RIVATIVE'S FIRST OBITUARY:
DAVID TOMLINSON
by TRAVIS HUBERT LONGBOTTOM III

David Tomlinson, actor
born May 7, 1917
died June 24, 2000 at age 83

David Tomlinson delighted generations of children with his paternal role in Mary Poppins, the 1964 Disney classic that made a star of Julie Andrews. The film fired the imagination
of many a bored child and introduced into their vocabulary the delectably nonsense word "super-cali-fragi-listic- expi-ali-dociuos". Tomlinson played George Banks, the father of two mischievous children, Jane and Michael, whose magical nanny teaches them how to make life more exciting. With the help of Bert, a happy-go-lucky chimney sweep, she makes every chore a game and every day a "JollyHoliday". Even when in the Banks family home on Cherry Tree Lane Mary Popppins uses a "Spoonful of Sugar " (early reference to valium, or "mother's little helper") to make life much more fun. Based on the 1934 book by. . . who gives a fuck. Let's get back to the dead actor.

For Tomlinson, the British cinema's original upper-class silly ass, it was the hight point in a career that kept him on stage and screen for almost 40 years. He appeared in more than 50 films and his later credits include . . . and something with Peter Sellers.

In a scene that could have been lifted straight from one of his own films, Tomlinson was once involved in a contretemps with a real-life chimney-sweep who, having arrived at Tomlinson's Buckinghampshire home to clean the chimneys, found that Tomlinson wanted to use the equipment to do the job himself. A heated stand-off ensued until the police were called and damped it down.

Earlier in his career Tomlinson had been fortunate to survive when a red-and-silver Tiger Moth aircraft he was piloting crashed ten yards from his own back garden, watched by his wife and their two sons.

Fortunately, David Cecil MacAlister Tomlinson was the son of a highly respected London lawyer who defended his son on those flying charges. Tomlinson was later to discover that his hero Father, instead of residing for 40 years at the Junior Carlton Club during the week and then spending the weekend with his family in Folkestone, had actually lived from Monday to Friday in Chiswick with a mistress by whom he had seven children. The secret came to light when Tomlinson's brother Peter was tavelling on the top of a double-decker bus through West London and saw his father in an upstairs room taking tea in his pyjamas.

That's about all that's interesting in this guy's obit in the London paper, except that he was a dropout from an upper class school, and it was his accent and willingness to make fun of upper-class assholes that made him a star.

So let that be a lesson to ya, kids. If a chimney sweep comes to your door, outdrink the bastard and hit him with his own brooms! Crash planes into your wife and kids. And always peer into second storey windows when you're on a doubledecker bus. Don't forget even Julie Andrews showed her tits in the movies. And always take medicines with tea, or whenever you have some unpleasant duties to perform

 

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