £400 for an original Elvis Sun-label 78, Baby Let’s Play House. I usually pay up to £300 for a record. You’re wasting your time at car boot sales. And I play all my records on a Dansette. I don’t want one of these modern things; you just lose the sound.
When we were younger, we took the kids to the weekenders. They don’t follow it now, but if a music question comes up in a quiz they know who recorded what. They’ve benefited from my wasted youth, as they say.

Christine Saunders, 57

From Leighton Buzzard, a retired civil aviation quality inspector; pictured alongside her husband, Cliff

For me it all started when I met my husband. He’s been a Teddy Boy for 50 years, since he was 14. It was the music and also the family ethics. We have two children; as they were growing up, we used to take them to rock ‘n’roll weekends, and you felt like they were safe. Everybody looks out for everybody else.

I get my drapes from the same tailor as my husband, worn with a pencil skirt, 1950s seam stockings and stilettos. I usually have my hair in the victory roll, or suicide roll. It likes to go into that. But if I’m in what I class as my civvies I’m usually in turned-up jeans and a T-shirt, with a quiff or a pompadour. We drive a 1949 Buick Roadmaster. For us, the life is everything.

Jake Lofthouse, 23

From Middlesbrough, works in a bank call centre

My grandad used to be a Ted, and he was my hero. When he passed away I started looking into it. Before that I was a punk. A lad I know who used to be a Ted started getting into the punk scene; he gave me a drape and a pair of brothel creepers he didn’t want. I had an old Sex Pistols bondage shirt and a couple of other shirts, so basically we swapped. I’ve got seven drapes now, the old Kentucky gambler ties, all that. When you put on a drape it just feels special. It’s the best style really, very smart.

I love it when you go into a pub and people shake your hand and say, ‘A Teddy Boy! You don’t see that any more.’

It’s a way of life. I go to work like this. A mate said, ‘If you turned up in a tracksuit I’d be worried about you.’