Tuesday 20 November 2012

A familiar face pops up on the the Oliver Reed Wimbledon 8 pub crawl


The Wimbledonians amongst you will no doubt have been amused to see none other than Simon Taylor - the world famous inventor of "The Duck" - pop up at 5'25". Nice to see that the old boy hasn't lost any of his legendary strength. 

I am indebted to Wimbledon College OB and renowned Welsh musicologist Richard Murphy (better known to all and sundry as "Spud" in those less enlightened times) for telling me about this nostalgia-inducing video when he kindly phoned to wish me Happy Birthday earlier today. Coincidentally, I remember Richard was there the first time I ever tried weight-lifting - I managed three lifts before what passed for my biceps gave out. Murphy promptly did ten in double-quick time without breaking sweat. I wonder if he and Simon Taylor ever arm-wrestled?

18 comments:

  1. A good walk down memory lane. My only sighting of Oliver Reed was of his legs sticking out from some bushes in our neighbour's garden. He kept shouting out "Basil, Basil, I didn't mean it". Is Simon Taylor the chap who had shoulder-length hair who was a debt collector and who toted a double-barrelled shot-gun? My memories of Wimbledon are of a bunch of creepy little KCS dwarves hanging around in the hall, juicy kisses from the hound and constant complaints from the Havers mob [the Attorney General and his drip son Nigel]about deposits in their garden. Also, Sir Hugh Wontner screaming abuse from his bed-room window after your 200th attempt to kick-start your motor bicycle.I miss these days.

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    1. SDG,the debt-collector was the late Bill Major who was as gentle as a lamb.
      Simon Taylor is the most modest of men,a gifted artist and rugby player,although he was plagued by self-doubt.Lovely to see him.

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    2. I didn't realise I was being shouted at by a knight of the realm, SDG. What an honour!

      Apparently, because of Havers's presence, a guard post was eventually erected outside our old place for his protection. I seem to remember some story about the IRA trying to get into his garden from the school playing fields at the back of Gothic Lodge.

      I fear your extreme age may be inducing false memory syndrome. As I'm sure you now recall, the KCS friends who regularly used our downstairs hallway as a smoking room (often using the tobacco from the stubs of your Players cigarettes in a roll-up - which is about as carcinogenic as it gets) mainly consisted of burly rugby players, scholars and wits who would have added lustre to the Algonquin Round Table. They were as uncreepy as it is possible to be - I think you may be mixing them up with the chums from the Dotheboys Hall you attended . There was one acquaintance of mine who you dubbed "the keyhole creeper", but that was when I was about 13. Being a tall person myself, I have always been extremely relaxed about other people's height - in fact, I am utterly non-PORGist to the core of my being (I cite my admiration for Toby Young as evidence).

      As Southern Man reports, Bill Major was a charming chap, even though he did almost cause O.J. Grønmark apoplexy the first caught sight of him walking past our place on the way to the Hand.)

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  2. Southern Man. Thank you for clearing that up.

    Who was the actor [Cuban Heels, very bad wig]who stomped up and down Woodhayes Road? A Canadian person? Haven't thought about Wimbledon in years - happy days, indeed.

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    1. Well, it can't be Barry Foster or Edward Judd. So I'm guessing you're thinking of William Sylvester (his son, Mio, was at King's, I seem to remember), who played Dr Heywood Floyd in "2001: A Space Odyssey". I have no knowledge of his tonsorial arrangements.

      Am I right?

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  3. Oliver Reed employed an old KCS boy to look after his horses for a while. He couldn't keep up with the lifestyle and to make ends meet did a bit of taxi driving, which is where we came into contact, although the fact that he was permanently topped up and his car was semi-roadworthy at best made for a fairly tense series of airport runs.

    He told me the following story. During the filming on location of a Michael Winner epic called Hannibal Brooks in the 60s, there were long periods of inactivity while the elephant handlers, elephants being part of the plot, tried to get them into a cooperative mood. Reed and his American co-star called Michael J. Pollard passed the time drinking and gambling with each other and the crew. Eventually, they settled on a daily wager involving an estimation of the weight of elephant shit deposited overnight. Large sums were involved.

    In order to make the odds more favourable, Reed appointed my taxi friend as a sort of elephant poo broker, his job being to maintain a covert store of deposits so that iin the middle of the night, he could sneak out and add or subtract the amounts necessary to match the predicted volume and thus win the bet. Apparently, this went on for three weeks, with not one successful guess for the Americans, and not a suspicion that anything was other than above board.

    I am glad that Simon Taylor is doing OK.

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  4. I always suspected Michael J. Pollard - who appears on my list of all-time crap actors - wasn't the sharpest knife in the drawer. Thank you for confirming it, ex-KCS.

    I was also delighted to see Simon Taylor looking in such fine fettle.

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  5. Herald-Journal - Nov 14, 1981
    "LONDON (AP) – The Irish Republican Army planted a bomb under the home of Attorney-General Sir Michael Havers that police said caused a "tremendous explosion" Friday night, but no deaths because the house was empty at the time ...

