THIS ISLAND LIFEA COUPLE of weeks ago an article (since dubbed Carry on Up Your Column in some prissy quarters) featured a few of the extraordinary characters I used to work with at the old Portsmouth Evening News.
It wasn’t long before former colleagues were getting in touch to remind me of others who had made themselves difficult to forget in the 70s and 80s.
I’m especially grateful to Anton Hanney for invoking the memory of Paddy, the night-watchman at Hilsea.
The politically correct police are everywhere these days so I’m not going to mention the land of this gentleman’s birth. You’ll just have to work it out for yourself.
In the days long before mobile phones had been invented, Mike Neasom was travelling all over the country to cover Pompey matches.
As well as being a top bloke, he was also an extraordinarily diligent professional. When attending midweek matches at the other end of the country he always drove through the night to get back to the office at Hilsea. Once there, he would write his report in the early hours, thereby ensuring it was on the sports editor’s desk ready for that day’s newspaper.
One January evening, however, while returning from an action-packed encounter at Darlington, his car broke down.
It was about 11pm and it was important someone was made aware of his plight in case his report was not available as usual the next morning.
Neasom knew his mate, Alister Marshall, had been covering a local rugby match that evening and would still be in the office clattering out his report. He could therefore leave a message with him.
That was the good news. The bad news was that every night all the phones were switched through to Paddy’s cubby-hole at the bottom of the building, where he adopted the role of a somewhat bewildered receptionist.
Neasom found a phone-box in the middle of nowhere and dialled the Hilsea number — which wasn’t easy with all his fingers crossed.
Paddy picked up the phone and Neasom patiently explained who he was before slowly and carefully asking the night-watchman to go up a couple of floors, find Marshall and bring him to the phone as quickly as possible.
Off went Paddy and Neasom, for what seemed like an age, had to keep pumping in coins to maintain the connection.
He was down to his last couple of bob when Paddy finally returned.
"Hello," he said, "Mr Marshall said Mr Neasom’s not here. Sorry."
And with that he rang off.
Neasom (never renowned for tolerating fools at all, let alone easily) could barely recount the story for weeks afterwards without grinding his teeth down to stumps.
So, a couple of months later when Paddy turned up for work with two black eyes and a cut face, we naturally assumed our Pompey correspondent’s frustration had finally got the better of him.
The little night-watchman resolutely refused to tell anyone how he had come by his injuries but one day, while working late, I managed to get the truth out of him.
"Well," he told me, "that particular morning my friend asked if I would take his car round to the local garage for a service.
"When I got there, I thought it would be helpful if I drove it over the inspection pit.
"Unfortunately, I forgot it was a three-wheeler …"
Forget the timetable – the lord of the manor will be travelling today
ISLAND Line is massively proud of its punctuality record — despite the fact it’s the equivalent of making a model train set run on time.
So I shudder to think how they would have coped with the demands made on the service in late Victorian times.
My old mate Les Benford’s grandfather was the coachman to the last lord of the manor at Shanklin, Francis White-Popham.
He told me: "When Mr Francis wanted to go to London, grandfather had to visit the station the day before to acquaint the station-master with the time he wished to travel.
"On his return to the manor in the horse and carriage, boys would run up behind and hold on to the back, thereby getting a lift up the High Street.
"Grandfather, in his top hat with cockade gleaming, would hear the cry 'whip behind Fred’ from various shop-keepers.
"He apparently knew the length of the whip to within a fraction of an inch and with a flick of his wrist would bring the end of it down on the offending digits without moving his eyes from the road ahead.
"The next day the train would be at Shanklin station on the 'wrong’ platform with all the staff lined up, including the station-master, the booking clerk, the porters and the most junior staff, all booted and polished and duly deferential.
"Timetable? Other passengers? It didn’t matter. If Mr Francis said he intended to travel at 10.45am, that’s when the train left."