In which Quirky’s sailing companion name-drops about how he forgot a name…  

  In a previous lifetime, when we lived in NY, we enjoyed the delights of keeping a 25 foot sloop on Long Island Sound. As two of my crew were in nappies at the time, we always asked able-bodied guests to join us for day sails to lend a hand.

I was working for an international hotel group and the financial controller was a witty engaging fellow but also probably the world’s slowest moving and speaking Englishman. He spoke fluent Michael Caine cockney, about eight words at a time, then, with a pause for  breath: “Know wha’ I mean?” We had enjoyed a slow easy morning reach that allowed us the pleasures of nursing a beer and a roast chicken leg as we surveyed the passing scene. The FC diligently chewed each mouthful the required 24 times, so conversation was a little slow.

 “This is my idea of sailing,”  he said between bites. He recalled that he had not been sailing since he had been invited aboard a yacht on the UK’s South Coast as a race crew in 1971.  The pace of that experience had not suited our languid-living FC.

“They got me all decked out in yellow oilies that smelt of boat and vomit. Then there was all this jumping about from one side to the other just when I got meself settled. Couldn’t get myself comfy. And of course, it was raining and blowing like hell.  Tacking is it? And they have to do it? Glad we’re not doing that today. The best part of that sailing day was getting into the pub in the evening,” he surmised. “It took a few beers to wipe all that salt off my lips before I could settle down and relax. There was a chap in posh sailing gear at the end of the bar with another group of sailors and I thought: “‘Allo, I know you”.

“White haired, stocky, middle aged gent. Definitely a well-spoken Brit. Think I could place him? Not a hope. And that really annoyed me.

“I’d been living in the US for ten years so where did I know him from? Must have been somebody I had met there on the job.  But where from?  I just couldn’t place him. When he stood up and was about to leave I couldn’t let him go without finding out who he was and how I knew him.

“So I went over to him, told him my name and what I did and said: “Here, I know you from somewhere, but I can’t place it. Weren’t you the financial controller of our Montreal hotel?” He smiled and shook his head. He looked bemused.

“Alright then, didn’t you used to go out with that dark-haired girl who was our legal counsel in xxxx?”

Another smiling shake of the head.

“Must have been on TV, then. Didn’t you play that bent copper in the BBC series where you were having it off with the mother and the daughter?” A furious head shaking denial at that one…

 “I went on until I had exhausted everybody and every connection I could think of and he just stood there grinning.

“Alright, alright, but I know I know your face from somewhere. I give up.”

 He smiled broadly and stuck out his hand.

 “Ted Heath. Prime Minister.”

(Ted Heath won the Sydney Hobart race in 1969, and in 1971 captained the winning British Admirals Cup team, while he was Prime Minister)

PS :You should never name-drop. The Duke of Edinburgh told me that.