John Gulliver: A ghost of the King's Cross fire disaster arrives on stage
Body115 is on at the Hope Theatre is Upper Street.
Friday, 5th May 2023 — By John Gulliver
Jan Noble
“Body 115” was for many years one of the enduring mysteries of the 1987 King’s Cross fire disaster.
Thirty people were confirmed dead after the station’s underground ticket hall was engulfed in a fireball of 600 degrees centigrade, caused by a cigarette smouldering on a wooden escalator.
One of the victims was so badly burned that he was buried at St Pancras cemetery in East Finchley before he was identified.
His grave simply said “an unknown man”.
Forensic scientists later constructed a model of the head of Body 115 – the name came from his tag in the mortuary – in the hope of jogging someone’s memory.
Around the time of the 10th anniversary in 1997, British Transport Police began to focus on a missing man named Alexander Fallon.
He was known as a homeless drifter who had wound up at King’s Cross following the death of his wife in Scotland.
Forensics experts later concluded it was his body based on skull measurements.
The story has inspired a dramatic piece of lyrical poetry, soon to be performed by Jan Noble in a one-man show at the Hope Theatre.
Mr Noble told me: “The King’s Cross fire was I think a pivotal moment in London’s history.
“It was part of the old decaying London – with smoking allowed in tube stations that had wooden escalators – and the beginning of the new one.
“It was 15 years until they identified Body 115 and even today there is still a dispute about whether it was actually Mr Fallon.
“When they reconstructed his face out of clay, it was the first time they had used that technique. I remember it was a very haunting image, and a piece of artwork.
“For me there is something about seeing that image of a man who had lost his complete identity – face and name, burnt beyond recognition.
“It was a famous face, but no one knew who it was, like a relic from Pompeii.”
The clay mould of Alexander Fallon [BTP]
Mr Noble was once in the Monkey Island punk band that played in venues like the Dublin Castle, Hope and Anchor in Islington and toured Italy.
He has been the “principal reader” in Speaking Dante in 2022 – a 24-hour reading of the entire Divine Comedy in Florence, which included readings by Ralph Fiennes and Helen Mirren.
His latest poetic work, Shelley 200, was performed at Keats-Shelley House in Rome.
Closer to home, he ran poetry workshops at the old Waterlow building for mental health patients, and creative writing courses for the homeless at the Union Chapel in Islington.
He said: “You had people there who felt they had lost all identity.
They didn’t know who they were, or other people had rejected them. The people I sat with I tried to steer away from pity poetry and to tell a proper story.”
Describing the dramatic production, directed by Justin Butcher, Mr Noble said it was a kind of a “road movie with words”, adding invitingly: “We go underneath London into the sewers and pick away at little bits of literary history.”
This one-hour, one- person show is described by publicists as a “rhapsodic paean to the trammelling ecstasy of loss” and a “trans-European odyssey turned safari of the soul”, evoking writers like Keats and Marlowe, and taking in sights from Paris and Milan.
Explaining the concept, said: “The poet hero – which is me–goes on an adventure to find himself.
In Dante’s Divine Comedy, Dante is guided by the ghost of Virgil. I think someone who lost his identity and had it found for him is appropriate for that ghost.
“I’d like to say it’s reading a text with drama, rather than reading a poem.
“It’s OK for Arsenal players to clip balls at the Emirates and say that’s pure poetry – and that’s OK.
“But in general poetry has a terrible name, it turns people off. The main thing is it’s about getting stuck in and investigating.
There are so many untold stories to find – and this old ghost needed them.”
Body115 is on May 5, 6,10 and 13 at the Hope Theatre in Upper Street and at 7.45pm.
