REVIEW: TEN MEN The Lives of John Bindon by Frankie McCabe at Drayton Arms Theatre 10 - 24 September 2024

'raw, belligerent & funny' ★★ ★ 1/2

There’s something profound about sitting in a tiny room above a pub and listening to one man recount his life: the ups, downs, memories, and moments. It’s like magic, being transported back in time to witness an entire existence. All lives are interesting, but some are more unexpected than others. The life of John “Biffy” Bindon born in Fulham, 1943 is full of surprises; a working-class boy dragged up “without a pot to piss in” became an actor, bodyguard, criminal, minor-celeb, raconteur, and scrabble-playing philosopher.

This one man show, compellingly inhabited by the solid, square jawed, guttural geezer-thesp, Matthew Platt made its debut at the Edinburgh Festival in 2022 and has since been drawing audiences with its working-class credentials and laugh out loud dialogue. Billed as an hour long, it’s more like 1 hour, 15 that but that’s okay because Platt is an engaging performer and Franklyn McCabe’s writing is sharp and mainly well-structured. The first half is pacier, but the action stalls a little in the second half which feels a bit introspective. But this aside, you want to know what happens next? Will it be up a ladder or down a snake for Biffo?

No more than a footnote in received histories of London’s swinging sixties. Bindon managed to ingratiate himself with filmmakers, gangsters, rockstars and royalty. A working-class criminal who ended up in borstal twice as a young reprobate, he managed through luck, opportunity, and strategy to penetrate celebrity circles that included everyone from the Krays to Mick Jagger. Discovered by Ken Loach in a West London pub who cast him as an authentic thug in Pow Cow (1967) Bindon was rumoured to have had a relationship with Princess Margaret. She was initially intrigued by the rumours of his 12-inch appendage but the love of his life was Vicky Hodge, a posh model. Biffy loved to love posh girls. “It was like a form of (class) revenge” he chillingly discloses.

What’s portrayed is a complex, multi-faceted character, intriguing and engaging if not exactly likeable. Full of contradictions, he was a chancer and brute who could be extremely violent, especially if he was being paid. An amoral, mercenary survivor, Bindon was either an archetype of toxic masculinity or a working-class hero, who managed for a short time, to shaft the class system – or did it shaft him? Ultimately his heyday in fashionable 1960s circles seem illusionary and transient when he reflects on his past from the body of a man who is no longer young, virile, affluent or desirable, professionally or otherwise.

The sense we are left with was a man who used to call the shots but at the end of his life was no longer in control. The one who used to terrorise others is himself visited by men “in black coats” one dark evening. It’s a fascinating story, one day sipping cocktails on a beach, the next working tricks in the local park and selling drugs to kids to pay bills. While not wholly redemptive or cathartic - how much was learnt is unclear - this is a raw, belligerent, funny and unapologetic life worth an hour (and a bit more) of anyone’s time.

 Box Office

 Ten Men - The Lives of John Bindon - Drayton Arms Theatre (thedraytonarmstheatre.co.uk)