Hanratty and Budgie
Who killed Hanratty? by the Hon.Paul Foot of Private Eye left me as mystified as to the murderer's identity as when I began. For instance I should like to have known more about the dead man, Mr Gregsten's past, his friends and his relations—not only with Miss Storie. Without having read a transcript of the trial it is impossible to know what in- timate questions were put to Miss Stork about her dealings with the murderer and rapist and what evidence was produced, again of a physical and intimate kind, about Hanratty and Peter Alphon.
What struck me most was the resemblance of Hanratty, his friends and his milieu to Keith Waterhouse and Willis Hall's tele- vision series Budgie. There is the same agreeable but dim little thief, successful with girls but unsuccessful with fences. There is the same seedy Soho club, the same hustlers and the same friends with form.
do hope that Keith Waterhouse and Willis Hall will spare us Budgie in a Hanratty-like fix from which we should be obliged to draw some moral. I remember my uncle's deaf, eighty-year-old gardener Franks, being asked about the Craig and Bentley case. It was noisily explained to him that Craig had committed the murder but was under age and that Bentley had been hanged. 'Oh well, he were no good anyway,' he replied, characteristically illiberal.
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