John Gulliver: To Boldly Go… Meet Paul ‘Alantis' Dobson
Tenants campaigner almost became Billy Mitchell in Eastenders
Friday, 12th April — By John Gulliver
Paul ‘Alantis’ Dobson is planning his autobiography
IT was possibly a little early for a tipple when I met Paul “Alantis” Dobson late Friday morning, which was a shame because I sense he’d make a good drinking partner.
A Star Trek and Spurs aficionado, baseball cap and wild animal statue collector, Regent Canal fisherman and son of a London Zoo keeper, the former professional actor turned tenants rep is now helping run the show at his sheltered housing block in the heart of Queen’s Crescent.
He told me his autobiography is in the pipeline. Called The Boy That Nearly Was, it’s a nod to the 1980 film The Boy That Never Was in which he starred as the character Charlie.
Mr Dobson – using his stage name Paul Alantis – played Oliver on the West End stage and had credits in other notable films, but got pipped to what would have been a career-defining role in the late 1990s.
“I was actually beaten to the part of Billy Mitchell [Phil and Grant’s cousin] in EastEnders by my mate Perry Fenwick.
“We were told it was between the two of us, but he got it.
“He did take me for a pint afterwards, but when I think about what could have been – he’s been doing that role now for about 25 years.
“If I’d stayed single I’d probably still be doing acting now. But I’ve been married twice. Lived in Agar Grove with the first. Somers Town with the second. And now I’m here.”
Mr Dobson, who worked most of his life as a dispatch motorbike rider, said he felt at home in the Crescent where many people know him by name and he has roots going back generations.
“I was walking past the Blue Sea Fish Bar the other day, and there’s a tap at the window and an ‘oi, this is for
you’. They gave me a new cap.
“Then I go into the off-licence and he says, ‘here you are this is for you’.
“It was another cap. I collect caps you see.
“Every one of them I have worn, except one: a 9/11 cap a friend of mine bought me. I’ve never had that on me head.”
A veteran of Camden’s tenant movement, Mr Dobson is trying to unite reps from all sheltered housing blocks to form a group to sit on Camden’s District Management Committees (DMC).
He said: “Right now no one tells the residents here anything about what’s going on and at the same time it’s a case of residents telling me if something is happening.
“I organise meetings in the common room once a month, I’m the only one with the keys, and we have a coffee morning there every Tuesday.
“I was downstairs at 6am this morning opening the backdoor for the bin men.”
He added: “I think I get that from my granddad, who was the secretary of the Queen’s Crescent Community Centre, back when it was a social club.
“He got me involved there when I was young. His real name was Ernest, but everyone called him Jim or Bob.
“My parents were Stan and Barbara. The old man was a zookeeper at London Zoo.”
Mr Dobson recalled food childhood memories of going “backstage” at the zoo and once “taking a fully grown cheetah for a walk”, adding: “I’m not scared of any animals, bar one – rats. They’re too unpredictable.”
He remembered how watching the first moon landing as a boy on a brand- new colour TV had a big impact on him.
“Yes, I’m a big Trekkie, been that way since I was about 10,” he said. “The original series, I’ve got the entire collection on video.
“The Next Generation I’ve got on DVD. I know every episode and I’ve done every quiz on the laptop – you get rated online, they made me an Admiral.”
When not watching Star Trek, Mr Dobson has enjoyed life cheering on the Spurs or fishing.
“I fished all the Heath ponds, but what I really loved was to go down the canal, just off Gloucester Avenue [in Primrose Hill],” he said. “You get roach, perch, ream, tench, carp, eels, pike, rudd.
“I used to go every week, sometimes twice a week – because I had nothing else to do after I had to retire from ill health.
“I’ve had a couple of big operations – perforated ulcer, and gall bladder out. My appendix. I’ve had 19 stitches in my head from the epileptic fits, when I’ve gone out and whacked my head on the pavement.
“What I say is from there upwards [points chin-high], I’m about 30. But from there downwards, I’m about 90.”
He has had a rough time in terms of his own family. His son was killed in a car crash two years ago – it would have been his 40th birthday – and his daughter died at three months in a cot death.
Last year he found himself so weak he had to sip his pint through a straw and got barred from the local he had been going to since he was teenager, now getting the No 24 bus up to the Garden Gate in South End Green.
But ever the optimist, he told me: “I’ve had three heart attacks, two strokes, I got gout.
“I have high blood pressure, epilepsy. I was in hospital seven times last year for a total of three months. But I stopped taking my medication on Christmas Day.
“This year, the worst I’ve had is a bad pint.”