How old is Lawrence White do you think?

[sheepiefarm]

This is just one of those throw away background moments that KO threw in for the sake of a quick bit of sensationalism.

Oh look - Lawrence White was Edna's husbands lover who went to jail  

And then suddenly he's pretty much ticking all the boxes as a heterosexual character cos "we" want to bring in his extended family as our new Home Farm family.
They've toyed around with this background without ever being specific about any of it (much like Robert's sudden bisexuality).
They hinted at stuff during a scene with Robert & Lawrence - but that was more to set up the shock of Robert jumping in to bed with Aaron.
They threw another kindler on to the fire when we had "one" scene between Lawrence & Bernice about him being tortured - but that was simply to justify the "no-sex married couple" scenario they were building to.


Its all just your typical Kate Oates "all-surface-no-depth" style of narratives.

Like Nicola's teenage abortion or Carly's dead child.

Maybe the new producer will delve a bit deeper here with Lawrence, but I wouldn't bank on it - too much story has been told with the Whites now - and too many opportunities where it could have had a natural "lead-in" storywise have come & gone.

[kitkat1971]

They've now muddied the waters even more, I assume so there will be a source of conflict between Chrissie and Rebecca should she every turn up, by establishing that he could/might be Rebecca's father.

So, clearly able to do the deed with a woman at least once then.

I remember speculating months ago that maybe this 'aversion therapy' had basically left him asexual or impotent. It succeeded in making him find the idea of sex with another man so abhorrant (by associating it with pain) that he never had another homosexual relationship. But he'd never been sexually attracted to women in the first place so that meant no sex at all, even if he tried. Hence him turning a blind eye to his wife's affairs, indeed encouraging them as he wanted to have children and couldn't sire them himself.

It's still crap re them skirting round exactly what was done to him but at least the would be some logic to it and it would drive home that it ruins lives. It isn't a 'cure' anymore than just cutting somebody's genitalia would be.

Which leads me to - they had the means of, and we're practicising chemical castration way before the 1960s so wouldn't that have taken over from aversion therapy? *"4+, wasn't aversion therapy aor castration an alternative to imprisonment rather than something that happened in conjunction with it?

As Sheepie says, nothing about it has been properly thought through. Which is actually quite offensive towards anybody that actually experienced, or lived in fear of experiencing arrest for homosexuality. And those people are still alive today, make no bones about it.

[CAEF]

Either they have not thought it through as to how old Larry is, or he is older than he looks. As I said, the age he looks now, gives me the impression that he was about 3 in 1964 when he was jailed, lol. So the worlds youngest convict and he came out at such a young age lolol.

Joking aside I reckon he was at least 20 in 1964 so born before 1944.

[butterball]

So are Larry and Bernice to actually do the deed and consummate their marraige?  His passions were obviously ignited by his old flame Ronnie Corkhill who managed to get a brand new digger delivered the same day as he complained about the old one. The digger is obviously to play a part in the story.

[roverman]

It seems to me that they wanted John Bowe for the soap because he's such a good actor and they thought they could fudge the age issue with makeup and brushing his hair differently. He's got to be 70 realistically for the prison thing to make sense. How the Birches ending up painting Laurence as the perpetrator I don't know. I can't see Edna perjuring herself under oath. I imagine on paper it looked like a brilliant storyline, an older character with some kind of "offscreen history" to the Village, a non familial link to an existing character that would flesh out their backstory as well as his own.

It left me wondering who else could have played Larry. I thought about Brian Capron (Richard Hillman) as he is actually 69 years old but he looks even younger! Leslie Grantham is another good contender but he's just too well known from Eastenders. There's a fine line between mature and ancient and in the acting world it seems to go one of 2 ways; they either look young until they hit 90 or they look knackered by 56!

I then decided that I would have cast Chris Ellison on the proviso he could do a halfway decent Northern accent. He is 70 later this year and I believe could credibly play someone with a past.

[CAEF]

Please Emmerdale writers, don't keep us in suspenders as Ethel Skinner said, just take a few seconds to mention Lozza's age in a script.

