BY 1985 MY drinking days were over and everybody said to me, ‘What you need to do is find a hobby to occupy your leisure time and keep your mind occupied.’ For some unknown reason, someone suggested DIY and for some other unknown reason I thought I’d give it another go. I say ‘another’ go because it has to be said that my one previous effort up until this point had not exactly been an unqualified success.
It was 1972 and we had moved into a beautiful detached house in Gerrards Cross. It had a very nice kitchen that adjoined the breakfast room. All the rage back then were can openers that attached to the wall and so I bought one. They are very simple to fix to the wall and I felt perfectly able to accomplish this simple feat myself, so I searched for my tool kit.
After about half an hour of thorough looking, I remembered that I didn’t actually have a tool kit and so walked into town to the ironmonger’s to rectify the situation.
I returned by taxi as the collection of spanners, hammers, wrenches, screws, nuts, bolts, tape measures, saws, spirit levels and screwdrivers, along with a very large tool box, were too much for one person to carry.
I put on the new overalls that I had also purchased, as I felt that if I looked the part then that would undoubtedly help the job go smoothly.
There was a small back piece of the wall can opener that needed to be screwed to the wall. It required four screws. I marked the places where the four screws would need to be screwed in and tried to screw them in directly. They wouldn’t penetrate the plaster.
I took one of the small hammers out of the tool box and a large six-inch nail and proceeded to use said implements to make a small hole in preparation for the screw.
Unfortunately it made a large hole.
Undaunted I moved on to the second screw and again finding it impossible to screw it directly into the wall (I had never heard of Rawl plugs), used a slightly smaller nail in order to create the necessary starting hole. All this succeeded in doing was to remove a rather large piece of plaster.
I’m not one to give up and so looked for another area of wall close to the now destroyed area of wall, and tried again. By early evening I admitted failure and phoned a builder who came round the following morning.
He told me that with the damage I’d done there were two options. Either plaster the wall and redecorate or have a serving hatch. He recommended the serving hatch, as already there was daylight showing between the breakfast room and the kitchen.
Total cost if I recall was around £300, and this was 1972!
Actually the total cost was £301.50. (The extra £1.50 was for a hand-held can opener).
I tried a few other odd jobs but the problem was that my DIY was abysmal, shockingly bad. This wasn’t because I didn’t try, it was simply because I was just crap. I didn’t have the right type of logical mind for it, I don’t think. Let me give you some more examples.
When we moved into our new house in Norfolk in 2005, the previous owner had stripped the place: they’d taken everything – he’d basically just left us some light bulbs and that was it. This was fair enough though because in the contract sale it stated very clearly that all the fixtures and fittings, carpets and curtains etc were not with the sale – however, it always comes as a bit of a shock to walk into a complete shell of a house when you move in.
In the kitchen, there were gaps all over the place where appliances had been, so I looked at this and thought this was my chance to get started on the DIY. In fact, this was DIY for beginners.
Quite simply, all I had to do was measure the gaps and then purchase appliances that would fit accordingly. No need for a hammer, or a drill or even a screwdriver.
I got my tape measure out and painstakingly measured every gap from every conceivable angle, then measured them all again and then once more for luck. Then I drove off into town to the electrical retailers and bought all sorts – a washing machine, a dishwasher, fridge, a freezer, all the stuff a kitchen could possibly need.
I had double- and triple-checked every measurement so it was easy to choose which appliances would fit. My fiancée, Rachel, was totally unaware of my previous DIY exploits and was very impressed at my efficiency. I beamed with pride. I’m sure the man in the shop was impressed too as I confidently referred to my notebook and then measured every appliance in sight with my tape measure, making notes along the way.
About a week later all the white goods arrived and the delivery guys began fitting them. They said they’d start off with the fridge. Five minutes later they came into the lounge and said, ‘Mr Wakeman, the fridge doesn’t fit the gap.’
‘It must do – I measured that gap five times . . .’
I went into the kitchen and there was the fridge, clearly too tall for the gap. It didn’t fit. What I’d done was measure to the top of the worktop rather than the underside, so that was mistake number one. And, of course, that applied to all the other machines as well. The delivery man said, ‘Well, you could move the worktop up a couple of inches to fit the fridge in . . .’
‘What a good idea . . .’
‘But then your microwave won’t fit on its shelf. Not that this will make any difference, because it doesn’t really fit on there at present anyway.’
Great.
Suddenly, having bought four ‘Easy to Fit’ appliances, I was now in the middle of a major kitchen refit. Then I had a brainwave.
‘Hang on – is the fridge on wheels?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’ll get my sledgehammer. Give me two minutes.’
