OUR LIVES: THE KNOCKERS TALE(1983) & Cutting Edge: WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE KNOCKERS (1993)
I remember watching these documentaries in awe; they were hysterically funny and absolutely summed up a certain time and place.
Four young Herberts from Canning Town are what used to be known as knockers. Selling shoddy household goods to bored housewives on the pretext of raising money for charity. The first of these documentaries saw the knockers shamelessly playing up for the camera. The faked tear up between a rival firm is both unconvincing and hilarious.
The only footage I’ve managed to track down is from Bob Mills’ ‘In Bed With MeDinner’
muggy boneheads v football
door to door
Ten years after the original there was a follow up that saw our heroes making a few bob abroad.
As fly on the wall examinations of working class culture in the eighties and nineties go these are not the hard hitting works of classic documentarians. What these two programmes are is an entertaining, funny and unknowingly witty view of a bunch of boys who duck and dive, although moments of fakery are present the depiction is far more honest than anything produced by the likes of Guy Richie or Nick Love.
Link to In bed with me dinner well worth a look/purchase: