Funny how things you've not thought of in years suddenly pop into your head as a result of this thread. Carrying on from my Bristow interview story, a few months later in early '68 whilst waiting for my CPL exam results I received a telephone call asking if I was interested in a job flying a Bell 47. It would have been foolish not to look at it and I toddled off to Stansted for an interview. The owner ran a building company - he's now long deceased - but I see his Company is still going so I won't mention his name here.
On arrival at Stansted I was greeted by the builder's chauffeur who thrust a thin Flight Manual at me and pointed to a Bell 47 sitting on a trolley and he said "Mr X says to teach yourself to fly it and he'd like to go to the races at Ascot tomorrow". My protestations that I hadn't quite got a pilot's licence in my hot sticky hand were met by a blank stare and the chauffeur disappeared. I'd never seen a Bell 47 before but thought it couldn't be that different to the Hiller 12E that I'd done my 1179 on whilst still in the RN so thought I'd have a look round it. When I found out how to check the engine oil level and saw it was about an eighth full I got back in my car and drove home.
Subsequently when I started my first civvy flying job one of the other pilots was the builder's former ex-RN pilot - now with a CPL. It turned out he had flown for the builder on a PPL(H) only and had been employed as an 'office manager'. His job when not flying was to organise a car parking 'business' where holidaymakers left their cars with him when they flew abroad and he housed them in the garages of the builder's unsold houses around Essex, taking them back to Stansted when the holidaymakers returned. The trouble was he lost his list of where he'd put the cars and chaos ensued.........which is how Mr X had ended up without a pilot.
Edit - I eventually ended up with more than 2500 hours on various varieties of Bell 47 and my conversion to type is another story....it's almost 50 years ago but I don't know how long the legal arm of the CAA is so that will have to remain untold.