"Jimmy never took things too seriously. He always moved on if something went wrong," the retired writer for the East London Pioneer, who still has the notebook from his early 1960s interview with Jimmy Sowerbutt, said. "Like the time in January 1947 when he took a hundredweight of whalemeat for £80. Everything was short in that bitter winter, including meat. Thick snow everywhere and temperatures fell to minus 20 in Essex. The whalemeat was selling for 1/10 a pound so Jimmy thought he could double his money.
"A consignment had been landed at Tyneside and Jimmy had his hundredweight brought down to the Smoke by train - a few were still running. The government was worried about people starving in the big freeze and was pushing the whalemeat. Full of goodness and tasty, they said."Not what the housewives thought. Some tried it but only once. Too gamey, they said, the kids wouldn't touch it. I had a plateful at the time and it didn't feel right when you were eating it.
"Jimmy tried everything - two pounds for 2/6; tried calling it venison. He managed to sell a few pounds to some posh restaurant in the West End - God knows what they did with it.
"In the end, he gave most of it away to hospitals, old people's homes and some of the free kitchens that the churches were running."
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Colour-Lemon-Surrender-1940-ebook/dp/B008USR7FA
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