Page 14 of 14: People

Carping People

Before I started to write this Blog I sort of planned to dedicate a bit of it to the people I crossed paths with along the way during my fishing career. As it turned out it was far harder to write than I originally thought and whilst I have many of old tales about certain personalities very few will be anywhere near interesting to anyone outside of the small circle of people who were there at the time and some I'd prefer to forget as they are unprintable. I found this out earlier on while finding myself leaving certain bits out of certain tales due to them being a bit out of order. I find myself nowadays a reformed character and many of the thing we used to get caught up in during the past are not things that I'd get even close to being involved with now. I did want to remember certain individuals who I ran across during these old days ... so I will! Here goes then.

Anyhow, whatever we were getting up to at the time I made some great mates during my fishing days, many of course weren't just fishing buddies, we'd also socialise away from the lakes, people like Geoff Bowers, Steve Horne, Lockey, Craig, Rich, Martin Daley, Tony Philips etc, many of whom I've already made mention of already but there were plenty of others. I'll start off with a few tales about people that I've not as yet made mention of. 

'The Brain days'

It was in the late 1980's that this very old geezer started showing up on the lake. He was from Hersdon and was already well known by one of the other lads fishing Fordwich at the time (Andy Clarke) so we soon got to know each other ... this old geezers name was Brian Allen, AKA the Brain or as it was written in our works phone book (in Geoff's handwriting alongside Brian's number) Brian 'dyes his hair' Allen ... and yes you've guessed it, for the obvious reason too. Brian was great bloke, really helpful and he was soon inducted into what was a sort of family sort of set up between our closer mates. I mean when you went to Brian's house you'd just walk in via the unlocked back door, he was always pleased to see us even when we'd often show up out of the blue. I have no clue as to what Brian is up to these days but what I do know is that he must be very, very old by now ... probably well along in the ancient sort of category even? Brian was very into his music and manic about his hi-fi too, I well remember him slagging off my beloved stereo system the first time he heard it, he was right too. After listening to his set up I then went hi-fi mad as well, it was all Brian's fault. I also went to few gigs with Brian, two nights (on the trot?) we went to see Yes and on one of the nights we fluked second/third row seats I think, whatever, we were right near the front, at incredible gig was that. I also remember going to see Allan Holdsworth at some tiny little London theatre with Brian and just before the show started I saw the bass player out of Whitesnake (amongst many other bands) show up with a few of his mates and they sat down a few rows in front of us. Holdsworth was just so low key, you would have thought that when he wandered on stage that he was a painter and decorator rather than the ace guitar player that he was. I also went with Brian to that same very intimate little theatre to see Al Di-Meola too. Wonderful memories. Brian was a loudmouth, a well meaning loudmouth I mean and nothing phased him, he was one the most down to earth blokes imaginable. When we started up the bait company we needed to buy a larger van and decided to get this brand new flashy Merc Van on trial. Anyway, while we had this large van 'on trial' remember, Brain decided to take it out for a trial run and attempt a bait delivery in it. Hours passed .... I'll never forget him bursting into the factory on getting back from that very first drive in it. We were all going about our day to day business in the bait factory when Brian arrived back, he was his usual jolly self as he wandered in and rather calmly announced "Oh, I pranged the new van" he was laughing as he said it, he thought it was amusing! Typical Brian was that ... hence 'the Brain' moniker. Anyway, Geoff sorted out the mess ... as usual. The early days of starting up Premier Baits were a real laugh and 'The Brain' fitted in really well as our Gofer, our whipping boy ... only joking Brian! It was such a matey set up back then that Brian used to tell us what to do even though he worked for us! That's just how it was, a madcap setup but a laugh a minute all the way. It wasn't like going to work,  I mean we had an indoor cricket pitch set up and often times we had loads of guitars and gear laying around all over the place which is when people like Dave Kemp used to show up, Dave was more into playing guitar than the fishing I reckon? He also had one of the nicest guitars I've ever played, an old 1970's Gibson Explorer with as good a neck as it's possible to imagine. It was like a baseball bat but wow what a thing that was. I bought an Ibanez Jem off of Kempy in the early 1990's, I still have that old Ibanez should you ever see this Blog Dave? 