[sheepiefarm]

Last night just seemed to muddy the waters even more with regard to Lawrence's age.

He claimed this thing with Ronnie happened 40 years ago - so as well as having an affair with Edna's husband - going to jail for that (long enough to be tortured AND presumably being old enough to go to jail for it) - he's also had this "thing" (whatever it was) with Ronnie.
Bearing in mind this "thing" with Ronnie must've happened shortly after he was released from prison (otherwise Lawrence would need to be 80+ ) - then it kinda puts a mockery on the torture repressed his sexuality narrative. 


For me - this story just digs a deeper hole for itself with each new plot point being added to it 

[Lotty27]

It's ridiculous now, what started off a different and potentially great storyline has regressed into sexual melodrama. Says something big about the shambles of a storyline that we're more bothered about how old Lawrence is to see if what they've presented tallies, I've never been so bothered about a character's age before. Can't shag Bernice (OK, he's an aged man, that could be the reason nowadays) but could seemingly give his first wife one once in a while (Lawrence thinks he could be his other daughter's father) and, and Sheepie says, didn't seem to have too much trouble getting down with Ronnie not all that long after he was released from prison - so it looks like it wasn't just his wife who could do what she wanted in the marriage then? Not quite the sacrifice that Lawrence was making it out to be!

John Bowe is very good, the actress who plays Bernice has really stepped up to the plate but I'm rapidly losing patience with this storyline now in a 'piss or get off the pot' way, either tell us it all NOW or make it go away altogether because from where I'm sitting they've thrown too much at it and spoiled it.

[CAEF]

He met Ronnie in about 1975. He was jailed in 1964 for having a gay relationship with Harold Birch. In 1967 homosexuality was not a crime any more. It is unknown how long he was in prison for. They should try to be more specific with dates, if I wrote the eps I would mention his age in 1964 and how long he was in jail for.

The dates and timeline is so muddy it will take about 5 years to understand.

[roverman]

One presumes that once it had been decriminalised that he would have been released. I've decided that Laurence is around 74-75 and that he did time because he was a single man, whereas Harold was a respectable married man.

[CAEF]

I know a man who is 73, born January 1943 but he looks about 58. He has a beard and short brown hair, little grey. His age shows more in his hands. He is about Lozza's age so it is not unknown for a 75 year old to look about 60.

75 is the new 60 today.

[kitkat1971]

Lawrence has to be mid 70s (21+ in 1964 when he was imprisoned, more likely mid twenties) for the history ot that plot to make any sense whatsoever.

I have no problem with people looking younger than they are - that does happen - Bill Roache for example doesn't look like a man in his 80s. But i think casting a man who is 15 years younger than the character would have to be, and a very handsome man at that, has done them a disservice. Which i hate saying as I love John Bowe, he's a great actor who i am happy to have in any soap but he has been miscast here due to age -if he were a young looking 75 year old, fair enough but he's not - he's an unusually handsome man of 60ish. Saadly, it is colouring the whole storyline, not helped by their somewhat shoddy treatment of a very serious subkect.

I think we'd have had the same issues with Les Grantham and Chriss Ellison and certainly Brian Capron. They all are, and look, too young. Alan Rothwell (if he's still acting) Would have been a possibility or maybe Malcolm Tierney (Brookside! Lovejoy). Or Ian McShane speaking of Lovejoy - he's the right sort of age and attractive.

[roverman]

You'd need a medium for Tierney. Sadly he's been dead 2 years.

McShane is a good suggestion. I'd like to see him do a soap.

[kitkat1971]

You know when I posted, I had a feeling Tierney had passed on and nearly checked - should have done!

[CAEF]

I can say for definite Lozza White was born before 31st December 1945 as he was said to be a young man when he had a relationship with Harold which was in 1964. That means he was at least 18 in 1964. But he had to have been 21 at least to not be considered a "minor". Edna Birch was born in 1937 so Harold was about the same age, maybe a bit younger.

In October 2014 Lozza was said to have had this affair "over 50 years ago", so maybe just over.

I think he was born in 1941, 1942 or 1943.