Geoff Fletcher

I had a favourite uncle when I was a lad. He was a retired coal miner, having spent a long and tough working life in the pits around Madeley in Shropshire (all long gone now of course). I loved to visit him and listen to his stories of life down the pit. He had been buried twice in roof falls and still bore scars blue with ingrained coal dust on his hands from those experiences. He always wore black boots – shined up to a mirror finish, and enjoyed watching dramas on his little black and white television set. Eventually, I joined the BBC and moved to London, but still visited him whenever I was home in Shropshire. One afternoon over the customary cup of tea and slice of cake he started asking me about my life at the BBC and then got on to  "the lists of names at the end of plays and films" He said to me that  the actors and crew must have to do a lot of work in wet and muddy places. I asked him why he thought  that. He said they often had a chap who looked after their boots listed in the names at the end of the programmes. I was at a loss about this, but it so happened that a film was just coming to an end on the box in the corner. "Look Geoff", said Uncle Bert, " I’ll show you when his name comes up" We duly watched as the credits rolled by until he suddenly pointed and said  "There he is! That’s the chap looking after the boots!" The credit was for the Dubbing Mixer. I hadn’t the heart to explain – he was too nice a man to take advantage of his mistaking Dubbing for Dubbin. He leaned back and said " We always used to rub dubbin on our boots down the pit to keep the water out too!"
I just nodded in agreement. Bert died at 86 some years ago – boots shiny to the end.