Those early days spent working with Geoff, Bamber and Brian were just incredibly good fun ... we were getting well paid for it too, as I say it wasn't work it was just fun. Very few places had a regime like ours ... Geoff would pick me up, we'd drive toward the factory laughing as we went and once there all sorts of thing would occur. We used to play our long games of indoor cricket between phone calls and it got to the point where in the later days that I used to take amps plus 'many' guitars to work and we'd play around with these too. I remember one day being stuck in the factory on my own for while ... I had a new Gibson Les Paul and a 100 watt Marshall (plus the full monty 4 x 12 cabinet) just sitting there at the time, and being stuck for something to do, a thought came to me, how loud is that amplifier? Hmmm? Now I used to play my guitar pretty loud at home but never as loud as that amp could go. Anyhow, I got my longest guitar cable so as to put as much space between me and this amp and plugged it in at both ends, cranked the amp up to 10, at the time having the guitar volume knob switched to zero, wandered thirty to forty feet away from the 4 x 12 cabinet or as far away as I could get and very slowly turned the guitar up to full ... the noise was STAGGERING ... I cannot convey just how loud a 100 watt Marshall valve amp actually is but it makes me laugh when I see there car stereos that have claims of being 1000 watts of sound as if you got anywhere close to this sort of noise emanating from a cranked 100 watt valve amp trapped in a car space, well you would end up in hospital. I swear to you noise like that is frightening, it hits you in the chest, you can actually feel it. I was half expecting the Police to arrive it was that loud. It was even far too loud to play anything, I ended up turning it down to a more manageable half volume and even then it was darn near pulling the door off the frame. I hate to think what the people in the adjoining units were thinking? I realise that I said 'no more guitar stuff' a few pages back but in this retro cyber waffle mode, I am often a man out of control. Please forgive me.

The days of 'The Brain' were the days of the last wave of newer Fordwich anglers I came into contact with, people such as Baboon, Roger Stanger, Andy Clarke and Andy Maple. Maple was great, a lovely fellow was Andy. We used to play tricks on Baboon, give him takes in the middle of the night amongst many other things. I remember coming back from the pub one night and wandering past Baboon's gear set up fishing on the Baldwin. He was sparko inside, absolutely out for the count, so I decided to wake him, grabbed his line and wandered off back up the path. As I did so I heard him waking up, his alarm was screaming by this time and he couldn't get out of his zipped up sleeping bag so all that I heard as I wandered back past his bivvy with the line of one of his rods still in my hand, was him going mental, turning the air blue in the process as he struggled to get out of his bivvy and hit this so-called take. Anyhow, I wandered and wandered, I was moving at a slow walking pace and by the time he got to his rod I was about forty yards behind his bivvy by this time but could still hear him in the clear night air shouting at himself "Come on" and "what's going on??" as he reeled and striked, and reeled and striked, and reeled and striked at nothing due to all of the loose line I'd pulled off! He was going mental and the funny thing was that he was talking to himself continually the entire time! I then decided to hide ... by this time I'd let go of his line and was sniggering to myself as he was by then reeling in line 'from behind him' ... oh, it was properly funny. He then reeled all the line back, still muttering to himself the entire time still in his "what's going on" sort of mode and I waited till he then recast and went back into his bivvy. By this time I'd sneaked forward in the darkness meaning I could hear every word, during the whole ten minutes incident he never stopped talking to himself once! Oh, and I never did tell him that it was me. Andy Maple did a good one on old Baboon too. One day we were fishing on the Richies and Baboon showed up and set up on the Mungs. Andy wasn't fishing I don't think but was down for the jolly and decided after dark to go out into the water from our swim, snag Baboon's line giving him a false take and see what occurred. Soon after Andy swam out he must have found Baboon's line as we heard this almighty screaming take, Baboon appeared from his bivvy and then started playing Andy in! It was hilarious, we were all telling Baboon that he'd hooked a real lunker and credit to Andy, he did a great impression of a Carp, the whole works in fact, the splashing on the surface after ages was utterly brilliant as I recall. Sorry Bab's, we all loved you really dude. 

