GEOFFREY CHATER
Prolific British character actor who has appeared in countless films and television dramas, from If and Gandhi to Harry Enfield’s Television Programme. Keen cricketer for the Lord’s Taverners.
I was invited, as a young actor and Taverner who played cricket a bit, to play at Bishops Stortford in August 1953. Godfrey Evans – Taverners’ captain that day – asked if anyone else would put on the gloves as he had hurt a finger. No hand was raised except mine, and armed with Godfrey’s gloves (I had none with me) I had to face Denis Compton’s chinamen and seamers.
‘Not to worry,’ said Denis. ‘I’ll give you a signal when it’s going straight through.’
Needless to say, the signal reception failed quite seriously, and bye after bye disappeared with me jumping in the wrong direction. The crowd got the message and started to laugh: I too was corpsing and the game nearly came to a complete halt. The situation was saved, I seem to remember, by Denis taking himself off.
RAY CONNOLLY
Writer, journalist and novelist, who wrote the screenplay for two of the biggest British film successes of the 1970s, That’ll Be The Day and Stardust. Also a great authority on The Beatles.
There’s no pleasing some people. Or, to put it another way, for sports masters, the looniest of all sports fanatics, sport really isn’t about winning. At least, it wasn’t.
As a boy in the Fifties I went to a rugby-mad Catholic grammar school known as West Park in St Helens, Lancashire, where every team in the school was much feared for many miles around.
Naturally a weed like me never got near to being selected for a West Park team. Thank God! But a classmate and friend of mine, Peter Harvey, who would captain England Schoolboys during his time there, learned very early that it wasn’t enough simply to be good to satisfy the rugby master. You had to play with an etiquette which, if not of another planet, was definitely from another age.
He discovered this one Saturday morning when playing for the Under-14s team, the Bantams, against another school. For some reason he was chosen to play at full back and encouraged to practise his kicking by taking the conversions. Uncertain of his kicking ability, however, Harvey asked his team-mates to make sure that if they scored they touched down behind the posts to make the conversions easier for him.
This they duly obliged, often crossing the line at the corner flag and then beating a couple of extra players before touching down between the posts. Every try was converted.
By half-time, when there were something like fifty points to nil on the scoreboard, the senior rugby master, a mad martinet called Dicko, who taught us Latin and who was watching from the touchline, decided that it was becoming embarrassing for the opposition.
As oranges were passed around he went across to the referee, a much junior teacher, and suggested that when the score reached seventy points, the game should be stopped to avoid further embarrassment to the other school. So, into the second half they went. With twenty minutes still to go, and the score reaching seventy-nil, the game ended.
Of the seventy points, Peter Harvey, the boy who was uncertain about his kicking, had been responsible for forty-three of them, scoring five tries himself and kicking fourteen conversions. Naturally he was delighted all weekend, so when on the Monday morning he received a message that he had to report to the rugby master in the gym his expectations were high.
What could it be? Was he to be made the Bantams captain? Or perhaps he was being promoted and would be playing in the Under-16s the following week? Or maybe house colours were to be awarded; at the very least a quarter star.
It was none of these. As he entered the gym Dicko reached for his cane, and very swiftly set about giving Harvey a very hard four strokes on the hands.
With his fingers swelling Harvey gasped: ‘But why, sir? What have I done?’
‘What have you done, boy?’ bellowed Dicko. ‘What have you done!! I don’t mind you beating inferior opposition. But to ask your team-mates only to touch down between the posts, thus colluding with them to beat two or three players after having crossed the line and so humiliate the opposition is ungentlemanly conduct, and quite unacceptable in the game of rugby…’
Footnote: Of that team of fifteen Bantams, four players, including Harvey, went on to play representational senior rugby for either England or Lancashire, while a further three turned professional on leaving school and played Rugby League for St Helens, Widnes and other Lancashire clubs. Some team!
HENRY COOPER
Sir Henry Cooper OBE KSG held the British and Commonwealth heavyweight titles from 1959 to 1970, and was also three times European heavyweight champion. His left hook, known as ‘Enery’s ‘Ammer’, was a feared weapon, which put Muhammad Ali on the canvas for the first time ever, in 1963.
I was driving my car accompanied by my former manager, Jim Wicks (who was at that time about 17 stone) and my twin brother George, when a gentleman on a bicycle suddenly pulled out in front of me. As he did so, I quickly braked, but unfortunately he fell off his bike.
I pulled over to see that he was not hurt, and wound my window down to ask if he was OK. He came over to me and gave me a right back-hander. With that, Jim Wicks, my brother George and I all got out of the car and looked at the gentleman, who must have weighed about 8 stone. He looked at me and said, ‘You think you’re brave, just because there are three of you!’
BOB COTTAM
Hampshire, Northamptonshire and England fast bowler, who took 9 for 25 against Lancashire at Old Trafford in 1965, then the best bowling figures by any Hampshire player.
Imagine the scene – a beach bar in Barbados. The England Under-19s are touring and the sun is setting. It is a most beautiful evening.
The barman had only one arm, having lost the other in a motorcycle accident, but he mixed wonderful cocktails, and was extremely efficient and quick. Just as we began our meeting, one of the lads sank back in his chair, stretched out and said, ‘This must be paradise. Most people would give their right arm to be here.’
Eventually the barman saw the funny side too.
During my first year at Hampshire, I was batting in the nets and an old guy in a flasher’s raincoat and trilby hat kept commenting on my technique, or lack of it. As I replaced the off-stump for the umpteenth time, I was awaiting his comment. Sure enough, he didn’t let me down.
My response was to tell him to eff off, at which point he informed me he was Harry Altham, President of MCC and Hampshire. I spent the next week picking up paper under the seats.
How times have changed.
STEPHEN COVERDALE
Chief Executive of Northamptonshire CCC from 1986 to 2004
I was playing golf with a friend who has a reputation as