So off came the wheels (and a fair bit of white plastic with them) and the brand-new fridge was rammed into this gap with much huffing and puffing. We were now stuck with this fridge for ever: it was never going to come out.
Which was unfortunate, because I then realised that I’d put the fridge right next to the gap where the cooker was supposed to go. As a result, we now have the world’s most inefficient fridge and our shopping bills are sky-high because the food’s always going off really quickly. Plus we are the proud owners of an oven that takes eighteen hours to cook a roast because the right-hand side is stone cold as it’s next to the freezer.
‘At least we have the microwave, eh?’ said a hopeful Rachel.
Well, not really. Since I’m six foot three, I hadn’t considered that Rachel – who is only five foot two – wouldn’t be able to reach up to the new higher shelf. She could just about reach when I got the stepladder out of the shed. (We actually don’t use the microwave any more. Never liked them anyway.)
At least we had no such problems forcing the dishwasher in. According to my measurements, there was a beautiful one-inch gap all the way around, perfect.
Except when they slid it in, there were at least five inches on either side. Minimum.
Almost enough room to put a microwave in.
I had also ordered a large television which I reckoned (I had measured very carefully) would fit perfectly in a gap between two shelves in the lounge.
It didn’t.
A carpenter was called to realign the shelves and a plasterer to re-plaster the area ruined by realigning the shelves and then a painter to paint the entire room because we couldn’t match the original colour.
The washing machine wouldn’t fit in the utility room at all and now sticks out so the door won’t shut. The cooker ran on Calor gas and leaked gas for the whole of its life up until a new kitchen was fitted, and guess what? I wasn’t allowed to go anywhere near the new kitchen from day one when it was measured until the day it was completed!
I should have known DIY was not a good idea. There were plenty more precedents for my failure. In the 1980s we had moved into a beautiful old Victorian house in Camberley and although the kitchen was fine (by this I mean all the appliances fitted as they’d come with the house), there was a shortage of shelf space and so I decided to erect some shelves.
There were two wall cabinets with quite a substantial space between them. A totally wasted space, I felt, not least because the area in-between would be ideal to put two shelves. I jumped in the car and shot off to the local B&Q and bought various lengths of plastic coated wood.
I measured the distances carefully and cut two lengths of shelving. After discovering I’d cut them too small, (obviously a faulty tape measure), I had a few more attempts. Then I went back to B&Q to get some more lengths of plastic coated wood shelving.
Eventually I finished putting the shelves up and if I say so myself, they looked pretty damn good. I placed cooking oils on the shelves along with a few other jars of stuff and thought I’d celebrate by cooking myself a bacon sandwich.
I put the bacon under the grill and went into the lounge to watch some television whilst the bacon was cooking. I didn’t watch very much because my enjoyment of The World of Sport was shattered by the explosion.
Nobody had told me that if you erect shelving above a cooker and said cooker has a high level grill, that the rising heat produced is quite substantial. Add this to the fact that plastic melts at high temperatures and I had built a recipe for disaster. The heat from the grill had bowed the shelves which eventually came away from their mountings and crashed onto the red hot grill, pouring cooking oil everywhere, which dutifully exploded.
Full credit to the Fire Brigade who were on the scene within minutes. They read me the riot act for what I’d done. Quite rightly too. My sarnies were ruined. I’d overcooked the bacon.
Never daunted by the odd little setback, a few weeks later I decided to attempt that most sacred of DIY challenges: building a barbecue. I found an old buried water tank made of steel and thought how clever I was to recycle this and make a stylish hand-built barbecue. I put aside the whole of Saturday to complete the task and even got up excitedly at the crack of dawn to start.
It really was a brilliant piece of design. I turned the tank upside down and pushed it into the ground. I found some metal mesh and fixed that to the top to make a grill. Then I went to B&Q, bought some bricks and ready-made plaster, went home and started laying bricks around four sides of the up-turned water tank. It was going along a treat. Getting carried away, once the bricks were laid, I slapped on some Artex and made some very hypnotic swirling patterns all over the outside. It looked amazing.
Even the kids were impressed. It looked the dog’s dangly bits, it really did.
I finished by mid-afternoon, which was perfect timing because then I had the chance to go down to the supermarket and get some charcoal and then bags full of sausages, burgers, chicken wings – the works. I must have bought enough food for a hundred and fifty people, I was so keen to try this creation out. I slapped the meat on the mesh and lit the charcoal.
There were two things I learnt that day which were really interesting.