The one-eyed Franz Klammer

Tony Philips captured on a vey cold winter's morning whilst Pike fishing on Trenley in about 1986 or '87? He'd just emerged from his pit.

I have many happy memories of my time spent fishing with Tony Philips. I first got to know Tony at school. Him and Alex Stewart, being best mates, were always up to some caper or other during the school hours. They were a year older than me so we'd only meet up at dinner times, I remember we used to avoid the school dinners quite often and spend our dinner money in the cake shop along Newington road. After we all left school I then ran into Tony in the local pub and via his brother who was a brilliant guitar player. He (as in Steve, Tony's brother) gave me the odd guitar lesson back in the day, well if you can call it a lesson as it pretty much entailed me watching him play some incredible stuff round at his flat before he got bored and he'd say "right, now you can buy me a few pints" and off to the pub we'd toddle ... I still learned a fair bit just by watching him at such close proximity. He was in one of the local bands, they were called Chalice, they were quite good too though Steve was by far the star of the show if I'm honest. Anyhow, one thing led to another, I got into the fishing as did Tony and we became great mates, we had many fishing adventures together, they were always fun filled, full of laughter and scrapes, Tony was a very funny bloke. He had a couple of very odd traits when drinking, one of which was his incredible double vision. I know it's not really funny really, even though it sort of was at the time, but I remember many occasions when I'd be sitting in the passenger seat of Tony's car on the way back from the pub and I'd notice him shuffling forward in the drivers seat, sitting bolt upright with his head, by then right above the steering the steering wheel. By this time he'd often go quiet, in full on concentration mode and when we did speak he'd look at me 'one eyed' having by then one eye clasped hard shut so as to combat his double vision. How we never had a crash and lived to tell the tale is anyone's business? Another one of Tony's traits was his incredible ability to forget everything and anything that happened after a few beers, and I mean FORGET, often he had no clue what had occurred during a night out. Back in the day we used to hit the local Thanet pubs on a Thursday night as it was pay day, and the ongoing routine was to head out to the pub on Thursday night, go to work on the Friday, I'd then have all my fishing gear pre-packed and ready for the weekend, get home from work, swallow my tea/have a bath and shoot off out, arriving on the lake early on Friday evening for a two night fishing session. Tony's routine was usually to forego the Friday nights angling and then he would show up on Saturday morning, do the one night then go home on Sunday to get ready for the next weeks work. Often was the time after a Thursday night out that the next time you'd see Tony you'd have to tell him what happened on the Thursday night after a certain time such was his ale induced blackout. It was most odd, hilarious all the same. The best example of this came in 1983. We'd been out on Thursday, I'd gone to Fordwich after work on the Friday when on the Saturday Tony showed up, as usual looking for a swim. His first question was "What happened on Thursday night?" he seemed more intent on knowing than normal, as if something bad had happened? I told him we'd met up the pub, where we stayed for however long, he'd dropped me home after at kicking out time and that was that. "Oh, I gave you a lift did I?" he couldn't even remember dropping me home. Then he went on to tell me that he'd got up on Friday morning and when he opened the door to go to work and looked at his car, he'd found the right hand wing and headlight were totally written off?? On closer examination in amongst the wreckage, there was obvious brick dust in the metal wing. He must have dropped me off at home and after driving the half mile back to his house he must have pranged his little grey Fiat into someone's brick wall during that two minute drive in-between!! He had absolutely no recollection of it whatsoever!! Typical Tony that was.

Another Tony memory that springs to mind amongst many was the time he had his two widescreen wipers torn off his car. This particular late autumn or winter weekend we'd turned up to do some Pike fishing on Westbere deeps. We used to like fishing at Westbere as they had a very old  pub called The Yew Tree which was Elizabethan (built in the 14th century) and with its Oak Beams and log fire, was a lovely place for a nice after dark mid fishing session warm up and a pint. As they had no lager on tap in this old pub and with me being a lager drinker then I'd be forced to drink warm brown English Ale out of a bottle and would feel the need to eat peanuts to get rid of the vile taste of brown beer which I hated back then. Anyhow, we parked in the usual small fenced off Car Park just across the train line at Westbere, did our Pike fishing session etc which by the end of it the weather was in full on hurricane mode. As we loaded the car up to go home, a large crack was heard and we looked across to see one of the large trees fall down, it was blowing an absolute hooligan!  It was then that Tony announced "Oh I forgot, I hope it doesn't rain as some 'erbert pulled my windscreen wipers off during the week" and with that, the rain came, absolutely torrential pouring rain. Tony did his best to drive home but it got really silly and I remember us having to stop along the main road passing through Sarre as it was full on dangerous. The rain did relent a bit after a while, though it never stopped, and we were fortunate to get home in one piece yet again. Oh the stupidity of youth eh?  

