The slowest train journey I have ever been on, took place in South Africa very early in the morning. I really cannot think why I bothered, the engagement was in a small and remote country town served only by the one dawn train, and I knew that when I got there I would have a job killing time until the evening show. I knew nobody at the other end nor did anyone know me, other than by name. So when I booked in to my hotel just before lunch I was feeling pretty low.
After a bite to eat I wandered round the hotel in a desultory fashion for something to do and to my surprise stumbled across a badly-lit billiard-room. I think there is some law of nature which lays down that billiard-rooms, no matter how bad and no matter what the time of day, are never deserted. As I peered into the gloom I was approached by a man who said at once: 'Have a game of snooker, old chap.' 'No thank you,' I said, 'I'm just strolling round.' 'Do have a game,' he insisted. 'I have to wait some time before my train leaves for Johannesburg.' So, reluctantly, I allowed myself to be persuaded. It did not take me long to beat him, after which I thanked him for the game and hung the cue back on its rack. 'Don't rush off,' said the other. 'I'm supposed to be the best snooker player round here, and I've never seen you before.'
'No, I don't live here,' I replied. 'I'm from England. ..'
'Yes,' he interrupted, 'and the way you play snooker you must have slept with Joe Davis.'
'Well, not exactly,' I said, 'but I often sleep with his wife.'
I feel sure that the fellow is going round to this day telling of the time that he played snooker with a chap that slept with Joe Davis's wife.
On that South African jaunt, in 1951, I took my son Derrick to carve out a career for himself. I was glad that he had no ambitions to be a snooker player for I realised that having to follow me would be a soul-destroying life unless he achieved the absolute pinnacle of fame. Very few children indeed ever follow their parents into sport and achieve equal or greater glory. But Derrick did have an interest in the business aspects of the game.
The one business which I started on my own was Joe Davis Billiard Supplies Ltd and in this Derrick was trained as a billiard-table mechanic by my manager Bill Bilby, a complete craftsman. But I found I could not give my whole attention to the business and although I had a fine manager in Howard Stevens, one-time sales manager of Burroughes and Watts, plus a showroom and offices in London and branches in Torquay and Paignton, I could see that the business was a long way from the big break-through. It was not losing money but I could not see the point of having worked hard all my life only to be starting a new struggle from the bottom. I had business ideas, but carrying them to fruition was not my forte. And, having been an individualist all my life, I found managing people very trying. When business was good I was happy to give them bonuses but when television came along in a big way, knocking the pub and club business and sadly affecting our trade in consequence, my employees were not, in general, understanding about the reduction in their bonuses. Since Derrick was not keen, either, to take on this task I decided to sell out.
So, in South Africa I took him to Sidney Gillett of Thurston's, Cape Town and Johannesburg and there I left him. As a challenge I told him that unless he swam back or earned enough money for the fare I would not help him to return for two years - the time I reckon that it takes to become fully acclimatised to a new country. Derrick rose to the challenge and is now a director and manager of the South African Thurston's which is now in no way connected with the old original firm. And until 1973 he never returned to Britain. He is married with three boys: Gregory, Brian and Richard - and like most South Africans they are tall, athletic and excel at outdoor sports. One day they may even represent South Africa against England - governments permitting!
Strangely, my daughter Dorothy has two boys, John and Paul, so we have no third-generation females at all. She and her husband Frank Hanson live in Bromsgrove, where they moved so that the boys could attend Bromsgrove School. Frank, who works for Girling Ltd, is deeply interested in ornithology and has a remarkable knowledge of botanical matters. What looks like a field of grass to me is a treasure-house of sedges to him. And he keeps me up to the mark on the gardening which I enjoy in my own small patch. Luckily the whole family are interested in these nature studies and they are never happier that when they all pile into their sleeper van to visit the wilds of Scotland or Cornwall.
