Fred Dibnah

1593

Fred Dibnah : biography

1938-4-28 – 2004-11-6

Notes

Fame

Fred Dibnah, Steeplejack

In 1978 Dibnah was commissioned to make repairs to Bolton Town Hall. Decades of exposure to soot and rain had caused serious damage to the clock tower and Dibnah alerted the Clerk of Works to the condition of the 16 stone pillars at the top of the tower. He bought new stone, built a lathe in his workshop and created the replacement pillars. He was given the job of repairing the clock tower and he also gilded the golden sphere at the top of the building. While Fred was working from his bosun’s chair, a public relations officer at the Town Hall informed Dibnah that BBC Look North West wanted to interview him. The following week, the film crew arrived and Alistair MacDonald conducted the interview from the top of the building, with Dibnah perched outside on his scaffold. His warm and friendly manner combined with his enthusiasm and broad Lancashire accent proved popular and he was later contacted by producer Don Haworth, with a view to making a documentary. After several meetings over the course of a few weeks, filming began early one morning just as Dibnah had climbed to the top of a chimney at Shaw and Crompton, a mill town near Oldham. Sporadic filming took place over an 18-month period and captured Dibnah (with assistant Donald Paiton) working on a range of buildings, spending time with his family and enjoying his hobbies. Giulio Briccialdi’s Carnival Of Venice (performed by James Galway) was the music chosen to accompany Dibnah’s work on Bolton Town Hall. One of the more notable aspects was Dibnah’s 1979 demolition of a chimney in Rochdale. Standing only yards away from the base of the chimney as it began to collapse, his retreat to safety and subsequent boyish outburst of “Did you like that?” endeared him to viewers.

Fred Dibnah, Steeplejack won the 1979 BAFTA award for best documentary, and over the years Haworth returned to film more documentaries. With his newly found fame, however, came distractions from his work. Visitors would arrive at his house, to see his garden. He began to receive fan mail; one individual wrote to offer Dibnah a steam-powered machine he no longer wanted. One company, who were apparently disturbed to see Dibnah’s matches being extinguished by the wind while at the top of a chimney, sent him a sample of their windproof matches. Filming would also interfere with his work. Cameraman Martin Lightening would climb with Fred to the top of a chimney—with a 16mm film camera—and film him at work, often hundreds of feet above the ground.

Several years later, Dibnah and his family went on holiday, to Blackpool. The trip was filmed for television and showed Dibnah’s preference for working rather than holidaying. He did however manage to undertake the removal of a small chimney stack from a business in the town, under a distinctly grey sky and aided by his wife, Alison. His payment for the job was a new front plate for the boiler of his traction engine. Dibnah, however, refused to take any more holidays and, after 18 years of marriage, Alison booked and paid for a holiday to Greece, taking their three children (Jayne, Lorna and Caroline) with her. Dibnah remained at home and was surprised when, upon her return, she asked for a divorce. One day in October 1985, Dibnah attended a solid fuel exhibition in nearby Bury. Upon his return he discovered that Alison had left the house, taking with her their three children, the dog and some items of furniture. Short of money, he was forced to sell his antique AJS motorcycle. He found life without his family difficult but defended his wife: “There is no doubt whatsoever, she were a good help to me and I’m going to miss her. It was just that all the pressure got too much for her.”

Second marriage

Dibnah met his second wife Susan Lorenz—a 28-year-old administrator—at a steam rally in Cheshire. In The Fred Dibnah Story (1985) she recalled their first meeting: “He looked sad and miserable, quite a pathetic sort of figure really, none of the bounce that people knew him for.” He later invited her to a chimney felling in Oldham and then a talk he had been invited to give to a group of fans in Halifax, known as The Fred Dibnah Appreciation Society. Sue moved into Dibnah’s home in Bolton and the two married on 27 February 1987. She encouraged him to grow a moustache and also to give up smoking.