    "A neighbor, Mrs Anne Dennistoun-Sword, told reporters: "There was the most enormous explosion. It was absolutely frightening. We were sitting in our drawing room thinking about going to bed. Suddenly I thought I was living in another war. Sir Michael Havers was known to be away, out of the country."

    My wife and I were in Paris at the time, visiting friends, when we heard the news. I rang FRM (8946 6038) to see if he was alright. He was, but no thanks to the police, and as to the house being empty at the time the bomb went off, he'd been blown from one end to the other.

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  6. Fond memories of Grønmark homes 2
    Does anyone remember drinking?

    Apparently we used to do it quite a lot and on one occasion in our MC's Westbourne Terrace-top eyrie, having finished the wine and the whisky, I was having trouble getting the port out of the bottle and into the glass. Ever the perfect host, he somehow negotiated the entire length of the sitting room and took the stopper out for me.

    Fine days, as far as I remember.

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    1. There's a line in the film version of The Spy Who Came In From The Cold that always takes me aback - where Richard Burton pretends he can't remember what a dinner companion said to him "because I'd had a large Scotch and the best part of a bottle of Spanish Red by then" - and he says it with a straight face! Richard Burton!!

      I'm not convinced young people now drink any more than we used to (after all, that's an enforced teetotaller speaking). Is it just that young women get just as drunk as men these days and then roll about vomiting on the pavement?

      I remember one friend - not you, I hasten to add - on being told that we'd run out of alcohol (in the same flat you're talking about - my brother's) after getting through three bottles of wine and a bottle and a bit of Scotch between us, roaring at me in a rage: "IS THAT HONESTLY ALL YOU'VE GOT!!!" And we weren't excessively heavy drinkers. How the hell did we function? Or didn't we?

      By the way, do people still drink port? I loved it.

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  7. Fond memories of Grønmark homes 3 and last
    Many readers will have been shocked by SDG's confession about his relationship with an under-age person. I, for one, was relieved. I met Gussie once, many decades ago at Grønmark Hall, and I'd always assumed he was a bloke.

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    1. Named after female tennis player, "Gorgeous" Gussie Moran, who made a name for herself at Wimbledon by wearing colourful knickers, rather than Gussie Finknottle.

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  8. I am indebted to Wimbledon College OB and renowned Welsh musicologist Richard Murphy ...

    I was at the dental hygienist's the other day, being demeaned, and she mentioned that her son had just gone to Wimbledon College. I was at King's, I gargled, and matches against Wimbledon College were always a bit edgy, local derby, ... Yes, she said, she'd gone to the 1st XV match between the schools this term and there were 500 people there watching.

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  9. Most of my friends from that time are from Wimbledon College. 40 years later, they still resent the fact that while they were rote learning as teenagers the Catechisms and doing all that strange atavistic stuff that left footers do to worship the 12 stations of the cross, we were having fun with the Ursuline Convent girls and the altogether less accessible Wimbledon High School lot.

    Yea! Get over it, wrong side of the Ridgeway losers!

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  10. ex-KCS.Are you sure that taxi driver was also ex KCS and not the late Martin Edgar-tall,glasses,charming,fond of a beer or three?
    SDG.One can only speculate on Mr.Reed's obvious remorse:I think he could have unwittingly downed in one Basil's last and most expensive bottle of sherry.

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    1. While I'm about it,delighted to hear from Uber 6th Former-way down in the south west-your ID remains safe with me.

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  11. Taxi driver KCS was definitely the real deal, but about 20 years older than us, assuming you are of the GronGeneration, Southern Man. I didn't know Martin Edgar.

    He was a sad case - a successful racehorse trainer and breeder whose life seems to have become embroiled with Oliver Reed's in a rather self- destructive way. It was a matter of some tension at home that I gave him my business, as the slurred diction, unsteadiness on the feet and occasional inability to fit the keys into the ignition did not go unnoticed by the then Mrs ex-KCS. It was only after he fell asleep during a return journey from Heathrow and pranged his cab, after which it emerged that the MoT and insurance were not entirely in order, that my instinct for self-preservation overcame my feelings of loyalty. He lost his licence for what the US calls DUI a year or so later. I suspect he would have had no trouble with the Wimbledon 8.

    I also wondered whether Reed's cries of "Basil" might have been directed at the teacher who lived nearby.

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  12. Basil was indeed the double-barrelled teacher Reed was no doubt apologising to. Interestingly, Basil was the only man I've ever heard ordering a "schooner" of sherry. I wonder if anyone in the whole world calls it that these days.

    The most terrifying ride of my life was between Millbank and Chsiwick at 1.30 in the morning, after a TV show. Through a haze of exhaustion, I realised that my minicab-driver - who, without encouragement, was describing how his marriage to a "Miss Jamaica" contest winner was unravelling and how his music business career had stalled - was driving faster and faster as he became more and more enraged at life's myriad injustices. We went through Chelsea at a speed not unakin to Donald Campbell in Bluebird. When he announced, "I have to do two jobs to keep afloat. I've been up for two nights", I realised that he was out of his gourd on uppers. I quietly suggested he slowed down - which he did - and then spoke to him soothingly until he got me home in one piece.

    Lot of dangerous people out there.

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