By this time June and I had developed quite a taste for overseas travel. In 1956 she flew out with me on a lumbering Stratocruiser for a lovely trip to Jamaica, under contract to the Jamaican Billiards and Snooker Association. There I played at the South Camp road Hotel in Kingston, followed by a few days in Montego Bay. My opponent was a charming man, the amateur champion of Jamaica, Helmot McKenzie - a very useful player who, sadly, had never been sufficiently stretched by top-class opposition. But such a fan was he that he was delighted whenever I made a good break at billiards and snooker against him. The Chief Minister, the Rt Hon Norman Manley, came to our games on several occasions. On the journey home a stopover in Bermuda enabled June and me to renew old friendships before boarding our plane for London. And on the journeyhome we found ourselves sharing the plan with Harry Secombe, bubbling as ever despite having broken his arm while fishing.
Unfortunately June was not well enough to undertake quite a strenuous tour of Southern Africa which I made in 1958, following the News of the World Tournament. I began in the New City Hall at Nairobi, before moving on to Mombassa for the hottest exhibition I have ever given - and by that I mean that the mercury was disappearing through the top of the thermometer. Of course, the fact that I was wrongly dressed did not help; the spectators were sitting there in shorts and open-neck shirts while I, perpetuating the John Roberts image to the last, appeared in evening dress, including waistcoat. It was quite unnerving bending over the table, with the air thick with flies, moths and other flying objects, all circling the table lights and often falling dead on to the green baize. The fans were on at full blast but they succeeded only in recycling the same warm air - and occasionally in moving the balls around on the table.
Again I travelled well-worn paths around South Africa itself, most memorably playing at the Durban home of the Natal champion jockey Charlie Barends. All the jockeys, trainers and owners in South Africa seemed to be there; quite a party. In all I gave forty exhibitions in seven weeks - leaving me time only for a weekend with Derrick, Marie and family.
I arrived home just in time for a four-handed challenge match for £500 a side which had been set up by the News of the World. They announced that they would back Fred and me to play any other pair and the gauntlet was picked up by the London Evening News who put up John Pulman and Walter Donaldson. Frankly, I think four-handed snooker is a game to be played for a pint of beer by amateurs, not for professionals. But the public enjoyed seeing us play the game that they so often played themselves. I also branched out seriously into television, playing fifteen-minute matches against different opponents in BBC TV's Saturday afternoon sports programme Grandstand. Somehow we never once ran over our time allocation - perhaps it was my theatrical training!
On the business side, apart from my link with Kay Sports and their miniature tables, and my own struggles with Joe Davis Billiards Supplies Ltd I had a continuing association with Peradon and Co., the country's largest and oldest cue-manufacturing firm. The first cue marketed to my specifications had been the billiard-cue type, but when billiards lost its popularity we stopped marketing that and instead brought out my snooker cue which has been a great success, selling all over the world. Next came the Club cue, followed by yet another cue marketed in commemoration of my 500th snooker century, and a new one to commemorate my 600th. Now we market only the snooker and the Club cues but the association has been a long and a happy one - and long may it continue. (My promotion of the Accles and Pollock 'Apollo' aluminium cue was, in contrast, short-lived. I found I could not get on with the cue at any price, so could not in all conscience recommend it.)
My involvement in billiard-halls themselves was always rather more traumatic. Apart from the halls I shared with my father there was one at Hyde, near Manchester, and a nineteen-table place in Blackpool in which my partner was a one-time mayor of Rawtenstall, George Lupton. Another friend, Bill Betts, was my partner in halls at Cambridge and Kilburn in London. The Kilburn one was a particular headache, attracting the rough element, and was soon disposed of. Indeed all the halls were sold off years ago except for the one in Blackpool. This we clung on to for some time before finally deciding to sell. We were just too hasty, for soon afterwards the new Betting Act was introduced; the one-armed bandits could have been the saving of the place.
