Spartacan..are you sitting comfortably ?
Then I'll begin...where I left off which was having a "blowback" which is the term that my beloved Wife used to describe my wanderings down memory lane..."Dad's having a blowback" she would say, usually in a warning tone of voice so that the family could get out of earshot.
I resumed a boyhood hobby and began carrying an Autograph book with me on Flights. Amongst the personalities was Charlie Chaplin as he was booking in at London and I took him to Brussels for the onward flight to Geneva. He was very smartly dressed and very quiet. For sheer style Sir Malcolm Sargent was the best dressed man I have ever met. His nickname of "Flash Harry" was unkind but rather apt as I met him when I was standing next to him at the toilets in Zurich or Geneva. Nobody had told me that he had been on board and he asked me if I had been the pilot who had brought him from London. I didn't have my Autograph book handy so he signed for me on a piece of paper that just happened to be nearby. I took the great Negro singer, Paul Robeson to Moscow and he signed my book with his name in Russian Cyrillic. His career had come to a complete halt in the States where he was ostracised . Ironically his views were caused mainly because of his treatment as a black person by so many persons of the McCarthy period that was in it's hey day .
The Aga Khan was my passenger to Kinshasa where , as a Head of the Moslem religion, he was inaugurating the site for an Hotel to be exclusively for Moslem guests. To my knowledge it was never built as another of my passengers, Moshe Tshombe, appeared on the scene and the country was plunged into bloodshed.
On one of my trips to New York I went to Jack Dempsey's restaurant just off Times Square. The great Heavyweight champion sat, every day in a window seat and personally welcomed all and sundry. He was most courteous and hearing my accent, recalled Tommy Farr as being one of the finest boxers he had known.
I renewed my boyhood acquaintance with Gracie Fields when I took her to her second home in Naples. She was as down to earth as usual and had the crew in fits of laughter with some of her tales. She finished the flight by singing "Sally" to all the passengers. Another very nice person was Richard Todd, the actor, fresh from his characterisation of Guy Gibson in "The Dambusters" . He stayed in the cockpit for most of the flight and was an aviation fanatic despite his very distinguished wartime Army career which included his playing the part of a Sergeant to an Officer in "The Longest Day" which was based on Richard's own part in the Normandy landings.
Without doubt one of the most interesting passengers was Mr.Dolby of the Dolby system which eliminated all background noise to sound recordings. He was fascinating to listen to and told me that when he invented his system he could not believe that no one had thought of it before as it was so simple. He said that the hardest decision of his life was to turn down the two million dollar offer from Sony to purchase his patent outright. At that time he was young, married with young children and heavily in debt but he told me that his Father had been an inventor who had never made any money out of his inventions and he was determined that he would not make the same mistake of selling his patents cheaply. He also told me that none of his employees were tied down to times of "clocking in " at the offices. They
could all come and go as and when they pleased and he had never had a trade dispute in his life with any of them.
Stirling Moss was, as you would expect, in a hurry and was only concerned as to whether the plane would land on time...It did.
In those days of piston engined aircraft you had time and the passengers were few enough, to go back during the longer flights and talk to them. In the later days of 707's, DC10's and 747's it was more like stepping out on to a stage and being confronted with row after row of anxious faces all willing you back into the cockpit where you belonged. Apart from the physical impossibility of speaking to everybody it was unwise to leave the cockpit of a very large jet aircraft to one pilot. Emergencies were few and far between but when they happened they happened quickly and two pilots were vital at these times.
I think that I shall retire to the kitchen and make myself a cup of tea. I am now the proud possessor of a lovely little two cup teapot which my Mentor (Sometimes with the prefix "Tor") Andy has kindly sent me together with all the instructions for fitting a new sound bar which I have successfully carried out. He always says to me "If you can land a 747 you can do this that and the other etc. ". So far he is correct but I have had a lot of the "this and that" but none of the "other".! Still some more to come later..Regle