David Williams

Tommy Tucker Lives

Little Tommy Tucker

Sings for his supper

What shall we give him?

White bread and butter

Tommy Tucker, for many the protagonist of a popular nursery rhyme, once existed in flesh and blood.

If that seems an unlikely scenario, consider too that he was born to a family of bakers in a quiet corner of rural Ireland. Not only that, but he was a large part of the reason why the bakery in question grew from a small, but respectable family enterprise, into one of the chief producers of bread in the country.

The most astonishing part of this story, however, is that none of this happened by chance. The incarnation of Tommy Tucker was part of a scheme so bizarre – and so immoral - that it has remained a closely-guarded family secret for the past 40 years.

Until now.

For far too long, the conspiracy, the intrigue and the deception behind this most Machiavellian of plots has remained hidden from the public. Those who fell under the spell of Tommy Tucker and purchased bread from these mischievous bakers deserve, finally, to know the truth.

The story begins on the morning of New Year’s Day, 1975…

The kitchen of the Williams family home in Taghmon, usually a room charged with animated conversation, barking dogs and whistling kettles, was strangely silent.

The brothers Williams, their hair streaked with flour, were sitting in nervous anticipation at the table. They were tired too; the hours from dusk to dawn had been spent sweating and swearing amid the heat and clamour of the low-slung building next door.

The working hours, and the confined conditions, were not unfamiliar to the family. For ever since their grandfather, Lar, founded a bakery and shop on the same site more than 80 years earlier, bread had been their business.

The place in which they were born and raised was called Taghmon, a village located in the south-east of Ireland in a county called Wexford. In the years since it was founded, the bakery had been passed down from father to son, with each generation bringing their own talent and ambition to bear. The brothers had been handed the reins from their own father a few years earlier and were determined to further broaden the bakery’s reach and customer base.

At that point, the bakery was producing about 25-30 types of bread, including sliced pans white and brown, crusty loaves of various shapes and sizes, soda-bread, batch loaves and barm bracks.

That winter, having recently installed new plant and machinery in the bakery, they had devised a recipe for a new white sliced pan that they reckoned and hoped would sell better than any previous product in the history of the company; and importantly, without compromising on quality.

Up to then, the success of Williams’ bread was due to the fact that it was still baked in the traditional manner, reflecting the firm’s long-standing belief that quality, flavour and freshness should always take precedence.

That night, they had tried out their new recipe for the first time. Having emerged from the oven only minutes before, the finished product now sat cooling on the table before them. This was no ordinary breakfast. The presence of their father at the head of the table was the main reason for the brother’s aforementioned apprehension. They had asked him to taste-test their new loaf. It was the obvious move. As a master baker with more than six decades experience, there was no better judge of bread than Tommy Williams.

Taking his time, the old man cut himself a slice and as the aroma of hot, fresh bread swirled about the room, he ate slowly and deliberately.

His verdict left no room for ambiguity.

‘Well, that beats Banagher.”

The relief all around was palpable and soon the kitchen was humming again as the wives and children arrived down for breakfast.

Normally, the new loaf would have been added to the production line without delay, but today was different. This latest product had the potential to introduce Williams’ bread into new shops in unchartered territories.

The bakers knew it, and they knew what they had to do.

The time had come for them to hold their noses and dive into the deep, black pool of public relations. Like their ancestors before them, the alien and murky world of PR was not something that the bakers of Taghmon would have readily embraced. The thought of prostrating themselves in front of the public in order to sell more bread instilled in them a terror like no other.

But this time, they knew they had no choice. This new loaf was too good to leave anything to chance.

But what could they do? A radio commercial was suggested, but was shot down on the basis that the local station had refused to cover that year’s Mardi Gras festival. And given that week’s Wexford People had carried a sniping report about Taghmon’s hard-fought victory over Clongeen in the county intermediate football championship, a newspaper ad was also out of the question.

Soon, they stumbled upon an idea. One of the brothers told how he read about a bakery in another part of the country that had named their new loaf ‘Peter Pan’. And that sales of this branded product had performed remarkably well. Was there any reason, he asked, why the trick couldn’t be repeated in Taghmon?

Here is where things become hazy. Having failed to appoint someone to take the minutes of this impromptu meeting, the exact nature of what took place over the next hour or so will forever remain shrouded in mystery.

What did become clear in later years was that there were three topics of conversation that it was wise to avoid when the family at large came together for a social occasion. The first was to query who amongst them baked the best traditional brown soda bread – a category that was open to all-comers in the family.

The second was confined to the brothers themselves. Having been raised in the 50s and 60s, it was woe betide anyone who dared introduce into a conversation about rock ‘n’ roll anyone apart from the hallowed trio of Jerry Lee Lewis, Eddie Cochrane or Buddy Holly. A neighbour, who called for tea one evening about 10 years previously, mentioned Cliff Richard in the same context and was swiftly escorted to the front door and hadn’t crossed the threshold since.