Of all my business activities I got perhaps most satisfaction out of the books that I wrote. The first was How I Play Snooker, published by the book production department of Country Life whose general manager, Walter Whittaker, gave me much encouragement and assistance. And soon, also with Walter's support, I published Advanced Snooker, although, since a reading of it would have greatly improved any average amateur's play, I thought this a rather off-putting title. Later both volumes were incorporated into Complete Snooker for the Amateur which I consider the complete classic of the game. My collaborators on these projects were the excellent photographer J. Allan Cash and the well-known Fleet Street figure Harold Lewis who was first a sports writer, then produced a holiday guide and a magazine called Parents and eventually wrote two or three novels, the best-known of which was Crow on a Barbwire Fence. Harold was the greatest assistance to me during the writing of these books since, being a non-expert, he asked me all manner of searching technical questions, the answers to which I had always taken for granted and found hard to explain. So I used to go to the table and play out the problem for both our benefits. It was surprising what I taught myself.
All these business activities, despite the headaches and frustrations, enabled me to acquire the standard of living that I am happy to enjoy. I doubt whether I should have earned enough simply playing the game. But I always used to live a comparatively frugal life in order to save as much as I could. I invested on the advice of experts - in properties and so forth - and never left myself with spare cash which I might lavish on luxury living. I have always believed, and still do, that to be happy one must not live right up to one's means, committing oneself to overhead charges that will only bring worry. This is especially the case as one's years advance.
People sometimes ask me how I managed to keep up the pace as I moved into my fifties, travelling so much, trying to keep fit and still playing almost every day - and very often twice a day. The only honest answer is that I have no idea. Looking back on it now, I cannot imagine having done it all. Certainly conditions in clubs could be very trying and one inevitably became irritable and bad-tempered despite oneself. In my time I have played on some indescribable tables with threadbare cloths and cushions as hard as closet seats.
On one occasion, at a golf club exhibition, I really did get the needle. It was a filthy November night and snowing hard. And as people came into the club they walked straight from the entrance into the billiard-room, each one carrying a ton or so of snow on his boots. Soon the floor was swimming with water and the central heating was causing condensation on a massive scale; it was like a Turkish bath. And the billiard-table cloth, being woollen, absorbed a vast amount of moisture. I am sure I could have wrung water out of it. I persuaded the club steward to put a hot iron over it twice but before I started to play it was as bad as ever. I had a grim struggle to make a cannon in my opening billiards exhibition and after the allotted forty-five minutes I had not even approached a break of 100, which was most unusual. During the break, after which I was due to play snooker, I adjourned to the committee room where, as ever, everyone was charming and hospitable - prepared to do anything to make you feel at home.
But I was far from happy; I was always so keen to put on a good show. Then one committee member said: 'Do you like our table?
I'm sure you'll make a snooker century after the interval.' This made me furious, knowing that I would be lucky to make 20.
Oh I like the table very much,' I said. For years I've been looking for something like it.'
'Really?' said the committee man. 'I'll speak to the rest of the committee to see if we could consider selling it to you. Would you want it for your own billiard-room?'
'No,' I answered. 'I want it for next week - it's Guy Fawkes night.'
I have never forgiven myself for my rudeness.
Although I was a smoker myself the smoky atmosphere tended to get me down as time went by, and eventually I gave up smoking after forty years and had to ask people not to smoke while I was playing.
I never did manage to find a brand of cigarette that did not make me cough and on three occasions in later years I nearly choked after coughing bouts, falling on to the floor in a black-out.
There was always much consternation from bystanders imagining that I had suffered a heart attack. But, oddly, as soon as I hit the ground I always came round. June was naturally very perturbed about these bouts and eventually whenever I started coughing badly she pushed me on to the floor for my own good. But even though I was becoming pretty weary of these attacks I am not sure whether I would have been able to give up smoking altogether if fate had not lent a hand.
June and I were due to fly to Monte Carlo to stay with our friends Jack and Ann Billmeir. Jack was founder of the Stanhope Shipping Co. and was known in the City as 'Happy Jack'. He was the jolliest millionaire I knew and ran beautiful homes and gardens in Elstead, Surrey (which housed the finest billiard-table I have ever seen), Melfort in Scotland, on the river Costello in Connemara, Ireland, and in Monte Carlo - besides having a hotel at Tilmouth in Northumberland. He was a yachtsman without peer, a great shot and fly-fisherman, a talented oil painter and violinist and a useful golfer. He beat me many a morning at a £1-a-round putting session on the greens that he made at his establishments. A great guy, and a great personal loss to me when he died suddenly on the golf course at Farnham in Surrey.
