50 year sketch mystery

Curious sketches of tenor Mario Lanza which have been baffling West Midlands drinkers since the 1950s will be featured in an exhibition this month. Mark Andrews looks at the story behind their elusive artist.

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For the best part of 50 years, Black Country folk have been scratching their heads over a mystery artist who has been leaving sketches of Mario Lanza on beer mats around the area.

Dave Bartley has seen more than most. The Tipton poet has received more than 100 beer mats from the elusive scribbler - known only as AJW or The Mario Lanza Ghostwriter - as well as 40 postcards, poems, and other items bearing his trademark drawing of the American singer and initials.

Dave has also received more than 1,000 telephone calls relating to the "calling cards" after AJW started including Dave's mobile phone number on them, including one left in an entrance to the Express & Star's Wolverhampton offices last week.

He is convinced the artist has spoken to him on the telephone after he was featured in the Express & Star appealing for information about the drawings.

Approval

"My phone number was in the paper, and a man called asking what would I think if the ghostwriter started putting my number on his drawings," he says. "I said it might lead to me getting more information. I am convinced he indirectly asked for my approval by anonymously ringing me."

While most of Dave's calls come from people who have picked the mats up around the Black Country, some are from further afield. One was from Peter Axworthy, a Chester pub licensee, who told him mats had been left at his inn on several occasions. He only discovered AJW was from the West Midlands when he read about him in the Express & Star while visiting relatives in Halesowen.

But the most intriguing sightings have been in France. In June Dave received an anonymous letter accompanied by a Lanza beermat and his telephone number. The letter said: "Contents found in a bar/restaurant (Auberge De La Mole), a small village in the South of France."

A few weeks later he received a call from a Tipton resident who claimed to have found a mat in a harbourside cafe in St Tropez.

The earliest drawing is believed to date back to the time of the singer's premature death in 1959, but it was in the 1970s that it really took off.

Dave says until recently the drawings were confined mainly to the Dudley area, but have started finding their way further afield.

"It's spread to Tipton, and I've had numerous calls from the Wolverhampton area. In May the Ghostwriter toured the River Severn," says Dave. "I received a string of postcards from Worcester, Arley, Bridgnorth, Shrewsbury and Welshpool."

The Express & Star received an interesting letter about the artist in December 2002, when an anonymous reader enclosed two beer mats - one featuring a drawing of Lanza, the other a sketch of Des O'Connor.

The writer claimed to have been shopping in Dudley market place when they felt a hand enter their pocket. "I thought it was a pickpocket, but I found two beer mats which had been put into my pocket, and saw a small, dwarf-like man dressed in red walking away," said the letter.

The Lanza picture had the words "They seek me here, they seek me there" written below, while the sketch of the much-lampooned O'Connor said: "The one and only Des O'Connor, The King of England."

Last year a beermat was found in a Stourbridge phone box suggesting there may be more than one artist. It said: "It's been said that the media know the identity of the Phantom ghost writer. But being unable to catch him in the act they can't prove it. Copycats have made it more difficult."

The mat gave the address of a Wall Heath community website, and the phone number of a pub.

Dave, aged 50, has picked up a few clues about AJW's identity, but is not really any the wiser.

Revelation

In April, asking him to write a poem, Dave obliged, and his tome included the following verse:

"Perhaps it's a prankster, there's no way of knowin', A joker from Dudley, or maybe Halesowen. Is he from Wordsley? Or Dudley Port? Or beyond the grave, now there's a thought..."

Shortly after, Dave received a postcard of Dudley Castle, with the revelation that AJW lives in Dudley. In other correspondence he has told Dave that he went to the same school as he did, Park Lane Boys in Tipton.

He is convinced his friend Ray Nash, from Dudley, knows the identity of the artist, and has hinted he is better known by his second name, so is more likely to be a Joe or a John.

"Ray worked as an apprentice with a Tividale engineering company," says Dave. "During his apprenticeship he worked alongside a chap who constantly burst into song - Mario Lanza songs."

When Ray became licensee of the Railway Inn in Brierley Hill, he soon came across AJW's mats and other correspondence referring to their time working together. He even sent a book he borrowed 20 years earlier.

Some people might find the deluge of telephone calls irritating, but Dave loves hearing people's tales, and says really he is glad that he has never been able to uncover the mystery.

"I have no problem with the fact that AJW incorporates my number on his beer mats," he says.

"He has become part of the Black Country's history.

"It's an honour that he has taken the time and trouble to contact me so often. I consider the man to be a gentleman and a mysterious friend."

A display of AJW's drawings and correspondence will be in Stourbridge Library from November 13 to 25.