..........................................................................................................................................................................................................

Some of the older Carp Anglers were came into contact with were

Without getting all philosophical about it, it ain't where you went fishing or what you caught it's more about the people you shared these moments with for me. Without the people you met along the way nothing much of what you did would matter. Sorry about sounding like Reggie Perrin's son in law but I'm a people person (Reggie, I can hear the line in my head as I write) and I loved the people I went fishing with and will always look upon people like my old soul mates like Geoff and Lockey like they were my family. Fishing is a great place to get to know people really well and I have have only fond memories left of all the people mentioned in this Blog, well all those mentioned by name anyway. So should you be perusing this here Bloggy wotsit wherever you are and whatever you're now up to then please take a mention within these here interweb pages as a sort of thirty year old thankyou, it wouldn't have been the same journey without any of you. People are far better and more interesting than any Carp, better than guitars and even Liverpool football club.

Back in 1979 when I first started fishing at Fordwich there were very few hardcore Carp anglers. Some of the names escape me but people who spring to mind included Barry Gardner, Fred Brown, Ron Mears, Burt Thatcher, Paul Sharpe, Tim and Steve Attwood and Colin Hurst amongst various others. Some of my mates also fished there Fordwich before my arrival in the later 1970's too, people like Dave and Alex Stewart, Mick Wilkinson, Tony Philips, Turk, Richard Stubbings, Craig Reynolds etc etc. 

The very late 1970's/1980's marked a bit of a changing of the guard and it wouldn't be too long before we would take on the mantle of being the main Fordwich carp mob. By this time we were joined by a fair crew of Whitstable Carp anglers such as Chod, Gapson, Stewart Coly, Tim Denning, Clive Whitlock, Metal Mickie (he had a tooth brace) plus a few others, as well as a handful of other new anglers such as John Baldry, Veggie Mick, Mark Sturge, Gringo, Phil Latter, Wing-nut, Les Fright, Geoff Hobbs, Brian Gaymer, Fireman Ian, Spike, Darren Grimstead, Dave Crittenden, Kev 'the head', James Dean (Not 'that' James Dean) and later as the years wore on, Mark Dean, Andy Wilkes, Roger Stanger, Andy Clarke, Baboon, Paul Lehane, Mark 'Plonker' Plank, Kipper, Mark Sturge, Ian Brown, Brian 'dyes his hair' Allen, Weird Kev Goldberg, Malcolm Berry, Phil Latter, Jock White, Martin Daley, Andy Maple, Kevin 'Arnie' Harding, Tony 'Bamber' Smitherman etc. 

If I've forgotten anyone here then please forgive me, I can be a forgetful dimwit at times, most of the time in fact.

Anyhow, I'll end off this peopley 'bit' by uploading a few old random photos of days gone by ... 

Andy Clarke, or 'Topper' as he was known due to him topping every story he was ever told by any other human being on planet earth. Oh Topper where are you now old mate? I've only just got over him ringing me one day in about 1988 telling me about a huge haul of Fordwich Carp he'd just had and with me still feeling all sore and in some mourning after my Fordwich ban. Anyway, I just said to him "Andy, I'm not really interested you thoughtless moron!" or words to that effect! I don't think Andy quite got what a body blow a life ban was to me at the time. I enjoyed being around old Andy regardless of his stupidity, he was always good for a laugh ... if not with but at him! Sorry Andy, only joking matey. 

And here we have old Bamber himself, Tony Smitherman or Tony Smit-Herman as he used to call himself from time to time. I'm pretty sure the photo was taken on the Baldwin?