Shortly before June and I were due to fly to Nice for that particular holiday I had had a smallpox jab which had given me an aching back which made me feel very much under the weather. But I had promised my old billiard-room partner Bill Betts that on the night before I would do a show for him at the British Legion Club at Witley in Surrey, so I struggled down by car having asked June to put out a flask of Ovaltine for my return at about 1 a.m. This I relished when I got home - but even more pleasant was that in the spare bedroom which I used when returning in the early hours, June had put the old electric pad under the sheets to relieve my back. The Ovaltine, my tiredness and the warm pad sent me off to sleep immediately without switching off the pad, which was not thermostatically controlled. After several hours I half-awoke, feeling a most terrific heat. I tossed and turned for some time, thinking that I was running a high temperature, and eventually turned back the sheets to get out of bed. Immediately flames shot from the mattress. I was scared stiff but managed to throw the sheets back in an attempt to damp the fire down. When this failed I ladled jugs of water over the bed until I succeeded in putting the fire out. By this time the room was full of choking smoke but I staggered in to see June and with her help and the assistance of Blos Lewis from the flat above we managed to haul the bedding out into the garden. I was thankful not to have been suffocated, electrocuted or both.
Somehow we managed to reach the airport on time but my breathing apparatus was in a terrible state when we arrived at the Billmeir's and I asked whether they would excuse me if I went straight to bed with whisky, hot water and lemon. As I did so I said to Ann: 'I want to tell you that I shall never smoke again.'
'We'll see,' she said. 'You'll probably feel much better in the morning.'
But after breakfast when all the other guests lit up cigarettes I stuck to my promise. And I have never had a cigarette or pipe in my mouth since.
Other delightful people whom we are happy to have as friends include show business people to whom June introduced me. They include Vera Lynn whom June first met when she was singing for Charlie Kunz's band at Casani's club in Regent Street and Vera used to come along to sing on the nights when the club was broadcasting. Vera went on to join the renowned bandleader Ambrose while June joined Jack Hylton. One evening when Vera and her husband, Harry Lewis, joined us in a foursome at snooker I made a break of 140 - and Vera complained that I made it look too easy.
The stage and TV star Pat Kirkwood and her husband Hubert Gregg are good friends, too. Pat I remember playing with Vic Oliver in Black Velvet at the London Hippodrome. The song she made famous, 'My Heart Belongs To Daddy', was tremendous.
She is still singing as beautifully as ever - and looking as glamorous as ever. Hubert, song-writer, actor, director, and playwright, wrote 'When The Lights Come On In London' and 'Maybe It's Because I'm a Londoner'. We have had many happy times at their villa in Luz Bay in Portugal's Algarve where they were among the first British inhabitants.
Arthur Askey, with whom June toured the provinces in Bandwaggon is still a close friend, as is Tessie O'Shea with whom I shared the bill several limes. Tessie, always great fun, is a staunch helper in the Imperial Cancer Research Fund on which June and I have concentrated our charity efforts. We are both life governors and I am a vice-president. Together with the famous surgeon Arthur Dickson Wright, who was honorary treasurer, I raised over £100,000 through snooker alone. I always particularly enjoyed my trips to Glasgow to help the efforts up there organised by the Duchess of Roxburghe.
