HUMOUR
This month’s cocky is full of the weird, wacky and otherwise unheard of tales of the unusual. The cast of characters includes an intrepid Scottish captain, skating park rangers, a snake beating caddy and Bill Gates!
THE GREAT PEDESTRIAN
Captain Robert Barclay Allardyce (born in Ury, Scotland on 25 August 1779) was one of the great British sporting toffs of the Regency era. Besides his
own notable achievements, he was one of the principal officials of
‘The Fancy’, a group of aristocrats who organised sporting events for the purpose of heavy betting. Bare-knuckle fistfights in those days had an unlimited number of rounds and only concluded when one fighter was knocked out cold or chose to retire.
Barclay himself was a pugilist and a noted pedestrian, and he could also run a mile inside 5 minutes. His most famous feat was to walk 1,000 miles in1,000 successive hours at Newmarket Heath for a wager. He started his long walk on 1 June 1809. This was an amazing endurance quest of sleep denial. The purpose was not to cover 1,000 miles in the quickest time; but to walk a mile every hour for 42 days. Think about it. The Captain won 1,000 guineas for this feat, but hundreds of side bets netted him well over 30,000 pounds sterling in total – a sum equal to about 3 million pounds today.
Thousands of spectators gathered at Newmarket to watch Barclay attempt to win his wager. He walked day and night, completing a mile at the start of one hour and then towards the end of the next so that he could get the most amount of rest between each stint. On several occasions, his manservant had
to slap him into wakefulness to get him moving. After 700 hours/miles, Barclay
was often literally asleep on his feet. The half mile (880 yards) course on the
Heath was carefully marked out and lit at night by lanterns, and Barclay
would walk out and back once every hour through heat and cold, rain and
sunshine.
Because several criminal types who had betted against him were quite prepared to ‘knobble’ the captain as he walked, Barclay employed two armed bodyguards and carried a brace of loaded pistols in his belt. Hired snipers took pot shots at him on several occasions; always at night when he was most vulnerable. All a sniper needed to do was shatter one of his knees with a musket ball and thus put him out of the game. But the darkness also worked in Barclay’s favour, making it is difficult to aim accurately, and every shot fired at him missed. Barclay’s pace for each mile varied from
8 minutes to 21 minutes as he slowly progressed, ticking off the miles on a large chart. If he failed to complete his allotted mile in any hour, he would be
instantly disqualified by marshals who watched him closely. Barclay cut it fine on several occasions, finishing his walk just seconds before the clock ticked on into the next hour. His manservant treated his blisters as Barclay rested on a mattress in a tent between walks.
The captain finally survived it all,
triumphantly walking his final mile soon after noon on 12 July 1809, cheered on by an admiring crowd of over 30,000 people. (Well, there was no television in those days).
After collecting his winnings, Barclay enjoyed a bath and a massage, and then
slept in a comfortable bed for the next 72 hours. His achievement was hailed
as the greatest individual endurance feat in history. Among many other notable deeds, Barclay once drove the mail coach from Aberdeen to London, stopping only to change horses (and urinate) en route. This meant that he was in the driving seat continuously for three day and nights. He did not eat during this period, only swigging fresh water from a canteen. Nips of brandy laced with traces of strychnine also helped to keep him awake. Of course a wager was involved. Much like modern professional sportsmen and women, Captain Barclay never attempted any sporting feat unless he stood to gain
financially. Barclay was also very strong. Even in his seventies, he would win bets by picking up a 12-stone man with one hand. He would place his right hand under the man’s feet, and then lift him up and place him, still standing, on a table.
On the downside, Barclay was a heavy drinker and an incurable gambler, which eventually cost him a fortune at the gaming tables, and he ended his days in poverty. Though he also distinguished himself by his bravery and military prowess during the Napoleonic Wars, he harboured a fearful temper characterised by duelling scars on his face and body. By his own lights, Captain Barclay was an honourable gentleman who hated nothing more than those who welched on their bets. Barclay (former ‘laird’ of Ury) died in his native Scotland on 8 May 1854, after being severely kicked by a horse he was attempting to shoe. Professor Peter Radford, an Olympic bronze medallist in 1960, has written ‘The Celebrated Captain Barclay’ (Headline Book Publishing), an absorbing biography of this remarkableman
SKATING RANGERS
London’s famous Hyde Park has a long history and is a popular haunt for locals and tourists visiting the capital city every summer in England. But this has led to an unfortunate rash of bag snatching by local thieves; usually drug addicts desperate for their next fix. The Royal Parks Department decided to
fight back by kitting out some of its’ fittest park rangers with roller skates so
that they could quickly chase down the miscreants and arrest them. Soon after this two rangers on skates spotted a thief depriving an unwary tourist of her handbag and took off after him on one of the park’s many concrete paths. They were just closing in for an arrest when the bag-snatcher veered off the path and onto the grass. He got clean away across country as the two rangers turned into the rough after him and promptly fell over. Roller skates with in-line wheels are designed for travelling fast on hard, smooth surfaces. Grassland does not suit them at all. The Parks Department was forced to re-think its’ anti-theft strategy and duly applied for a grant to trade in the skates and buy some mountain bikes for the rangers. I understand that most of the local ratepayers in the rather snooty Royal Borough of Kensington were not amused. (My thanks to Tim Hutchings for this one)
RULES FOR LIFE
Bill Gates recently gave a speech at an American High School about eleven (11) things they did not and will not learn in school. He talked about feelgood,
politically correct teachings that have created a generation of children with no concept of reality and how this concept will set them up for failure in
the real world. Rule 1: Life is NOT fair. Get used to it!