First of all, I hadn’t realised that there’s one type of Artex plaster for interior use and a different type for exterior use. There’s also the heatproof type as opposed to the non-heatproof. I’d bought non-heatproof interior-use Artex. I sat there with my kids and friends and watched as the Artex started cracking all over the barbecue, just like in a Tom & Jerry cartoon when Tom gets smacked over the head with a mallet.
The second interesting fact I learnt is just exactly how incredibly hot a metal tank can get on its way to exploding. I suspect the actual temperature that had built up inside the sealed, airtight metal tank over the thirty minutes since I’d lit the stupidly large amount of charcoal was easily in excess of a thousand degrees. The first worrying sign was when we all heard a strange bubbling sound echoing around inside the tank. Then a weird rumbling began. The hot air was rapidly rising in temperature inside the tank and had nowhere to escape.
I got the kids back in the house just in time.
It really was the most phenomenal explosion.
Apparently, they found chicken wings as far as half a mile from our garden and the left-hand panel of the barbecue itself landed eight gardens away.
Learn one thing from my experiences: if you give up drinking, DIY is not the answer.
I do enjoy my sports. Just before I tell you about my love of golf, let me take a quick diversion into the equally civilised world of tennis. Well, it was civilised until I got there. One day the phone rang. It was the boss of Olympus cameras who I still did corporate work with.
‘Rick, do you want to go to Wimbledon? We’ve got a hospitality tent and it’s great fun – why don’t you come along? I’m going to pick up Alan Ball first in a limo then we’ll come round to yours and head off to south-west London to meet up with James Hunt the Formula One racing driver at his house in Wimbledon for Pimms on the lawn and then toddle off over to our hospitality marquee at Wimbledon Tennis Club. There’ll be loads of champagne from the minute you step into the limo. Once we get there you can go in the hospitality tent, if you want to watch a bit of tennis you can, whatever, and then we’ll come home stopping at a few watering holes on the way – we’ll probably get back around midnight. We’ll be with you about nine in the morning. Is that appealing?’
How could I say no?
God knows what time the Olympus chairman must have left to pick up Bally: by the time they got to my house they were both already rat-arsed. We drove about two miles before we stopped at a pub that was serving breakfast, then piled back in the limo and drank some more champagne before going over to James Hunt’s house with at least six further stops at watering holes along the way. He’d set a table with Pimms and champagne (I think there were two sandwiches) so we got stuck in to the booze and left the food then all jumped back in the limo to finally head down to the tennis.
It was after one o’clock in the afternoon when we finally staggered into the Lawn Tennis Club. We must have stunk of booze. Lunch was being served for various high-powered Olympus associates all there in their finery, so it soon became apparent that we were the token celebrities for the day, beautifully holding up our side of the bargain by making a complete spectacle of ourselves.
After a lengthy liquid lunch, James left to go home at about 4 p.m. I don’t think he’d seen a single tennis ball being hit – he’d brought Oscar, his German Shepherd dog along for the day and it wasn’t allowed in the actual club, whereas it was allowed in by the hospitality tents so that was where he stayed.
Now, I love my tennis (I actually won several tournaments as a schoolboy), but if the truth be known, I was just too pissed to see anything. Even if I could have found my way to a seat, I wouldn’t have been able to follow a single shot. After another hour of drinking, I turned to Bally and said, ‘I think I need to have a sleep, Alan. I’m off to find somewhere to have a nap.’
Bally said he’d come with me so we staggered off in search of a corner to fall into. We were both weaving along by the back of some rather large vans when this man suddenly appeared in front of us and spoke.
‘Well, it’s a beautiful day here in SW19 and I’ve just bumped into the England football legend Alan Ball. And he’s enjoying the tennis and sunshine with the rock musician Rick Wakeman.’
We had absolutely no idea who he was or what he was talking about. Or why he was talking in such a strange manner to us.
‘Hello, Rick . . .’ he said.
I belched.
He looked a little startled but carried on undeterred with his rather forced conversation.
‘So, Rick, how are you enjoying Wimbledon today?’
I belched again.
‘Alan,’ he said, turning to my equally drunken friend, ‘which one of the many super matches have you seen today?’
‘None of them.’
‘Ah, have you only just got here then?’
‘No, we’ve been here since lunchtime,’ I interrupted.
‘I started out at eight,’ offered Bally.
‘Oh, really? So why haven’t you seen any matches yet, gentlemen?’
‘Er, that’s because . . .’ I suggested, ‘. . . we are completely pissed.’
This guy looked like he’d seen a ghost and quickly said, ‘Er, that was our live afternoon report from Wimbledon for the BBC. Now back to you in the studio . . .’