What Tommy Trinder called 'the best gag ever' was pulled by Raymond Glendenning and me at a Fund snooker night, attended by a host of celebrities. Before I was due to play a game Raymond announced that it was going to be broadcast on the radio with him doing the commentary - and sure enough there were the microphones, the little red light to denote that we wereon the air, and all the other paraphernalia of radio. Raymond gave his usual pre-broadcast chat to the effect that the audience should remain silent unless something out of the ordinary occurred at which point they were allowed to applaud, thus giving the feel of a live audience without interrupting the flow of the broadcast. Then the little red light went on and Raymond could be heard throughout the hall setting the scene and giving a running commentary for the listeners. Then, by prior arrangement, I shaped to pot a simple enough black and missed it badly. Raymond accompanied these actions with the immortal commentary: 'And now Davis is going to pot the black, his favourite shot. Oh, hell, he's fluffed it - a bloody terrible shot.' The whole audience gasped in horror, the red light was suddenly switched off and Raymond announced in sombre tones that we had been taken off the air.
It was only later that he explained: we had never been on!
But I think the greatest snooker night that we staged for the Fund was the one at the Café Royal, in 1964, just before my final decision to retire from the game altogether. The Café Royal evening was always staged just before Christmas. Turkeys, drinks and other goods too numerous to mention used to fetch a fortune at the auctions and the tombola never had fewer than 700 prizes. Admittedly we always invited people known for their generosity and everything from the Café Royal suite to the billiard-table was provided for us free. And certainly the stars were a free attraction - Tessie O'Shea, Vera Lynn, Arthur Askey, Tommy Trinder, Jack Train, Dickie Henderson and many more. But even we were impressed that year. We cleared £12,000 on the night.
Ten years before I retired I obtained the registration number CUE 1 for my car. In those days the car number game was unheard-of in its present-day form. It was simply that a friend of mine in Sutton Coldfield wrote to tell me that he had seen the number in the street - and had discovered that it belonged to his dentist, Mr Norman Granville Evans. I contacted Mr Evans suggesting that we swap next time I bought a car, paying the expenses myself of course, and he readily agreed. He later came to see me play in Birmingham and I presented him with a billiard-cue and case for his kind co-operation. From time to time since then I have wondered whether this distinctive number plate was a good idea; I have been seen at various places where I should not have been. On the other hand, fans recognising it have sometimes come to my assistance when I have had a problem on my hands.
The fact that I was increasingly being recognised wherever I went was not entirely due to the car, however. I was appearing on TV quite a bit and, of course, was still to be seen from time to time in the newspapers. And from 1954 you could actually pay to see me - and one or two other people - in the Madame Tussaud's wax museum. I was surprised to be approached, but considered it a great honour to be placed on view amid the famous and infamous, even though it meant losing an evening suit and waistcoat for the model. However my brother professionals were less enchanted. 'One Joe Davis is enough,' they said.
A greater surprise still was to open an envelope over breakfast offering me the honour of becoming an Ordinary Officer of the Civil Division of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire - an OBE. I have never known who put my name forward - but I have always hoped that it was somebody with whom I was involved through my charity work. It was a great day for June and me and my daughter Dorothy when I visited Buckingham Palace in 1963 to receive the medal from the hands of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. After an investiture everyone without exception asks: 'What did the Queen say?' So to keep everyone happy I invented the story that she said: 'Well now you know where we live, you must come round more often.' In fact what happened was that when my turn came I was announced as Mr Joseph Davis, so that when I reached the rostrum Her Majesty said: 'I'm sure you scarcely recognise yourself being called Joseph!'
Since my retirement I have enjoyed every minute of my time. I have never regretted the decision although it took me some time to slip into a different gear. But when I finally realised that leisure time, like working time, has to be organised I was well away.
Golf was foremost on the agenda, and I was soon playing three and four times a week. While my standard did not improve I did become more consistent and was at one lime a pretty difficult customer to beat off my 16 handicap. Actually, when introduced to the game by Ernest Rudge, I got my handicap down to 12 by constant practice - until I realised it was detracting from my billiards and virtually stopped playing. Later, Willie Smith was often my opponent on the golf course and occasionally Tom Newman, though Tom was never a good player. I well remember seeing him and Fred Lawrence having a furious argument on the fairway about how many strokes they bad played. Admittedly it was a longish hole - but they finally compromised by agreeing that each had played nine strokes. And they were not yet on the green!
