Working in East Ham
East Ham, in the area of East London formerly in Essex, is one of the places where I briefly worked during my long career in cinema management.
While I was still an Assistant Manager, in the mid sixties, I used to have to go out on relief a lot, being temporarily in charge of a cinema while the Manager was away.
I just did this for two days at the Odeon East Ham.
Years later, in the early seventies, while I was General Manager of the Classic Twin Cinemas at Westcliff, I worked at the same cinema late one night.
A few cinemas had started to show live boxing on closed circuit television, but on the cinema screen. At this time, the Manager of the Odeon East Ham was a personal friend, and he asked me to come over on the night he showed a fight, to help out as and where necessary.
The fight was the famous Rumble in the Jungle, when the incomparable Muhammad Ali won back the world heavyweight title by defeating George Foreman.
If anybody reading this has any conection with East Ham, or East London in general (Born? Lived? Worked? Relatives? Ancestors?), I will be very pleased to hear from them.
Posted by colin on Friday 29th August, 2008 at 8:09am