When Alison Gunn-Robson was having a tough time at school, her aunt’s 128-year-old ventriloquist dummy George helped her cope.
George – who appears on The Repair Shop on Wednesday night –was made in the late 1890s and worked in London music halls. He came to Alison’s family when his owner died and her aunt inherited him.
Alison, 73, recalls: “She didn’t like him. He gave her the creepies. She asked my mother when I was 11, ‘Do you think Alison would like this thing?’ Me and George have been inseparable since.”
As a girl in Seal Chart, Kent, she was bullied over her undiagnosed dyslexia.
She says: “I’d get beaten up in the street after school.
“At 11, I couldn’t read or write. The teachers gave up on me, they thought I was stupid. I was so shy and had an inferiority complex. But George helped bring me out of my shell.”
Alison would spend hours with the doll, working out how to operate his moving parts and coming up with an East End accent for him.
Later, she entertained her schoolmates during the intervals of plays.
Alison recalls: “George and I would go on stage and say all sorts of things about the teachers… everyone would laugh.”
But the years hadn’t been kind to the papier mâché dummy.
His suit had holes in it, his shoes were being kept on by an elastic band and the strings connecting his eyelids, lower jaw and hair were also fraying.
Alison says: “He was a bit of a mess but I couldn’t find anyone expert enough to repair him.”
So it was with trepidation she approached The Repair Shop, who had four people working on him.
Ceramics guru Kirsten Ramsay repainted George’s face, mechanical expert David Burville rewired the dummy’s operational parts and Julie Tatchell and Amanda Middleditch made him a new wardrobe and wool hair.
Alison says: “It was an out-of-body experience seeing him afterwards.
“Now he sits in his own chair on my landing. I know George isn’t everyone’s cup of tea but he’s been a dear friend.
“Now I need to work out what happens to him when I go. I couldn’t bear for him to be dumped in a bin.”
* The Repair Shop, BBC1, 8pm, on Wednesday.