The legend that was James Dean ... he liked a bit of Camo gear did Jim. I have no clue as to how the bottom photo came about but it might have been me wanting a photo of his head for one of my collage photos? Photoshop didn't exist at the time so you literally had to cut and paste using printed photo, a pair of scissors and some actual paste! He was a great snooker player was old Jim and at some point in ancient history wangled access to Maurice House at North Foreland, an old people's home that had a full size snooker table which they allowed us to play on for free in the evenings. We go late after all the old biddies went to bed and stay there into the wee small hours as I'd get another tonking off Jim ... I doubt that I ever even took a single frame? I well remember one night when Jim was in the middle of an enormous break but fell short at about 55 with many balls still in potable positions. 

Jock and Geoff  on the Killick and Corner swim in the winter of 1987 I believe.

Jock with the Yateley Pad lake forty, a huge fish at the time. He caught Basil out of the North Pit a year or two after ... I wasn't the slightest bit jealous. Well, okay ... I was ... a bit. 

Ah Mark Sturge in the years before he went for the full on slaphead look as he now does. A good lad was Mark, we had plenty of laughs over the years. 

One of the old Whitstable crowd, well a second wave of Whitstableites showing up on Fordwich a couple of years after Chod, Gapson and Stuart Coley. His name was Tim, I can't remember any more than that as I sit here now all these years on but he was often around in the middle 1980's. 

My old mate Tel, well okay Terrance Pethybridge. A quiet retiring soul was Tel with a light hush tone to his laugh, barely audible in fact. Well, barely audible if you were in a different county to him. Another great bloke was Tel. It looks like he's got all famous since I knew him, on the front cover indeed eh Tel? 

One of Geoff's many doodles found amongst my old notepads. The hammerer of the year thing was for the Premier Baits annual awards. You'd quite often hear these plebs showing up at the lake armed with a rubber mallet and some stainless steel banksticks and have to put up with an annoying barrage of hammering whilst they were setting up. It was mystifying to us how they had the thoughtless stupidity to think that making such a racket was even half way acceptable? You didn't even need to use a darn silly mallet on Fordwich anyway ...  and what about that pseudo cubist figure old Pablo Bowers chiselled into my pad. Is it me or does it remind anyone out there of the Predator? 

Ah these still make me smile Bowers you old dribbling fool you. 

And lastly perhaps the best photo that I've ever taken ... ever seen perhaps? He we have old Bowers c.1985/6 who has obviously been out clubbing, fallen asleep in his clothes, grabbed his fishing gear and then worn the same clothes for another week on the bank. I mean look at him ... red shoes?? Red shoes ... Carping!!!? In Red shoes? He'll kill me when he see's that I've included this ... no hang on, being the richest man on the Isle of Thanet these days he'll no doubt just pay someone else to kill me? 

So that's about it for this Blog and I just can't be bothered writing out any more. There are plenty more old tales kicking around inside my head still but I'm all Blogged out after typing that lot out. I do have one last tale, it concerns our first ever trip to fish at Yateley in June of 1986. This last tale I wrote out into my first fishing Blog (written in the autumn of 2019) after finding many of my old photos and whatnot after many years of never looking at them. I've just cut and pasted the entire 'bit' so if there is anything out of synch or already mentioned then take note that I wrote the bit about our first actual fishing trip to Yateley about eight months ago in my first Blog. It's just something that I will never ever forget ... due to 'many things' too but mainly because fishing at Yateley was just so not like anything we had imagined prior to going. 

Yateley June 1986. 

Geoff and I decided to bite the Carpy bullet and start the 1986 season off at Yateley. We settled on the Copse for that very first attempt, mainly due to seeing fish or signs of fish there pretty much every time we looked. I think that the complex of lakes at Yateley was made up of thirteen pits (??) but only four of these lakes appealed to us due to holding big fish, the other three pits aside of the Copse lake all held well known bona fide forty pound plus Carp and whilst the Copse held at least two or perhaps three thirties, we still fancied this lake more than the others. That said there may well have been a very large Carp in the Copse, a phantom Carp known by the locals as the Pineapple but it hadn't been caught for many years and 'if' it in fact did exist some people were thinking that it may well be the largest Carp in the entire complex and this included Basil which was around forty five pounds at this time. 

