Tom Harrisson, leader of the Worktown study was an early advocate of the Jack Kerouac school of writing. Other Mass Observers describe his manic, mammoth writing bouts,  from which he would emerge dazed, and sometimes quite smelly. Observer Walter Hood describes him typing away with a George Formby 78 playing over and over again on his gramophone.

So you can picture the scene here’s Lancashire legend, George Formby’s “Hindoo Man” which sort expresses the 1930s cultural attitudes which led to Mass Observation. I think you could call it confused colonialism.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXQtc107f74&noredirect=1

The photograph of Tom Harrisson is from Bolton Museum’s Worktown Archive. The Museum only hold the print, which is clearly Harrisson on a Bolton rooftop, but it is not obvious which film it belongs to