I was born on the 16th of April 1941 at a small nursing home at Rayners Lane in Middlesex to my Mum, ‘Violet Winifred Henderson’ (but known most of her life as ‘Fluff’) and my Dad was ‘George Eric’ (always known as ‘Eric’).
My father wasn’t there because at the time there was a World War was happening and he was in Africa for many years. I think I was 4 years old when he first saw me.
This is me soon after I was born and at 6 months old. I have always joked this was the only time in my life I looked cute. Another thing I also looked very brown, and I will talk about this later.
I was given the Christian names of ‘Anthony Eric’ but nearly everyone has always called me ‘Tony’ (although at school I was known as ‘Hendy’)
A few days after I was born I was taken to live in the home I would live in until I was 17 years old. It was in a nearby town, called Eastcote, and the address was 7 Hoylake Gardens.
In 2006, I took your Mummy to see this house, nearly 50 years after I left, and it looked like this.
It was raining, and the only changes were we didn’t have that additional entrance at the front door, and people didn’t have palm trees in their front gardens when i lived there