So You Think You Know It All: A compendium of extremely interesting and slightly strange true stories. The Show One
sadly, the tremendous song and dance number ‘Portobello Road’. There were, however, significant location scenes filmed at Corfe Castle and the surrounding village in Dorset. The three child stars were Roy Snart, now a software manager in Basingstoke; Ian Weighill, now a train driver; and Cindy O’Callaghan, last seen in EastEnders as Andrea Price and now a child therapist.
‘My overriding memory is how well the three of us kids got on,’ says Cindy, sitting down for a cup of tea with Ian and Roy for the first time in nearly fifty years. ‘I don’t remember any of us, however young we were, being naughty. It was a really professional engagement and Angela sort of set the tone. We upped our game because of her, she was very much an inspiration for me.’ None of the kids could sing or dance when they were cast for an all-singing, all-dancing musical and Angela Lansbury’s motherly encouragement could only go so far. ‘Oh I was terrible, I was terrible then and an appalling singer now,’ groans Roy, shaking his head. Ian concurs: ‘I was a thirteen-year-old English boy, and I had to dance throughout the “Substitutiary Locomotion” song.’
During the animated sequence, the kids had no idea what was going on at all on what, to them, was a completely empty sound stage. ‘All we could do was listen to the crew,’ remembers Roy. ‘They’d shout out, “There’s a fish right next to you. Now talk to the fish!”’ The overall experience, though, they all agree, was magic. In one instance literally. ‘We did this one scene with the brass bed knob. We were all gathered around it and it turned pink, it was amazing.’ Cindy was equally impressed, ‘I remember! I still wonder how they did that, don’t you?’ Ray thinks he knows: ‘It’s easy, it’s just Disney magic, isn’t it?’
HEIL ZAT!
In Nazi Germany sport had one purpose, to strengthen the German people. But not all field games were acceptable to the Führer. Hitler thought the quintessentially British sport of cricket wasn’t butch enough for his Aryan master race.
There is, apparently, a churlish but somehow characteristically Adolf reason for this.
It’s reported that in 1923, having watched a team of British former prisoners of war play cricket and learnt from them the rules, Hitler raised a team to play against them. To his chagrin, Hitler lost. But what really incensed the would-be Führer was that he wasn’t allowed to change the rules of the game. Whatever; Hitler’s interest in cricket was short-lived. He may or may not have stormed off the pitch in a huff but he absolutely went on record to declare the sport ‘unmanly’.
So, if he despised the game so much, why did he invite the Gentlemen of Worcestershire Cricket Club to Berlin for three games? And why might they have taken more than just wickets?
Some say cricket’s complex rule book reflects the many facets of genteel British manners – which a dictator might not want to adopt.
In 1937 Hitler – now the leader of Germany – dispatched his Minister of Sport, Hans von Tschammer und Osten, to London. During his stay the minister was invited to a lunch at Lord’s, the home of cricket.
Von Tschammer und Osten reported this to Hitler, who came up with a cunning plan: challenge the British at their national game, and show the world that the Germans could beat them. The minister sent out an open invitation – worded, one suspects, more diplomatically than ‘Would you like to be crushed and humiliated by the Master Race, weather permitting?’ – and one club, the Gentleman of Worcestershire, accepted the offer to play in Berlin.
So it was that in August 1937 the Gentlemen found themselves in Berlin for the start of an unofficial Test-match series. As the team took to the field, they were asked to give a Nazi salute.
Good manners dictated that they did just that. But as the matches played out, the Worcestershire team were shocked by the lack of etiquette displayed by their Aryan opponents, who screamed ‘Aus!’ every other ball, probably in an effort to put Worcestershire off their stride. The English team also observed that the captain of the German side, Gerhard Thamer, would punch butter-fingered fielders who dropped catches off his bowling. We may all, at some point, have desired to do the same. But only a true barbarian actually would.
In spite of an intimidating backdrop of swastikas, anti-Semitic posters, the distant serenade of semi-automatic gunfire at night and being under the constant scrutiny of the Gestapo, the Gents went on to beat the Nazi cricket team in all three matches.
But in the midst of this extraordinary series, one team member may have had his eyes on more than just the ball.
Author Dan Waddell has researched the Nazi cricket series, and he discovered documents that suggest there was a British spy in their team. ‘As I delved deeper into the story and started to gather information, there was one name that stood out. And that was this chap Robin Whetherly.’ Dan says there wasn’t an actual ‘smoking gun’ document identifying Whetherly as a spy,
… but there’s an accumulation of evidence that suggests it was likely. For one, he spoke German and he joined Special Ops during the Second World War and served with them, which again adds to this air of secrecy. He seemed to have no link to the Gentlemen of Worcestershire team, he never played cricket for them before. Finally, he flew out to Germany while the rest of them went on the train and he seemed quite separate to the rest. A few of the members didn’t even know who he was.
Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.
Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».
Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.
Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.