After more drinks and a couple of naps, I stumbled home at well after midnight to find my answerphone going ballistic with messages. There were calls from the BBC asking me to report in the next morning to explain my behaviour, messages from friends and family saying they’d heard it all and quite a few giggling congratulations from my rather more rock ’n’ roll acquaintances.
It was the early 1980s and swearing of any kind on the radio was a grievous sin. But to be fair no one got sacked, no one got suspended even, and it was all fairly harmless stuff. In my defence, a few friends said that from the first second of the unscheduled interview it was obvious that we were both absolutely pissed as farts.
I never did get to see any tennis.
I took up golf quite by accident in 1984. I’d actually gone to buy a car but instead of coming home with a Bentley T-Type I somehow managed to come home with a set of Mizuno Silver Cup golf clubs instead.
A mate of mine called Peter Vernon-Kell had a car company near Esher and I’d arranged to look at this particular car. However, there was a crash on the M3 and I was late getting to Peter’s. He’d had enough of waiting and as I parked I saw that he was loading his set of golf clubs into the boot of his car.
‘What about the car?’ I asked him.
‘Bugger the car for now,’ said Peter. ‘I’m going to play golf first, otherwise I’ll miss my tee-off time – you can jump in and we’ll talk about the car later.’
When we got there we went into the clubhouse where Peter went to register only to be told that his playing partner had called in to say he would be late and so the tee time had been moved forward one hour.
‘Great,’ I said. ‘We can drive back and look at the car.’
‘I’m not driving back, I’m going to the driving range. Come along.’ Peter grabbed a bucket of balls and headed for the driving range. ‘So tell me about the car, then . . .’ I said as I hurried after him.
‘Bugger the car, let me hit some balls first,’ said Peter, clearly fed up.
As he started hitting the balls, I couldn’t have cared less about his efforts – I had no interest in golf whatsoever, really. I kept asking him about the car that he was going to show me until eventually he said, ‘Listen! No, I’m here to play golf. Here’s a club – grab some balls and have a few shots will you?’
Peter showed me how to hold the seven-iron with the basic grip and I took a few wild swings at the ball, missing it completely the first couple of times. Then I started to hit it all over the place – slices, hooks, scooping it up in the air, everywhere except where it was supposed to go.
Then it happened.
By the law of averages it had to happen, I suppose. I hit a beauty and the ball sailed away straight as an arrow. It was like the heavens opening, angels peering down through the gap in the white fluffy clouds, I’m sure I could hear choirs singing and trumpet fanfares . . .
‘Come on, then, Rick, let’s go and talk about that car . . .’ said Peter.
‘Bugger the car. Why can’t I hit the ball again like I did a couple of minutes ago’?
‘Because you need lessons. Go and see the pro. He may even be able to fit you in now You can have a lesson whilst I’m out playing.’
I went to see the pro and he booked me in later that afternoon. He also sold me a second-hand set of Mizuno Silver Cup golf clubs, a second-hand trolley with odd wheels and a really naff bag that was falling apart, but the whole lot only cost a hundred quid. After a few months of literally playing every daylight hour, rain or shine, snow or sleet, hail or heatwave, I’d presented three qualifying cards and therefore earned my first handicap, a meagre twenty-seven but a start nonetheless.
But prior to getting my handicap, out of the blue, I got a call from the Comedians’ Golfing Society. I obviously hadn’t played in any tournaments or against lower-handicapped players yet: I was just finding my feet. Literally – as I was about to find out.
I thought this would be a good laugh, playing a round with a bunch of comedians; they’d be laughing and joking all day long. How wrong could I have been? Comedians take their golf very seriously. I went along to the Foxhills golf course, a very salubrious club in the heart of the Surrey countryside. Foxhills (where I later became a member) was also in a totally different league to where I had been playing my golf up to now. The club professional was Bernard Hunt, the wonderful ex-Ryder Cup player.
I walked up to the clubhouse and met a few of the other players. The first thing I noticed was the quality of their gear. There were golf bags that looked like thousands of pounds’ worth of hand-made leather craftsmanship; clubs that were technological marvels; and clothing that was clearly just the right style, colours and logo.
Meanwhile, I was standing there in a pair of normal shoes with a very scruffy bag, a second-hand set of clubs and a wobbly, odd-coloured trolley that altogether probably cost less than one of their shiny professional five-irons. I was introduced to my fellow players and we walked off to the first tee, which was at the top of a hill. It had been raining so we all had umbrellas too (Correction: they all had umbrellas). I was first off so I put my ball on the tee, settled myself into my best stance and took a swing.
The ball went ten yards and came to a rest.
