An original Wolverhampton Teddy Boy sheds light on mysterious photo and beautiful waistcoat

We recently shared this old photo of some dapper young Teddy Boys with the little information we had about it - our records say it was taken on February 27 of 1957 somewhere in the West Midlands, and not much else.

But it turns out that not even all of that was correct - as one of the boys in the photo, now a pensioner, got in touch to tell us we in fact had the date wrong.

The impressive quiff and intricately detailed waistcoat you see second from the right in the photo belonged to Alan Lees, who is now 84 and was all too keen to tell us more about this moment caught in time.

"I could tell it was me straight away!" Alan says at his home in Tettenhall.

"My waistcoat was silk with a hunting scene embroidered on it, with a pack of hounds - it was my pride and joy.

"It wasn't in February, it was on Easter Monday. There's another photograph taken on the same day at the station platform, of me standing on my own. I don't know where that photo is now."

Sadly, the waistcoat is also long gone. Alan says the photos were both taken at Wolverhampton train station with the group on their way to Blackpool for a day's excursion.

In a far cry from the violence that came to be associated with the Teddy Boy fashion by some, Alan and his gang restricted themselves to some harmless mischief by the seaside.

"We got up to all sorts - we got chased out of one or two shops for messing around. We went to the Pleasure Beach, we went to a cafe and had fish and chips. I remember there was some controversy about paying at the end!"

The group had been willing converts to the Teddy Boy fashion that swept the nation in the postwar years, with a penchant for mock-Edwardian suits, heavily coiffured hair and fancy waistcoats.

Alan is confident in naming the five others in the line-up: from left they are John Lees (no relation), Duncan McGregor, Patrick 'Paddy' Morgan, Keith Reynolds (they knew him as 'Reno') and Theodore Ireson.

Alan says the first three of these have since died - he went to the funeral of John Lees about 18 months ago - but he has lost touch with Reno and Theodore since their Teddy Boy days.

"[John] lived just off Henwood Road in Wolverhampton. To the others, I don't know.

"We all palled around since we were in school; John and Duncan and Paddy, they were about 12 months older than myself.

"I was 16 at the time that photo was taken, and John, Duncan and Paddy would be 17.

"We weren't like the Teddy Boys later on with velvet collars and that - we were the original Teddy Boys, the pioneers!

"We were always dressed up sharp with polished shoes. We took a lot of pride in being smart."

He says that on another occasion he and his friends visited Dudley Zoo in the same finery as in the photo, and that they turned more heads than the animals.

But what did their parents think of this dapper new style?

"There were some ribald comments of course - especially with my dad.

"I would come in and say I'd got some new shoes - he would ask how much I'd got them for. I'd say '39 and 11' [in old money] and he would say 'You've been had!'"

He remembers a lot of their shoe shopping would have been done at a shop called Bata in Wolverhampton's old town centre - long gone now.

And Duncan McGregor's mother, a dressmaker, would taper their suits for them.

The friends, who were coming of conscription age not long after the photo was taken, all went into National Service and went their separate ways.

"We all went into the forces," said Alan. "John and Paddy, they were in Germany. I was in Cyprus and in Aden [in Yemen].

"I was one of the last inducted to National Service. I was deferred for 12 months - if I'd been deferred again I would have missed it.

"I was in Cyprus during the EOKA Uprising. I got to see a bit of the world I wouldn't have got to see otherwise."

After he returned from the military, Alan and his brother Gerald started up a chain of butchers shops around the Black Country, with Lees Bros selling meat in Wolverhampton, Willenhall and Wednesbury.

Alan later ran a smallholding near Ditton Priors, in Shropshire.

That old photo of the Teddy Boys still has pride of place in Alan's home in Tettenhall, and he insists that he and his friends were in it for the fashion - even though he admits some of their ilk were less scrupulous.

"The Teddy Boys did have a bad press like all these things I suppose. Some of them, they had a drape collar and they had a bike chain hidden in the collar - that was a favourite weapon.

"But I can honestly say that none of the crowd in that photo were violent."

If Keith Reynolds, Theodore Ireson or any of the Teddy Boys' relatives are still out there, Alan would be very keen in getting back in touch with them. If any of the names or faces above are familiar to you, please contact rob.smith@mnamedia.co.uk.