After getting out permits from Leisure Sports we then did a few close season reconnaissance missions and had checked out the other three lakes with Forty pounders in them. These 'other' lakes were all on the other side of a main road that split the complex of lakes in half and though we had wandered around these other pits it was Copse that just felt right as I say. We had also seen a few Carp in the Car Park Lake where Heather the leather resided but they were only seen in a very snaggy unfishable corner in amongst an impenetrable tangle of submerged tree roots and brambles. You'd need to have been mad to even try and fish for them from this mass of snags and to make matters worse it was right on the main path so it was also the one place you could never get any peace. Unlike the the water in the other pits at Yateley the Car Park lake water was very clear meaning that looking at these Carp was even more attractive. Of course this clearer water meant that this only helped the weed to grow and the lake was chocker full of it and I hated fishing weedy pits so generally plumbed for the Copse or the North Pit, not that it mattered as I never caught anything. In those days the close season was still the law of the land but right next to Yateley was a lake called Tri-Lakes (three lakes perhaps, I forget?) and somehow the close season didn't apply there. Perhaps the people that ran this day ticket water had stocked some Trout or something so as to get round it, this sort of rings a bell, I can't remember now but they did do a close season day ticket and with it being right amongst the Yateley complex of pits what Geoff and I would do was to use Tri-lakes as a base whilst we checked out the pits at Yateley. This allowed us to get a good feel of the waters during the close season also providing us with bits of local knowledge picked up from other anglers walking the banks at the time. If we were taking the fishing of Yateley very seriously at the time this attitude sure didn't last for too long. 

It was a bit of a daunting task of taking on Yateley, this complex of lakes with a few very large Carp though none of the pits held very many of them, in fact one of the pits held just five Carp. I think there were only seven or so Carp in the North Pit which was around twenty acres. The fishing was going to be very hard going anyhow. Now by this time Geoff and I were pretty well known on the UK angling scene, we had our own Bait Company which was advertised in the national press meaning that everyone knew or knew of us so we didn't want to come across too micky mouse, we had a reputation of sorts to keep up after all. We also assumed that the other anglers would be super serious and fishing the Copse, a rather small intimate and tranquil lake, that everyone would be talking in a hushed whisper, that's if it wasn't so serious that any even spoke to one another? We really didn't know what to expect. No doubt we initially would have played the role of super professional Carp angling dudes, an act we'd soon drop when we learned the lay of the land of course, acting like dudes just wasn't either Geoff or mine's bag, we had no times for ego's. One other thing is that we were used to having a bit of fun at Fordwich and of course with much of the fishing there being long range stuff you could get away with making a bit of row every now and again. Here it would be a different kettle of fish ... surely? Er ... no, no it wasn't ... in fact NO IT WASN'T WITH BELLS ON THE TOP as no one gave a stuff. Now we'd already met a couple of Carpers there during the close season, probably Geoff Pink and another bloke who looked and spoke like Allan Hansen and used the word 'bizarre' an awful lot. It took a fair while for us to give him a nickname but in the end we arrived at an awfully shrewd, cryptic and profound nickname of Jock! It took many weeks of deep thought to come up with that name no doubt? We met others while looking round the lake that close season but who they were I can't remember. I do recall meeting this younger bloke while I was up the looking post Oak Tree. I saw him down below, so climbed down for a chat. He was a few years younger than us and had jet back hair, I make mention of this as during our conversation it started to rain and the black dye started running down his forehead and face. I then noticed he'd even dyed his eyebrows black too. But why? Don't get me wrong he was a very nice bloke. You'd just meet these oddballs at Yateley, it wasn't like fishing at home let's say. 

Of course 1986 was World Cup year and the season started just after the beginning of the tournament in Mexico. This was the year of Maradona, the greatest ever footballer, he ended up winning that Cup almost single handed such was his greatness. Anyway, this would mean that I took a small TV with a car battery as there was no way I was going to miss one second of the world cup, More of this later.