Once, in the early days of the war, Austin Carris, the donor of the 'Carris Cup', arranged for Henry Cotton and myself to play Tom Newman and Archie Compson at Shirley Park Golf Club in aid of the Red Cross with, in the evening, a return match of snooker. Henry Cotton and I were beaten on the last putt and Archie cried out: 'Tom, we'll tour the world together.' In the evening Henry and Archie proved as mediocre at snooker as Tom and I were at golf but we earned some good money for the Red Cross. It was a great thrill for me to play with Henry, one of the greatest golfers ever, and also when I played the brilliant Bobby Locke when he first came to England. Similarly I was delighted years later to play with the South African star Gary Player at Selsdon Park in a 27-hole better-ball event on handicap. We managed to finish third and I have a silver-topped decanter to prove it.
Towards the end of my snooker-playing days I enjoyed some very relaxing golfing parties in Scotland, principal among them being one organised - or disorganised, as we used to say - by the Surrey and England cricketer Alf Gover. We went with Peter May and his brother John; Stewart Surridge; Ted Drake, the former Arsenal ace; Leslie Ames, the Kent and England wicket keeper; and George Casey, the Sunday Mirror sports editor. They were practically all better players than me and the cricketing boys could hit the ball a mile, but it was all great fun, playing a different course every day.
Nor will I ever forget another Scottish golfing holiday in Dornoch. Four of us arrived at our hotel - 'Quarry' Adams, Arthur Orengo and the jockey Charlie Smirke. But only three of us stayed. On the very first hole that Charlie and I played we had a difference of opinion but this I overcame, knowing that Charlie could be a bit temperamental, by saying: 'Let's not let this get in the way. We have another week or so together.' So all went well until after dinner when we were all playing solo whist. Eventually Charlie called solo and made eight tricks. 'That was a bit of a lay-down,' I joked. Then Charlie really went off the deep end. 'You're always going on at me,' he cried. 'I'm going back home tomorrow. I've had enough.' And he did, leaving the rest of us to continue our holiday. Six hundred miles for one round of golf!
But without doubt my greatest golfing moment came in 1966 when I won the knockout competition run by the Eccentric Club, which is the biggest auction sweep in the country. I was sold for £100 and the first prize came to over £2,000. I think I played six or seven matches all told and in the final faced George Williams, a fine golfer with a handicap of 6, and a past winner. I received a number of strokes but there was nothing else in my favour; George was about half my age - a great help over the 36-hole match and nearly twice my size. The course was the testing one at Walton Heath and as I was never long from the tee and we were playing from the backward tees I was not hopeful. Reflecting my feelings, the betting was 5-2 against me at the start. But playing in front of a big following of Eccentric Club members took me back to my snooker championship days and I concentrated furiously. I listened or talked to nobody except my marvellous caddie, Jackie, whose advice I took from the beginning. And so I upset the odds by winning by 6 and 5. George cannot believe it to this day - and I have never played as well since. The silver owl - the Eccentric Club symbol - which was presented to me is one of my proudest possessions.
For fishing I was spoiled at the outset because I was introduced to it by Jack Billmeir who always did it in the grandest style, renting miles of the River Tweed, the River Till in Northumberland or the Costello River in Ireland and having gillies on hand to help. Once a fortnight's rent alone cost him £600. I will never forget the bitterly cold day in March when I caught my first salmon with Jack, and nearly fell overboard in the process. It was a neat 10 lb, just right for the pot. I particularly enjoyed the deep-sea fishing when Jack and I, with an experienced boatman, crossed in Jack's launch from Connemara to the isle of Arran, trawling for mackerel. On landing at Arran we used to head straight for a small crowded pub owned by two old ladies where Jack always ordered drinks all round - usually pints of draught Guinness. By the time we were due to return we were practically swimming in the stuff.