However, with my normal shoes on and the tee being soaking wet, I went much further. At first it was hard to balance but as I slid faster and faster down the hill I got the hang of it and ended up zooming about eighty yards like some maniacal skateboarder on grass. When they’d hauled me back to the tee, I went and bought some golf shoes – although I still came last.
After a few months, November 1984 to be exact, I was gradually getting a little better (I no longer fell over on the back swing), but my handicap had not come down at all. I was slowly mastering the irons although had yet to hit any of the low irons. A five-iron was the lowest numbered iron I could hit. I had three very shiny woods that looked like they’d never been used, which in fact they hadn’t. They were there for show. I hadn’t yet plucked up enough courage to hit a driver or three-wood yet.
Then I got a call from a great friend of mine called Miles Dawson, who was the managing director of Panasonic. Back in the 1980s Panasonic used to sponsor the European Open which was always held at Sunningdale and Walton Heath. I used to do some corporate work for Panasonic so I knew Miles and his team well. As I mentioned, it was November, and I’d been ‘playing’ for only a few months.
‘Rick, I’ve got your Christmas present sorted!’
‘Great! What is it, Miles? Another telly?’
‘No, Rick, much better than that. It’s a round of golf at Wentworth with Nick Faldo.’ And with that he put the phone down.
When I eventually got hold of Miles later that day he explained that Nick had been away from the game for some time perfecting a new swing. Since he was a music lover and because of Miles’s backing of the European Open, Nick had agreed to play a four-ball with myself, Miles and another guy from Nick’s management company. At Wentworth – one of the most difficult courses in the world. I would be up against a man who was arguably the greatest golfer on the planet at the time.
No pressure then.
The approach to Wentworth is beautiful and on the many occasions I’ve played it since I always marvel at the majestic clubhouse and greenery. At the time, however, I was too busy crapping myself. I’d forced my clubs into the front seat of my Porsche 911. As I began to play more and more golf, I came to realise that this was the most impractical car and so sold it and went back to Silver Shadows! As I walked to the clubhouse I think I must have seen about five famous golfers practising. And everyone had the most immaculate gear and the most tailored, pristine clothes.
I knew that my bag was on its last legs and a flap had actually opened up in the bottom. So I grabbed my trolley and pushed the decrepit old thing firmly in to make sure it didn’t fall apart any more. To a rock ’n’ roller like me, the one pink wheel and one black wheel almost looked alternative-cool. But not to anybody else.
Miles took me to the putting green to meet Nick Faldo. Nick’s a really big man and on a golf course he naturally has a huge presence so everyone was watching him practise. He was lovely and his warm chat relaxed my nerves a lot. Then Miles said, ‘I’ve got a surprise for you, Rick . . . some of the caddies have stayed over after the European Open and so as a special treat for us all, Nick has arranged some top caddies too. Nick’s got his own, of course. I’ve got Jack Nicholson’s caddy, Nick’s partner’s got Tom Watson’s caddy and you’ve got Gary Player’s caddy.’
Great.
Long ago I’d met Gary Player but didn’t cover myself in glory. I just hoped his caddy didn’t know the story. Let me rewind and take you back to Sun City some years earlier. I had been booked to play for a week at the Sun City Complex in South Africa. I was following Shirley Bassey, would you believe. Sun City is a very luxurious complex, which included a golf course designed by Gary Player. I was never really much of a gambler and I was years away from starting golf, so to be honest I just sat by the bar getting pissed and occasionally fell into the pool. We had five days off before our first performance and there wasn’t really much to do, so I settled into this routine that seemed to work for me. Drank all day, fell in the pool, sobered up, drank a bit more, did the show, fell in the pool, drank a bit more and went to bed. That’s what the band and crew did – there wasn’t much else to see or do. Except they had an elephant there that used to play the slot machines.
Anyway, one day I was at the bar getting thoroughly rat-arsed and this guy came and sat next to me. ‘I’d like to introduce myself. I’m Gary Player.’ Now, golf is a life’s passion for millions of people and it is also one of those games that if you don’t like it and don’t watch it on telly, its stars mean nothing to you. You can’t avoid knowing some famous footballers, for example, even if you don’t watch the game, but golfers weren’t the same back then. So as I sat at the bar in Sun City, next to the living golf legend that was Gary Player, I’d never heard of him.
‘Hello, Gary, my name’s Rick Wakeman.’ He seemed like a nice fella so we chatted and after a while, he said, ‘I designed the golf course here, The Gary Player Country Club. It’s only just finished. Rick, how’d you like to learn to play golf whilst you’re here. I’ll organise everything. By the time you leave here you’ll have a handicap. The pro shop can kit you out with everything you’ll need.’
