Guardian review of Cheapjack

Cheapjack 
by Philip Allingham

Philip Allingham came from a family of journalists, and was little brother to the crime writer Margery Allingham. She titivated for publication his youthful memoir of lowlife on the showgrounds of Britain in the 1930s, and later pinched its weird tone for a few of her novels. Phil had realised early in the great depression that entry-level office jobs were asphyxiating him, and so he chanced it round the circuit of the last great fair weeks, when all of a county was en fete simultaneously, out for a lark on the rides and shies or in the booths and among the crowds. He was almost a toff, and at first traded on it, wearing his dinner suit to "read palms" - Phil had a novelist's gift for character and so told people about their present selves, a revelation before the age of pop psychology. Then he realised he was a natural at the stand-up comic routine cheapjacks used to sell novelties, and went on to flog hair curlers with the help of young teen assistants and their lovely if nitty locks. Original, unpatronising dispatches from a world you never suspected had existed.

Vera Rule         (Guardian March 13th 2010)