So I had this TV, and like I say I ran it off a car battery. It was A: Tiny ... about 5 inch x 3 inch and B: Black and White. Still, it was World Cup year and as football trumps Carp fishing then a TV was a must. Anyhow, word spread, and before we knew it we had a swim full of bored Carp Anglers, all twiddling their thumbs waiting for the fishing season to kick off at midnight and wanting to watch the football so as to waste a couple of hours. Having the TV certainly broke down the barriers anyhow, helping us to get to know a fair few of the locals, most of whom were hilarious. Ah, but we had Geoff with us, the worlds funniest man, who on a good night could rival Billy Connolly, and Geoff was on top form this night. I remember him telling this joke ... imagine the scene ... a dozen insanely dedicated Carp anglers from all corners of the UK, gathered on one of the top, most serious Carp lakes in the Country, most of whom didn't know each other (there would have been about six locals too?) ... and Geoff comes out with this ...

Geoff: "Paddy is on mastermind" ... even his opening line got a laugh ... Geoff was snigerring away as he told it ...

Geoff again: "and Magnus Magnesson asked him what his chosen subject is, but Paddy doesn't have a clue, replying "is it alright to have Bonanza ... I love Bonanza, I'd like to choose Bonanza as my chosen subject please Magnus" ...

Well, when Geoff said the word 'Bonanza' some people almost fell on the floor laughing ... it was amazing but also VERY noisy, they were by this time hanging on his every word ... he knew how to hold an audience did Geoff ..

Once the furore and laughter died down (which took a good minute) Geoff then re-started telling this silly joke ...

Geoff: "anyway ... Magnus Magnesson says to Paddy ... 'You can't have Bonanza as a specialised subject Paddy, this is a serious BBC quiz ... no, no, no, you just can't have it, you'll just have to have two rounds of general knowledge ... Paddy replies "but I only know about Bonanza" and another roar of laughter went up. 

By this time, there was uproar, people were laughing, Geoff was laughing so much himself that he couldn't speak ... no exaggeration it must have taken five full minutes to tell this one thirty second gag. So after he had composed himself, well to some degree ... Geoff continued ...

Geoff: Now as Magnus Magnesson, he was playing both parts, doing both voices  - "So here you are Paddy, here's your first general knowledge question ... start the clock ... Paddy, who was the first man to walk the earth??"

Geoff - by this time playing Paddy, pondering the question, pulling faces ... before saying "was it Ben Cartwright??

"No", says Geoff, now playing Magnus Magnesson, "it was Adam" to which Paddy replies "drat, I knew it was one of the Cartwright brothers"

They must have heard the laughing all across the Yateley complex, we were all crying. Okay, its not the best joke in the world but I tell you this it was by far the funniest joke I ever heard just because of how it went and the context of it all. Anyway, this was just part of our initiation. It then went up a whole notch in madness ... as it got dark, there was a load of row coming across the lake, and I mean loud noise. It went on and on and it was just odd as this was meant to be a small quiet Carp lake??? In the end we asked Dickie Eversham what on earth was going on 'what was that racket', he replied, "oh don't worry, it's just the dummy, he's building a swim on the other bank!" What, on a small confined super dooper serious Carp lake, on June 15th, an hour or two before we start fishing??? Well, it turned out that the term 'Dummy' was their name for a deaf and dumb bloke who they all knew but we didn't. If this sounds cruel then it wasn't meant this way, they all liked the bloke, it was different time remember. Sadly I picked it up recently that he'd died, I can't remember his name now? He caught Basil out of the North Pit after we stopped fishing the lakes. I heard about his death whilst watching a  Tubeface video. 

Also, re the football. We were all gathered on the Pad Lake one night a year or so later when England were playing a qualifier of some sort, so there was another swim full of people all huddled around yet another tiny TV. At some point with the score at 0 - 0, England scored and we all erupted, people were shouting and hollering, running around etc. Eventually everyone settled back down and started watching the match again, bearing in mind on this tiny black and white screen (I think there would be 8 - 10 of us?) when one of us notices, after quite some while too, that the score is still 0 - 0?? Perplexed, we all look at each other, some bickering breaking out amongst the ranks, before it's confirmed, it is 0 - 0 ... but how, we all saw the goal?? What we didn't realise that during the furore while we were all running around or jumping about in celebration that the Ref had disallowed the goal at some point many minutes earlier and none of us had noticed!

Le Fin