‘Oh, well that’s really kind of you, Gary. Thanks for the offer, but it’s not really my cup of tea,’ I said, oblivious to the Golfer’s Golden Ticket that I was just being offered. Gary nearly fell off his stool but, like I said, I was just not aware of who he was and I had no interest in learning to play golf and wasting valuable drinking time.
‘Okay,’ said Gary. ‘Fair enough. I’m here if you change your mind.’
‘I won’t, but thanks ever so much.’
‘So, Rick, what are you going to do to occupy yourself for the rest of the week?’
‘Drink. Jump in the pool, drink some more, then play a show before drinking again.’
‘Look, you come with me and by the time you head home. I promise that you’ll have a handicap.’
‘I’ve already got one of those, Gary: Not enough hours in the day to drink, party and make music.’
I never saw him again. And this must surely be one of the biggest errors I have ever made in my life, and so, on the off chance that Gary ever gets to read this, then I hope he will please accept the following personal note from my heart.
Dear Gary,
Your Highness, Your Lordship. How can I ever apologise for my appalling behaviour back in the early 1980s before I discovered the joys of golf. One lesson from you back then could have changed my life. One lesson from you now could change my swing, my hook and my abysmal putting. So, if you can find it in your heart to offer help to a much older and wiser rock ’n’ roll fanatical golfer (handicap 13), then I will humbly fall at your feet in deepest gratitude, but I fully understand if you’re too busy.
Yours, grovelling to the extreme,
Rick Wakeman
So fast-forward to my round of golf with Nick Faldo and I’m not in a hurry to meet Gary’s caddy. As it turned out, he didn’t seem to recognise me so I got away with it. Sort of. He came over and introduced himself and asked me where my clubs were. What followed next was just like a scene from Only Fools and Horses. John Sullivan couldn’t have scripted it better.
I simply looked over by the putting practice area where a line of very expensive trolleys were parked. Mine rather stood out. It was like Del Boy’s three-wheeled Reliant Regal parked amongst a fleet of Rolls-Royces and Porsches.
‘It’s the red, blue and green trolley with the black wheel on one side and the pink wire wheel on the other.’
All eyes around me seemed to be fixated on this multi-coloured golfing apparition.
‘It’s the one with the bag on it with the cover missing,’ I added, in case he hadn’t spotted it. To his credit he said nothing but simply walked up to the trolley and pointed at it.
‘That’s the one,’ I said, smiling sweetly back at him.
‘I’ll carry if that’s okay with you, Rick?’ he said and before I could warn him he had lifted the bag off of the trolley.
Now golf courses are very sedate and quiet places and the only sounds that could be heard up until that moment were that of putters gently hitting balls on the practice putting green. Unfortunately, when describing my equipment to my caddy I had neglected to tell him that there was indeed no bottom to my bag as it had ripped and was now acting as a flap.
All fourteen clubs fell out of the bottom onto the concrete path and about fifty battered golf balls bounced down the hill. My caddy was left holding a very dilapidated bag with the bottom flapping away like a giant puppet’s mouth from some kids’ TV programme.
Wentworth came to a standstill. People had come out of the clubhouse to see what on earth was going on for themselves.
To his credit yet again, my caddy simply bundled the clubs up in his arms and walked off to the caddy hut where a few minutes later he emerged with a proper bag over his shoulder with my clubs in them. We all then trooped off to the first tee.
I could see Nick was more than a little concerned but he was being ever so friendly. A crowd of about two hundred people had gathered at the first tee because the rumour that Nick was out on the course had spread and he hadn’t been seen for a long time. I was looking at this first hole and couldn’t believe how long it was. I could hardly see the flag. I’d never seen a course like it. Nick walked onto the tee, teed his ball up and hit it. I don’t think I had ever seen a projectile go so far. It was like a bullet, perfectly straight, amazing. He hit it further than I went on holiday. I say hit it, murdered it would be more accurate. I stood watching with my mouth gaping wide open.
The crowd applauded.
By now I’m just shitting myself, thinking, This is just awful. I shouldn’t be here.
‘Miles, you still got that wicked hook?’
‘Yes, thanks, Nick.’
‘Well, I’ll give you all a shot a hole then,’ said Nick.
A shot a hole? You must be joking. Ten shots more like!
Now Miles was a very good friend and I would never wish him any ill, but I hoped deep down inside that he would hook his ball as that would surely take some of the pressure off me when it came to my turn. Sadly, Miles let me down. He probably hit the best shot of his golfing life.
‘Well done,’ said Nick.
The crowd applauded.