Two or three years ago I sampled a different sort of fishing - for conger eel. Bernard Howard took me down to Brixham in Devon for a week to fish with some friends off the famous boat Unity manned by John Trust and Ernie Passmore. In glorious weather we sailed for two and a half hours before dropping anchor over a shipwreck - a popular haunt of conger eel. I was astonished at the ease with which John and Ernie could handle the monsters, some of them 6o or 70 lb. They picked them up as though they were mackerel and threw them across to a huge bin. I looked on for a day or so and found that my friends, all hefty chaps, seemed to have little difficulty either. One day we landed over 1,000 lb of congers, one of them weighing 84½ lb and breaking the record which had stood for thirty-seven years. But soon I realised that the ease of handling was deceptive. The only eel I landed, which weighed just under 50lb, took me half an hour. And afterwards I was exhausted.
Not that I was forever dashing off and leaving June behind. We share various activities such as the Derby and Joan clubs in Pimlico and St Mary Abbotts, Kensington, and in 1973 and 1974 took 150 club members on a day's outing on the Thames, with money (£1,200 in 1974) and help provided by my fellow members of a society called the Guild of Nineteen Lubricators. Music all day long came from James Stewart Gordon and members of his Savoy orchestra, and there were presents for all, a splendid lunch and high tea, and as many whelks, jellied eels and cockles as anyone could wish for.
More exotically, June and I were treated to the close sight of African wildlife when, after my retirement, we went to stay with our friends Anna and Remi Martin in Kenya. A friend of theirs, Johnny Douglas, an oil representative, was on holiday himself and volunteered to take us to that most famous of safari spots, the Tree Tops Hotel - built literally on tree tops - from where Princess Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh were recalled on the death of King George VI. There we spent an exciting night watching all manner of wild beasts visiting the watering hole and taking a dip. June went to bed early while Johnny and I looked on for some time before having 'one for the road'. June, a light sleeper, was still awake - and furious - when I crept in. Early next day when we were wakened she was still cross. 'I can't think why you had to stay up all that time, having three more whiskies,' she pronounced. Then Johnny's voice sounded from the next room. 'It was only two', he said. Thin walls in those parts.
Rather thicker were the walls of the Aswan Dam which we marvelled over during our trip to Egypt in 1972 where we were the guests of Arthur Dickson Wright. We arrived in Cairo on New Year's Eve in time to celebrate with Arthur, his brother Douglas and his wife, and another surgeon, Professor Halim Grace. Then we all flew on to Luxor, where we boarded the Nile steamer Osiris and during the course of a few days took in everything from the Valley of the Kings, where we saw the last resting place of Tutankhamun (did all those treasures really fit into that small tomb?), to the Dam itself and the monuments of Rameses II at Abu Simbel which were transplanted to make way for the dam.
Apart from the out-of-the-ordinary trips June and I usually manage to visit South Africa each winter to catch the sun and see our family. While there, a man whom we never fail to look up is Carl Erasmus, not the best amateur snooker player in the world but certainly one of the most enthusiastic. In 1974 we travelled to Manchester from South Africa to watch the professional championships. Carl owned the Park View Hotel in Durban but a few years ago sold an 8o per cent interest in it and a sixty-year lease to Trust Houses Forte. June and I stayed with him and his Scottish wife Moreg when he later continued to manage the hotel, but he has now retired completely. Carl often flew me up in his Cessna for lunch in the Drakensburg Mountains. He is no mean pilot, with several thousand flying hours to his credit, but in snooker he still has an ambition: to make a century break. He has two tables - one at his home in Durban and another at his place in the country - but it was only late in life that he took up the game seriously and he never gets much opportunity to watch or compete with better players. Still, he practises like mad every day. I wish him luck.
On top of these holidays, for a number of years I used to go to St Moritz about the middle of January with my good friend Ronnie Cornwell. At that time of year a number of jockeys for-gathered at the Kulm Curling Club for curling led by Sir Gordon Richards. Nowadays, however, interest among the riders has deteriorated and the sessions have ended. Though Ronnie and I have been to the resort quite recently we have changed our playing venue to the Suveretta House Curling Club and Hotel where each year they contest the Cornwell Cup. Apart from being very able in business and excellent company on visits to Deauville or the National Sporting Club Ronnie is also a talented writer of letters. But he has to give second best as a writer to his son David - better known under his pseudonym, John le Carré. Having known David from a boy it was with great pleasure that I received an autographed copy of his smash hit Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.
