Bill Naughton’s creation Alfie Elkins has had several outings since his first appearance in the 1962 radio play Alfie Elkins And His Little Life. In addition to the radio drama, this character has sustained a stage play, a novel and a sequel, a 1965 film and a 2004 remake.
Alfie Elkins turned out to have legs, the most notable being those of Michael Caine, the star of Lewis Gilbert’s 1965 movie Alfie, in which Caine’s long lean frame is stylishly clad in Mod-inspired duds such as low-rise grey tapered trousers and Chelsea boots. There’s also a double-breasted blazer bearing an RAF badge, worn without the irony with which military dress was adopted as a fashion later in the decade.
It begins with a classic Sweeney-type chase, as three armed robbers and their driver follow a security van across Waterloo Bridge in London. In the Kingsway Tunnel, now known as the Strand Underpass, the security van explodes and three men meet a horrific end.
The novel A Kind Of Loving by Stan Barstow was made into a 1962 film directed by John Schlesinger but Barstow went on to write two more books about the characters and the Vic Brown trilogy was made into an absorbing 10-part television series 20 years later in 1982.