Then the chap from Nick’s management office stepped onto the tee. I noticed he had some sort of limp and then I realised as he walked past me, that he actually had a false leg.
Thank God! A chance! Three cheers for false legs! All hail Bob Flett! Miles is lumbered with me and Nick has got golfing’s Long John Silver.
Long John teed his ball up, took the club back slowly in a lovely movement (Nice swing, I’m thinking), and then with controlled, almost robotic precision, the ball flew off like a missile, dropping only about ten yards short of Faldo’s.
The crowd applauded.
‘Amazing,’ I said as he walked past me to the side of the tee. I admit to being not a little bit miffed.
‘Well, actually Rick, the false leg’s rather helpful. It never moves and I’ve adapted my swing around it so it’s like a perfect base from which to hit the ball.’
I’m really pleased for you . . . not.
So now it was my turn.
How I held the cheeks of my arse together is beyond me.
Looking back, I suppose I should just have hit my favourite five-iron gently down the centre of the fairway, taken it easy and got away safely. But the pressure was simply enormous and, with at least two of the shots having travelled to different counties, I looked across at my caddy.
‘Driver please,’ I said.
The caddy handed it to me. A fine specimen of a driver. Ten-degree loft and in pristine condition. This was simply because I’d never used it before. I’d never even held it before.
Miles said that what followed was one of the most unbelievable scenes he’d ever witnessed in his life. I teed the ball up and as I addressed it, I was physically shaking as though I was holding a pneumatic drill. Due to my extreme nerves, I don’t remember much after that so Miles filled me in later. ‘Everyone went very quiet and you actually swung the club vertically over your head like you were holding a pickaxe. Then you came down with a slicing motion, like you were trying to decapitate someone. As it completed its downward trajectory, the bottom of the club hit the top of the ball. We measured the distance, Rick. It went four inches. Backwards.’
I do remember that part. And I also recall the next part when I kept the driver gripped in my hands and swung wildly again at the ball, only to see it roll eight yards down the main tee onto the fringe of the ladies’ tee.
The crowd did not applaud.
In fact they simply stood in silence wondering what on earth was going on. Was Jeremy Beadle involved perhaps?
The battle between common sense and pride now took hold. I was truthfully nearly in tears. I knew the sensible thing to do was to ask for my trusty five-iron and hit the ball down the fairway and take it from there. So I looked across at my caddy and said ‘Five-wood please.’ I realised my mistake immediately but it was too late. He handed me my five-wood. Another pristine club that had never been used or held.
I smashed the ball as hard as I could. It started off well enough but I’d obviously sliced it quite badly because it started heading right. Violently right and eventually the oncoming wind caught it and the ball started returning towards us, albeit twenty yards to our right. It hit a bank and flew onto the road where it bounced merrily away from the clubhouse until finally coming to rest in some bushes about a hundred yards from the first tee.
There was no applause.
Everyone else started walking up the first to follow Nick while I trudged backwards down the road to the bushes. Strangely, being alone with the caddy without all the people around had a comforting effect on me and I started to feel a whole lot better. We found my ball and I asked him what he thought was my best option from where I was. After all, that’s what professional caddies do.
He looked at me, then the ball, and then down the fairway. Then he spoke.
‘Okay, Rick, you are now a hundred and twenty yards further away from the hole than when you teed off. You’ve also played five shots if you include your penalty shot, so you’re now playing six on a par four. Nick will undoubtedly birdie this hole. (That’s down in three for you non-golfers.)
‘And so your advice is?’ I tried to sound as professional as I could.
‘Pick up,’ he said and walked off down the fairway to catch everybody else up.
I didn’t get a lot better. I must have visited every bit of rough, every bunker, every out-of-bounds and every tree and bush on the course and a few others that weren’t. At one point I’d taken about eight swings in the sand so I asked Nick, ‘What do you recommend with regards to bunkers?’
‘If you play golf like you do,’ Nick said, ‘don’t go in them.’
Perhaps my most memorable round of golf – or rather, the most unforgettable – actually took place in Australia. A friend of mine called Peter Lister-Todd was the manager of the band Sky and occasionally they would take guest musicians out on the road with them when they were touring abroad. Rather nicely, they invited me to play seven shows Down Under with them. The money was rubbish but Peter sweetened the bad fee by saying he’d managed to get EMI in Australia to obtain entry to each of the seven prestigious Royal courses over there, normally reserved for professionals and elite club members only (I think the record label had shares or were involved financially in the courses in some way). ‘If you think about it, Rick, it’s a paid holiday – you play a bit of piano, then get to play golf on the seven Royal courses.’ He knew he’d got me!
