Jamaica sunshine lights up world of shadows

BING FINDLATER: Larger than life

MARTYN TORR meets BING FINDLATER, steering youngsters along the straight and narrow

A BUNCH of guys were holiday in Magaluf and bumped into a group from Oldham on a stag weekend.

Conversation turned to where they came from and when Oldham cropped up the other group asked in unison: I bet you know Bing Findlater?

Of course they knew him, because so many know Bing, whose name is certainly a claim to fame but whose prowess on the rugby field — believe it not in his early career he was a nippy winger — and in the field of community work have kept him the forefront of Oldham consciousness for more than three decades.

For this is a larger-than-life character, no longer a nippy winger, now a powerful prop forward who is still trying to get the odd game with St Anne’s amateurs.

“I tried to bully a game the other week . . . but the coach wasn’t having it. I played in the 70s, 80s and 90s and just fancied being able to say I played competitively in four decades, but maybe it ain’t going to happen.”

Bing spoke with a laugh in his lilt and a sparkle in his eyes and if there was a hint of genuine regret, it didn’t show through.

For I doubt that the Big Fella has any regrets in his life.

His Jamaican background ensures he looks at life with the glass brimming over, none of this half-full, half-empty jiggery pokery for this son of Blackburn who has lived in Oldham for all but six months of his 48 years.

He is one of 10 children — the oldest of the siblings born in England — and is the only one whom his mum Gwen allowed dad Rupert to choose a name.

“Hence Bing . . . It’s a bit more popular in Jamaica than Oldham, maybe, and I’m named after one of my dad’s best pals,” he recalls.

These days Bing has his hands full in his day job as prevention manager for Positive Steps Oldham.

He works with a raft of agencies — the police, schools, PCSOs and the community at large — to identify youngsters who perhaps have what Bing likes to call “issues”.

In any 12-month period Bing and his team will talk to maybe 600 youngsters on street corners, in parks, in pools of light.

Often these groups have been identified as perhaps, and not always he stresses, causing a few problems for the community where they gather.

“There are ‘hot spot’ areas in Oldham, no doubt about that, and we talk to these guys and help put them on the straight and narrow. That’s the plan, to try to avert anti-social behaviour and, further down the line, to try to steer these kids away from a life outside normal, accepted behaviour.”

His adult journey into his current job was almost a rite of passage.

His mother Gwen always worked in the community and encouraged her children to do likewise. From an early age Bing was involved in voluntary work at youth clubs across the borough, although the biggest influence in this respect — after his mum — was the Greenhill club in Glodwick where he grew up.

“Glodwick was one of my anchor points, no doubt about that. My neighbours were Italian, and next door to them was a Polish family, and further along the street was a Ukrainian household, and there was a Bengali family.

“There were West Indian families and then we started seeing more and more Asian families. We never had any issues, we just got on as kids, in and out of each other’s houses.

“I remember going to an Indian wedding when I was six and there is no doubt I was enriched by that experience.

“Having said all that, I have lived my life in the context of a black man in Oldham and I can tell you that Oldham is a much better place than people give us credit for . . . whenever there is a conversation about race issues or immigration I always ask the same question: “Who do you know from that community?

“There are lots of good people, from all walks or life and all communities, across the whole of Oldham.”

This experience has undoubtedly stood him in good stead in his current job . . . it’s a role that could have been tailor-made for Bing, but he came to full-time community work late in his professional and adult life.

On leaving Blue Coat School — which he describes a “brilliant experience” — he went to Oldham Technical College and for two years immersed himself in business studies, “skills I have never, ever used”. He laughed out loud as he told me this, and laughter comes obviously easily to the Big Fella.

Innocence

“I went to college because I was glad to leave school but didn’t really want to work,” he confessed with a look of innocence which I suspect has beguiled many a client and colleague over the years.

He found himself working on a YTS scheme at British Aerospace in Chadderton, arriving on the day 2,000 redundancies were announced.

Seven months later he was working for at the Fox Mill in Limeside for Courtaulds as a trainee industrial engineer and he was to stay with the giant spinning company for many years.

He witnessed first-hand the decline and eventual failure of the cotton and textile industry, not only in Oldham but across the region as Courtaulds finally succumbed and went under.

“I worked with some good people at Courtaulds, but there was always pressure, chasing, chasing, chasing.”

When the business finally went down Bing found work with a mate as a roofer before getting into community work full-time and eventually being “gently encouraged” to apply for his current role.

It is clearly a job for which he is admirably suited.

He is rightly proud of his involvement with the Go Oldham project which culminates each June with a free multi-racial event in Alexandra Park when the town’s youth comes together in a festival of fun with dragon-boat racing, arts and crafts, go-kart rallies, drumming and dance workshops, to mention just a few of the activities.

He also enjoys time with his children — daughter Kinsey, a 19-year-old studying politics an Liverpool University and son Simeon, following in his footsteps at Blue Coat.

They delight in trips to Jamaica, to visit their grandparents.

“It is important they understand and know their heritage,” says Bing who, although an Oldham lad through and through, has a picture of the wider world.

As a child of the Academy of Good Looks — as Fitton Hill amateur rugby league club used to be known, certainly by the players themselves — Bing has a rounded view of life that is bringing huge benefits to Oldham.

His work in the shadows, with his unsung-hero colleagues on the prevention team, is helping to build a better life for many youngsters and in this 10th anniversary year of the problems that catapulted Oldham into the national headlines, that is an achievement in itself.