I just had a weird moment - a name popped up in the headlines and then I saw their picture and I thought ' I know that face, very familiar'. It would appear he didnt turn out so well to say the least, ive just contacted an old school friend to confirm it is who I think.
Anyone else ever seen a ghost from the past in the papers?
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Similar - but on TV
I was watching one of those "fly on the wall" TV programmes about Customs Officers and their work at Heathrow Airport, they had this guy (and his wife) in a custody suite having found drugs in suitcase they were bringing back from the West Indies holiday.
There was something familiar about him..............the longer I watched the more familiar ....then it clicked! He was a childhood friend, my best friend at primary school - we started together at 5 years old and were friends until we were both in our 20's but then lost touch and I hadn't seen him for 20 years.
At the end of the programme there was the usual update just before the credits on the subsequent fate of those featured (which indeed confirmed his full name) , amazingly - he was aquitted at Crown Court having claimed his wife must have packed the drugs and he knew nothing about them, she was jailed (can't remember how long).
He was such a quiet lad at school as well.
Last edited by: Jacks on Tue 18 Dec 12 at 00:56
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You know what they say about the quiet ones :)
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A former driving pupil of mine once featured on a Crimewatch reconstruction, being one of a gang of four putting the strong arm on the manager and staff at a pub in Rainham for free drinks and cash out of the till.
I remember him as a rough and ready but likeable lad.
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In my teens I was very friendly with a guy who was going to uni to study law and we lost contact.
He recently reappeared, on the news, fighting for compensation for prisoners rights!!
Mmm...
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>> In my teens I was very friendly with a guy who was going to uni
>> to study law and we lost contact.
>> He recently reappeared, on the news, fighting for compensation for prisoners rights!!
>>
>> Mmm...
The guy's done well.
Having worked in what was then the Lord Chancellor's Dept early in my career I met quite a few barristers who've subsequently risen to high judicial office. One in the Supreme Court and several others in the Court of Appeal.
And less respectably...
Last year sorting out my daughter at Uni got me thinking about my first move away from the family home; digs in Scunthorpe.
Found the place on Streetview easily enough. Then I thought I'd see if I could find out if the Landlord, David, was still about. He was on the County Council so should be easily traced.
The answer was that he was doing, or had done, time for the offence of pleasuring himself in the company of young boys. Named removed from the town's roll of honour etc!!
There were rumours he was a bit odd back in 78 but only suggesting that he had a life in the closet as it were.
Last edited by: Bromptonaut on Tue 18 Dec 12 at 11:37
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I've seen quite a few names and faces I recognize in the evening paper. But there's only half a million of us in this city.
Most names I recognize are in the obits now.
Ted
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>> Most names I recognize are in the obits now.
Likewise Ted... worst news I ever got from the comic was a long obit of an old friend, a good one too, whom I hadn't even known was ill. While there have been quite a few of those over the years, all the others were less surprising.
As for the toerag stuff, least said soonest mended, or at least forgotten...
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Had more bad news last night, Lud. We have been away on our bikes for some years now, camping in France, Germany, etc. Usually about 6 of us...all of a ' mature ' age.
Ive always shared with one particular guy, hotels, cabins on ships, even my caravan at local shows. We get on fine.
He's been behaving strangely for 3 or 4 years and it's been noticeable to us although , him being 35 miles away, we don't see him very often. A phone call from my local biker mate, one of the group, told me that R had been sectioned under the Mental Health Act.
Very sad for his wife and 2 grown up kids.....I guess there's not much we can do but show support for the family.
R is about 63 and has worked from being a teenager in just one place......the paint rectification shop at a major car manufacturer's assembly plant.
We've wondered for some time if that had anything to do with his deteriorating condition. I imagine health precautions were maybe not as strict 40 yrs ago in the days of cellulose paints.
Ted
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>> I imagine health precautions were maybe not as strict 40 yrs ago in the days of cellulose paints.
In the chaotic but interesting period of my life between 1958 and 1963 or so, I worked for a couple of months as a sprayer's mate in a factory in Chiswick that made tin advertisements and stuff like that. I think it was cellulose, anyway it had to be baked afterwards in a big oven. Silk screen processes were also used there I think.
The point is though that I was given a pint of milk a day 'to absorb the fumes'. I doubt if it achieved much but apparently it was a legal requirement or recommendation. No doubt an entire working life spent doing that might have had more permanent and baleful effects, as they seem to have done on your poor friend. An upsetting story. It would be interesting to know what form his health problem has taken (not that I'm asking of course).
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I'm not sure....we noticed a refusal to ride with us, going off by himself. At dinnertime he wouldn't spend any time with us in the bar, preferring to sit at the table holding his knife and fork for an hour. Usually good-natured, he showed a lot of awkwardness in joining in. He could navigate his bike to the club in Manchester in the dark but got lost in his home town in daylight. When my pal asked him if he's spoken to me, he had to ask who I was.
All small things, of course, but showing changes in personality from how he was, say, 5 years ago. His wife contacted us in the Summer before a weekend away which we do every year asking us to tell him the event was cancelled if he should ask. She didn't trust him to do the 300 mile round trip on his Honda Shadow cruiser.
I've not spoken to my mate, SWM talked to him last night, but I understand domestic violence was involved....sadly.