When we got to Sydney we headed for the course and the captain of the club, whom we were the guest of, handed me a huge sleeve of balls: there must have been thirty in there. I really couldn’t see how I’d need that many, but he insisted. ‘Trust me.’
On the first hole I hooked the ball left and my ball flew into some bushes. Thinking nothing of it, I was trotting off into the shrubbery to retrieve my ball when I heard a frantic shout. ‘Rick! Get out of there quick!’ The club captain literally pulled me out and said, ‘Rick, there’s brown snakes in there – very poisonous, mate.’
‘How poisonous?’
‘If one bites you and you don’t have any antidote, you’re dead in forty-five minutes.’
‘And the nearest hospital with any antidote is . . .?’
‘An hour away. Just drop a new ball down nearest the spot where your ball went into the rough with no penalty.’
I dropped so many balls – I was just terrified, looking for these brown bloody snakes. If my ball landed within twenty feet of a stick, I’d drop a ball. Some of these brown snakes were basking on the fairways and we were warned not to go anywhere near them. Advice we heeded!
We got to Canberra and EMI had arranged for me to play a round with the captain of the club there. Peter Lister-Todd couldn’t make it as he had a business meeting so I was on my own. Normally that would’ve been quite an honour, but I’d heard that this particular tough old stick did not like Poms. The only thing he hated more than Poms was rock musicians. I began to realise exactly how much he didn’t like Poms when the guy in the clubhouse who served me coffee beforehand said, ‘You’ve got some balls, mate.’
I headed towards the first tee and this club captain was waiting for me, standing there looking pretty fierce. His opening gambit was, ‘I don’t particularly want to play with you, but it appears I have little choice so we’re out in ten minutes. You a Pom?’
‘Yes, and you must be Mr—’
‘What do you do for EMI?’
‘I’m a rock musician.’
‘Right. Let’s get this over with,’ he said and marched off to the tee.
I hit a few decent shots and then hooked one into the bushes. ‘I’m not going in there, I’m just going to drop—’ I said.
‘What are you talking about? Why?’ the captain growled.
‘Brown snakes!’
‘Don’t be stupid, we don’t get brown snakes in Canberra. Bloody Poms. Go in there and hit your bloody ball. We’re holding people up.’
A couple of holes later, I sent a ball crashing into a small cluster of trees and reassured that there were no brown snakes, I dived in to have a look. I quickly spotted the ball in-between two of the small trees and started walking towards it. It was then that I heard this kind of ‘tut-tutting’ noise.
Standing there, six inches from my ball, was a bloody great kangaroo.
I crapped myself, this thing was big. Gingerly, I held my hands up and walked backwards on to the fairway.
‘I didn’t see your ball come out,’ said the captain.
‘I haven’t hit it yet,’ I replied.
‘Why not?’ he stormed.
‘There’s a kangaroo in there . . .’ I stuttered.
‘Well, you’re in Australia, what do you bloody expect, a four-eyed zebra with a dildo up its arse? It won’t hurt you, just go back in there, push it out of the way and play your shot.’
When I went back in there, the kangaroo had moved and now his foot was actually on my ball. I was really frightened. The next thing I knew, this captain marched in, gave the kangaroo a little tap and this giant Skippy bounced away.
Things were not going well at all. We came to the ninth hole. To the side of the teeing area was the most beautiful blossom I’d ever seen on a tree. It really was spectacular, the colours were so vivid. As I stood there, the grumbly captain said, ‘What are you looking at?’
‘This tree, look at those flowers . . . just beautiful.’
The captain picked up a golf ball and threw it at the tree – at which point the ‘blossom’ revealed itself to be several thousand parakeets that flew away. The captain looked at me and said, ‘Bloody Poms. That’s the last bloody straw,’ and as he stormed off the tee continued his rant. ‘That just about does it for me! He thinks that parrots are flowers, he thinks we’ve got brown snakes in Canberra and he’s only just discovered we have bloody kangaroos in Australia. I’m off.’ With that, he stormed off towards the clubhouse.
When I eventually trudged my own way back to the clubhouse I went straight to the bar, in need of a very stiff drink, but couldn’t have one because I’d stopped drinking three months previously so had to settle for coffee. The barman who’d previously served me coffee that morning poured me another one and said, ‘What hole did you get to?’
‘Finished the eighth and he buggered off on the ninth tee after a bit of a rant.’
‘Really? You did very well – most Poms that play with him don’t normally get past the third.’
‘Really?’
‘That’s right. I thought you might have done better than most because the captain was in here a few minutes ago. Singing your praises he was, saying what a lovely fella you are.’
Don’t you just love the Aussies!