As a toning-up operation for my St Moritz trips, indeed for my general welfare, I endeavour, with June, to visit twice yearly the Grayshott Hall Health Centre of which I am a director: a massage each day, sometimes underwater pressure massage, a little time in the sauna and osteopathy when necessary. I usually spend the first couple of days on a strict diet, too. Happily, there are the compensations of the golf course for me and the heated pool for June. We always feel marvellously refreshed when we get back home.
My remaining pastime is racing in which I have been interested ever since my father had his betting business. I have had some wonderful entertainment at races all over the world - Australia, Copenhagen, Kenya, South Africa, France and even, once, near the Dead Sea. In this country I am a member of several racecourses but my favourite meeting is at York where the accommodation and amenities are first-class. I enjoy it particularly, though, because I renew old acquaintances - especially Phil Bull, with whom I have stayed many times at 'The Hollins' outside Halifax. Phil was the creator of that indispensable racing production Time form and of the fine comprehensive annual Racehorses of the Year. The only time I have played a game of snooker since I retired has been at Phil's on a table supplied by Willie Smith many years ago. At one stage I used to give Phil 50 start but as my eyesight deteriorated somewhat I had to be less generous. He is always such a good host that after dinner is not the best time to be playing snooker with him. Once, half-way through a match, I said: 'Phil, have you noticed that on these long shots I'm hitting the ball on the wrong side. It's my eyesight, I suppose.'
'That's not your eyesight,' he replied. 'It's the wine you had with your dinner.'
Whatever the cause, that was the last game I played.
Although, like Mel Inman, I have been tempted to own a horse I have always reminded myself in time that they demand the betting aside of several thousand pounds which one must not be at all worried about losing. The nearest I have ever come to becoming an owner was through Sonny Stalbow, the managing director of Grayshott Hall, who asked me a couple of years back to make inquiries about acquiring a horse for him. I approached the Epsom trainer Staff Ingham who then bought a yearling filly for 3,000 guineas at the Newmarket Sales. My interest in the filly, named Grayshott Hall, was a percentage on any earnings so I was pleased when she performed well on her first outing. But unfortunately she broke down in training and although we sent her to stud for two seasons she failed to get in foal. At 3,000 guineas, plus upkeep and stud fees she was becoming an expensive hobby. Then to our surprise, it turned out that she was in foal after all, with the Derby winner Firestreak as the sire. From gloom our mood changed to elation. Whether the foal will also be a Derby winner we shall have to wait and see. The ups and downs of racing!
I have never backed horses very heavily - partly through natural caution and partly because I always did so much studying that I could not see the wood for the trees. But having been brought up in a gambling atmosphere it would be surprising if some of it had not rubbed off. In one way gambling was, of course, a way of avoiding paying taxes unnecessarily. For instance, when the keen race-goer G. H. Moore once visited Thurston's with his son and offered to pay me £10 if I showed his lad how to make a century, I had to say: 'Bet me a tanner that I can't do it.' I made many a pound in that way; people were always betting flyers, tenners and sometimes a pony on century breaks. The motto was: a £1,000 bet is all mine; a 10s gift is taxable.
But I must confess to having made in my time one or two rash wagers which I shudder to recall. The biggest was at Angmering on a golfing weekend with the Guild of Nineteen Lubricators. After dinner, in between poker sessions, Frank Craddock and I were guessing odd or even on the last digit of pound notes which we kept fishing out. This went on at wearisome length until Frank said: 'Let's have one good bet and finish. Spin a coin and I'll guess heads or tails for £500.'
'That's too big for me,' I said. 'But all right, I'll take it. Just the one - and then finish.'
I won, so Frank immediately offered to toss again, double or nothing. I took some persuading but eventually we tossed again for £250. Again it came down in my favour. 'That's your lot,' I said.
That was a long time ago. I cannot imagine now how I had the nerve.