Jane Common spends a day at Southwark Archives researching the work of Bob Fox, a forgotten local hero of the 1950s and 60s
It’s March 1959 and Bob Fox is a man on a mission to entertain the good people of Camberwell. Bob has just been promoted to the position of entertainments officer with Camberwell Council and is full of ideas for municipal merriment. And he’s passionate about providing it.“If there’s a public for live entertainment, why shouldn’t it be provided by the local authorities, the same as library books?” he posits to the local paper.
It’s quaint to think now – in an age of austerity – of Bob sitting in his office in Camberwell Town Hall on Peckham Road chewing on his Biro as he puzzles over who to book for the regular Monday evening variety show at Havil Street Hall. As compere, Bob was always on the bill.
In the 1950s and 60s, most London boroughs had entertainment officers. Indeed, there were professional exams for the role and Bob, who cut his teeth managing a 2000-seat bandstand in his hometown of Weymouth, was at the top of his game.
“Bob’s likeable, quiet personality has endeared him to many, and it is small wonder he is known as ‘the ratepayers’ Danny Kaye’,” wrote an enamoured journalist in the South London Observer. (His matinee idol good looks probably boosted his popularity among ratepayers too.)
Bob’s greatest hits? Camberwell Festival fortnight in the 1960s – in 1962, he welcomed a herd of cows for a milking exhibition outside the Town Hall and wrestlers to Lucas Gardens.
He also championed dog shows in Lucas Gardens – and Bob was rooting for the hoi-polloi.
“This is the day for the mongrels of Camberwell,” he told the London Evening News in May 1964. “The show is not open to pedigree dogs.”
Lucas Gardens, opened with great fanfare in 1955, was the scene of many of Bob’s triumphs. Brunswick Park, with its cute café, pop-up art shows and avant-garde white squirrel, may fancy itself the go-to strolling spot for Camberwell’s aesthete elite today but in the 1950s and 60s Lucas was the jewel in the borough’s al fresco cultural crown.
In the late 1950s, when Bob was assistant entertainments officer, Lucas boasted a bandstand at which actual orchestras performed, while Brunswick made do with acts called Happy Folk, Pierrot at Play and Crazy People.
Many of the Festival competitions took place in Lucas too: “All entry forms to be sent to Entertainment Officer, Town Hall, Camberwell, SE5.”
Picture the harassed post room boy lugging sacks of these forms up to Bob and his two assistants – green for the Talent Show, pink for the Festival Queen and blue for the Bonniest Baby.
Festival Queen entrants (“to be judged on charm, grace and beauty”) were told they had to “be prepared to attend all necessary functions during the festival. The Council will provide transport on all occasions.”
Bob in his Morris Minor?
By 1964 the festival, with its Grand Saturday Evening Gala in Lucas Gardens, was such a success it even had its own spoof newspaper featuring a front-page story about Peckham trying to sabotage the event, and a joke
about Dr Beeching, of rail line closure infamy.
Alas, Bob’s tenure came to an end just a year later in 1965 when Camberwell was amalgamated into the London Borough of Southwark. To mark the occasion, a specially written play showcasing Southwark’s history was put on in the Town Hall. I imagine Bob packing up his desk and then taking a seat in the audience, stoically clapping the performance marking his own professional demise.
But Bob lived a long and full life, dying in Dorset in 2023 at the grand old age of 94. And entertainment remained close to his heart, his funeral notice requesting donations be made to a local musical theatre group.
I think Bob would be happy to know that there’s still an annual dog show – Scrufts in Brunswick Park (which my dog, a MONGREL, won). And that Camberwell was named the fourth coolest neighbourhood in the world in 2025.
Bob, your legacy lives on.