Rule 2: The world will not care about your self-esteem. People will expect you
to accomplish something BEFORE you feel good about yourself.
Rule 3: You will NOT make 60,000 dollars a year right out of High School, and you won’t be a vice-president with a car phone until you earn both.
Rule 4: If you think that your teacher is tough; wait until you get a boss.
Rule 5: Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your grandparents had a different word for burger flipping: they called it opportunity.
Rule 6: If you mess up (and you will sometimes) it’s not your parents’ fault. So don’t whine about your mistakes; learn from them.
Rule 7: Before you were born, your parents were not as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes and listening to you talk about just how cool you thought you were. So before you save the rain forest from the parasites of your parent’s generation, try delousing the closet in your own room.
Rule 8: Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life HAS NOT. In some schools, they have abolished failing grades and they will give you as many times as you want to get the right answer to any question. Be aware that this does not bear the slightest resemblance to anything in real life.
Rule 9: Life is not divided into semesters. You don’t get summers off and no employers are interested in helping you to go and find yourself. You have to do that on your own time.
Rule 10: Television is NOT real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop where they have been wisecracking and go to real jobs.
Rule 11: Be nice to nerds. Chances are they you will end up working for one. Enjoy your lives. (My thanks to David McGarry for this)
BATMAN AND KNEEBONE
Australia’s first Aborigine to win Olympic gold was not Cathy Freeman in 2000, as most people believe. The first was Nova Perris Kneebone (born in 1971) part of the victorious Australian Women’s Field Hockey team at Atlanta, USA, in 1996. Ms Freeman was Australia’s first Aboriginal INDIVIDUAL Olympic champion. Ms Kneebone was also a world-class sprinter, winning the Commonwealth 200 metres title in Malaysia in 1998 and sprinting for Australia at the 2000 Olympics at Sydney. Now she is due to marry an Aussie sprinter with the magnificent name of Daniel Batman. Apparently she will then become Nova Batman Perris Kneebone. The couple will then become Batman and Kneebone. Doesn’t sound quite right, does it?
SNAKE AT THE 11TH HOLE
My friend was recently playing 18 holes on a picturesque course on the East Coast of Thailand. All was going well until the 11th hole, when he drove off stoutly only to send his ball into the rough. When he and his caddie found it, a quite large green snake had adopted the ball, and was tightly curled around it.
“Oh well. That’s it. I’m not fighting a snake for a golf ball. Let’s leave it there and take my second shot with a new ball parallel to it,” he told her. But the caddie was having none of it. She pulled out a number 5 iron from his bag and proceeded to beat the snake to death with it. Then she retrieved the ball from among the blood-spattered mess, washed it clean and handed it back to him. “Play on, sir” she said calmly.
MOVIE QUOTE
Ripley: “There’s a monster inside of you, and it’s a really nasty one. Soon it will smash through your rib cage, and then you’ll die.” Space tourist: “So what’s the bad news?” (From ‘Alien Resurrection’ 1997)
“My 12-year-old son and his young wife have just given me my first grandson. I hope to sell this baby to the American singing transvestite Madonna.” (‘Borat’, 2006)
SMOKIN’ JOE!
We all have pet hates, which is only human. Mine is having people around me smoking in enclosed restaurants where food is being served and eaten.
This practice is now actually illegal in Thailand, but many restaurateurs choose to ignore it for fear of driving away their regular smoking customers. This especially applies to some establishments that strive for a traditional ‘British pub’ atmosphere. Apparently a foggy cloud of fired-up tobacco is all part of the nostalgic ambiance.
The best example I have ever seen of someone strongly objecting to this was at Rome in August 1987, where I was covering the second World Championships in Athletics. A group of us press colleagues were dining at a smart place overlooking the Tiber just across a bridge from the famous Stadio
Olympico. In our group was Andrew Edwards, nowadays a commentator for Eurosport. Andy is a typical Englishman: a Cambridge graduate, fluent in three languages, always unfailingly polite and unflustered behind an intelligent dry wit. Don’t get me wrong – he has a neutral English speaking voice without the plummy accents of British Royalty. But all Andy needs to complete the image of Jeeves is a bowler hat and a black umbrella. Nothing ever seems to faze Mr Edwards. But when two young Italian girls sitting next to us lit up as we ate and then began puffing smoke our way, he went berserk. “Now look here!” He said. “Please go away and smoke somewhere else! Can’t you see that we are eating?” The girls looked genuinely bemused. “What is your problem?” They asked. Andy began spluttering like the radio psychiatrist Frasier Crane (Kelsey Grammar) overhearing someone misquoting Voltaire.
“My problem is your damned smoking!” He shouted. “We are trying to eat here! Now PLEASE go away and smoke somewhere else before I empty this plate of spaghetti over your heads!” This time the senoritas got the message. They moved away after telling Mr Edwards that he was an “anti-smoke Nazi”. Andy, his face still reddened with rage, struggled to settle back down and continue eating his lunch. It was a wonderful moment. None of us had ever seen the soft spoken Mr Edwards loose his cool like that. Most of the other diners stood up and gave him a round of applause.
davidcox@loxinfo.co.t
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