Ted
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The random memory lapses, and the apparently happy vacuous stillness and blank solitude, do suggest brain damage, like early onset Alzheimer's, and the domestic violence could result from anger caused by awareness of the deterioration. But you'd have to know a lot more than I do to be sure. Horrid for family and friends however you look at it.
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>> Anyone else ever seen a ghost from the past in the papers?
>>
I've seen myself a couple of times, does that count?
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A guy in my class from school turned out to be the culprit in a high profile murder case.
Odd, as I went to school with a few odd balls, and he wasn't one of them
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>> A guy in my class from school turned out to be the culprit in a high profile murder case.
>>
A guy, Flossie Forsyth, who was briefly in my year at school ( before moving to a nearby school) was one of the last to be hanged in the UK. He was just 18 and was hanged in 1960.
( first Google item says hung)
I was called in to alibi a friend who lived two doors away from the victim.
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School friend (his name was next to mine when the register was called) became the youngest QC at the time. First I knew was seeing his physog in a multi page profile in one of the Sunday colour supps.
And another, also in my year but not a close friend at the time, was often on TV news where he'd been defending celebrities, mostly footballers.
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A guy I went to school with was the only survivor of a car crash on 31 August 1997 in Paris. He was the one wearing his seatbelt, despite being thought of as 'not very bright' in his school days.
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>>A guy in my class from school turned out to be the culprit in a high profile murder case.
A girl in my class turned out to be the victim of a high profile murder case. Quite shocking.
In the 70s with the state of motorcycle casualties and the number of dodgy vehicles driven quickly, quite a few of my school mates met their end on the roads.
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>> A girl in my class turned out to be the victim of a high profile
>> murder case. Quite shocking.
One forgets these things. Girl who was a class or two younger than me at primary was national news child murder in 1969.
Abducted by a GPO engineer who, IIRC killed himself afterwards.
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I've seen me in the papers a couple of times, even been on TV news.
Does that count?
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So have I, but I'd rather not think about it.
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My name appeared in the local paper on one occasion when they used to list motoring offences in the "Court in Brief" section. Pre-speed-cameras of course. They'd need a pull-out section now.
My latest appearance in print is in the Ferrari Owners Club mag, pictured at the world record gathering at Silverstone - I haven't seen it yet, so I might need a magnifying glass when I do.
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I was on the telly once. Walking across the square outside the office, there was an outside broadcast unit and 3 or 4 Asian girls. I thought no more of it.
Watching the telly some time later there was a news item on female circumcision and there was me walking towards the camera.
A serious subject....good job I hadn't broken into a ' Morecambe & Wise ' sort of prance for the camera !
Ted
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I'm occasionally caught in the TV coverage round the Royal Courts or the Immigration Tribunal in Bream's Buildings.
Was ambling back to work from Sainsbury's when that Russian lass with whom Mike Handcock MP had been practising Hochmagandy emerged from the latter building for the lu.ch adjournment.
Not as attractive in the flesh as some of the pictures made her out to be.
I was just visible in the background.
Last edited by: Bromptonaut on Wed 19 Dec 12 at 15:00
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Being on TV is horrible.
I, for one, look a complete pratt and speak with the education and knowledge of a lump of clay.
It is mortifying and about a billion times worse than hearing your own voice recorded.
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>> Being on TV is horrible.
Yup. Even those tiny little BBC radio studios used to get me in a muck sweat, and any hint of a camera and klieg lights would soon have my shirt and armpits sopping wet. Babes with powder puffs couldn't get the shine off my face for more than ten seconds at a time... what was needed was five of them with squeegees and a huge cold air blower.
All that before one even had a chance to forget what one was saying or field one of those underhand questions designed to elicit a frazzled (so mildly interesting) response.
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In 1989, the Beeb made a documentary called "Thatcher's Children", to mark 10 years of Her Glorious Reign.
The part which focused on University students of the day was made at my University, and in particular my Hall of Residence (I was a first year student). Several of my chums had decent interview/speaking parts, but my appearance was restricted to a panning shot of students seated at a dining table at a Hall formal dinner. Once the cameras had gone, the evening, of course, immediately descended in to the most violent food fight I have ever been part of. Sadly, that bit didn't get filmed and broadcast. I seem to recall I had treated myself to a bottle of Fitou red wine (which I had been reliably informed was both cheap and classy) to accompany the meal, and it was the first time I recall consuming a whole bottle of wine on my own. Doesn't seem to have the same effect these days.
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I have some video clips somewhere of me mouthin' off in a Mosque about something, I'll dig it out.
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The worst are the remote controlled green studios.
One sits in a hot room, with green drapes over everything and a couple of remote cameras in front of you.
There is a speaker via which you can hear the direction and production staff, but you have no face to face interaction at all other than the occasional scuttling in and scuttling out again wordlessly of an anonymous technician.
Then you hear things like; "Now could you pretend that someone has just raised point number three on your list and respond with a 2 minute answer when I count you in".
I remember one where I placed my hands thoughtfully and in a relaxed manner in my lap whilst listening considerately to the interviewer.
I thought.
On playback it looked for all the world like I was relaxing in quite a different way.
Last edited by: No FM2R on Wed 19 Dec 12 at 15:48
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Bit like this Mark ?
www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQPSoRPmoso
Last edited by: R.P. on Wed 19 Dec 12 at 15:51
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Well, embarrassingly close.
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I saw a girl I used to go to school with in Fiesta. Does that count?
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Yes, the big bumper model.
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Seeing people you recognise in the papers - Jacks