The third emerged from that January morning and it was to enquire who in the family first mentioned the name ‘Tommy Tucker’.

It is a sad state of affairs that, even to this day, the slightest mention of either has the potential to swiftly reduce a civilised and carefree conversation into a week of furious and unpredictable violence. And not just amongst the men of the house.

In any event, on that particular morning, all present were of one mind. The name for the latest addition to the product range would take its inspiration from a nursery rhyme. The ‘Tommy Tucker’ Williams White Sliced Pan was born.

As they had hoped, the new branded bread performed very well. Sales were more than satisfactory and for most families that might have been enough. But these bakers were of a different breed. Mere respectability was never going to cut it.

Sometime in early 1976, a sinister but admittedly ingenious plan was hatched to create a real-life Tommy Tucker. More, this walking, talking advocate for bread would not just represent the new loaf; he would be a mascot for Williams Bakery itself.

Now, this wasn’t a straightforward matter. For one, though the brothers had produced five offspring by that time, sadly (for the purposes of the challenge in question at least) they were all female. It was obvious that certain steps would have to be taken.

An emergency board meeting was called. Reportedly, it was a tense affair. The brothers coolly laid out their proposition. Their wives calmly responded with their demands. After some negotiation, a deal was struck.

And lo, the first of the next generation of Williams’ men entered the world that November. He was followed by two more baby boys in the summer, and another four males over the next 10 years.

Yes, when the Williams men put their mind to it, anything was possible.

The family quickly got to work. As soon as he was able to chew, the first-born male was put on a strict diet of white bread. The picture below, only recently discovered, is clear evidence of his early eating habits. The story goes that this was the boy’s first taste of Williams’ bread and, although it might seem an innocent-enough scene, it masks the profound terror that gripped the bakers seconds after the shot was taken, when the boy spat the bread out onto the floor.

But they persisted. With the future of the business at stake, failure simply wasn’t an option.

Matters developed quickly. The boy soon found himself addicted to fresh crusty loaves (an infatuation that, sadly, he finds hard to shake, even to this day).

On his third birthday, he was presented with this mug. He drank from it - and it alone - for the next two years. 

And then there is this incontrovertible piece of evidence.

This photograph was taken at a festival in Taghmon in the early 1980s. It sees little Tommy, his sisters and some of his cousins assembled in a neatly-formed semi-circle, all grinning like orphans on visiting day and sporting white t-shirts adorned with large, crude black lettering.

This image represents the smoking gun of this story. The message on the chest of the small boy on the right leaves absolutely no room for ambiguity. He has, by this point, fully embraced his rogue identity.

The image itself also raises a number of disturbing questions. How did the bakers convince the other children to act as Tommy Tucker cheerleaders? Had they too bought into the charade? Any why is the other little boy wearing a sailing jumper whilst tightly gripping a chocolate lollipop?

No doubt all will be revealed someday in a family will.

Alas, the adventures of Tommy weren’t destined to last. Unlike Peter Pan, this little boy was slowly growing up. Soon he could perform the role of Tommy no more. But the bakers, with infinite wisdom, had already anticipated for this inevitable day.

Yes, ‘phase two’ was already well under way.

A few months later, cartoon Tommy was revealed. The resemblance with the original and real-life Tommy was immediately striking, as this comparison demonstrates. 

 A hugely-effective PR campaign was launched that included the publication of a series of sketches in the local newspaper lampooning Tommy in various scenarios. Soon he became a star in his own right. It was only a matter of time before he adorned the wrapping paper of almost every product sent forth from Williams Bakery.

The bread sold well – and Tommy was the showman. Banished to the wings, the boy, now clothed in a new uniform, threw his bag of schoolbooks over his shoulder and walked on, the injustice of it all silently taking shape inside.

By the end of the 1980s, cartoon Tommy had reached celebrity status. He became bigger than the bread he helped to sell, and, for the bakers who had created him, that could not continue. Luckily, before they had a chance to replace him with another outrageous PR stunt, Williams Bakery was approached to form a new national bread group, which they did in 1989.

While the bakery in Taghmon continued to trade, Williams Bakery – and Tommy Tucker – were no more.

So what happened to the boy? Thankfully, he has come to accept the first five years of his life as something he cannot change. And, if he was to be perfectly honest, nor would he want to. He has long since forgiven the bread-makers for their folly. After all, who in their right mind can ever stay mad at a baker?

So, having recently celebrated his 40th birthday - that time of our lives when we are all duty bound to review who we are, who we were and who we might be, Tommy is ready to cast off the shackles of fear and loathing and embrace that part of him that remained hidden under a cloak of uncertainty and confusion for the past 35 years.

For too long now the only evidence of Tommy Tucker’s existence has been fading from view amongst battered photographs or on wrinkled scraps of oily bread-wrapper pressed between the pages of an old scrapbook.

No more. It is time to embrace Tommy Tucker once again.

While parts of this story are true, some elements have been (wildly) exaggerated