John Spinks 1956-2002

How I met Spinksy
David Williams

I forget the precise moment, but it must have been sometime in the winter of 1992. I was living in Winslow, Buck’s at the time and had been persuaded by a friend to bring my rugby boots out of retirement and turn out for the recently formed Winslow Rugby Club. After one particularly good game, I think we only lost by about 20 points which was pretty good for us, I recall supping a pint in the Nags Head when a bloke, who I vaguely recognised as part of our team, introduced himself to me in the bar and made some opening gambit about how he had started playing for a small club side because the onset of the professional game was going to ruin the sport and he, for one, would make a stand by abandoning the potential big money game. Guess who?

Anyway, his sense of humour kind of appealed to me, and needless to say we both ended up completely legless after crawling around Winslow’s many pubs.

The problem was, I had completely forgotten that I was supposed to be home for about 7pm because I was meant to be going out for dinner with Alison, my wife, and a couple of friends. Spinksy and I turned up at my house some point after kicking out time for a final drink or two, to be greeted by a pile of bedding in the hallway (meant for me) and a strongly worded note on the door advising me not to even think about trying to get into bed! The thing was, I still didn’t twig as to why I had been greeted with hostility at home, Spinksy kind of had that effect on you. I ended up sleeping on the sofa, Spinksy crashed out on the floor. The next morning he met an irate Alison, but as usual, managed to turn on the charm and be the peacemaker by shouldering all the blame himself. A great friendship was born.

Spinksy on Tour

I could probably go on for ages about the multitude of rugby + beer related adventures we had, but my favourite was when we went on tour with Winslow to Bordeaux.

The general plan was to put up a fierce touring side, dedicated to showing Johnny foreigner how to play our great British game, but as always, ended up an alcohol fuelled free for all, with rugby playing second fiddle to the serious business of hedonism.

My memorable moments of the tour included me, Spinksy and one or two other reprobates, pitching up late to the official reception that our Gallic hosts had arranged, much the worse for the drink, carrying upturned chairs on our shoulders as makeshift bagpipes accompanied by our very own rousing rendition of “There Once Was A Lassie With A Black Hairy Assie”. Actually it went down a storm with the Frenchies who, unable to understand the words, thought this was some honourable British rugby tradition and consequently cheered us (or was that jeered us) to our table followed by cries for an encore, thus avoiding chastisement from the club officials!

The same tour also saw Spinksy turn up at our hotel one night triumphantly brandishing a large triple pointed star flag that he had, ahem, liberated from the top of a flagpole at the local Mercedes dealership.

Amongst many other “adventures” to be had on that tour were Spinksy trying to persuade some girls in a nightclub that the two of us were Nigerian students studying the French wine business (don’t ask me why). A competition to see who could take the biggest mouthful of a whole Brie. Another competition to see who could do the longest James Brown style knee slide across a crowded dance floor (I won, and had the burn marks on my trousers to prove it), slam-dancing in the same night club culminating in the house bands amps getting knocked over and discovering in the ensuing melee that the rather attractive female base player had a brother living in Winslow. And stuffing ourselves with croissants, bought fresh from a bakers at about 5am on our way back to the hotel after a particularly long session.
Oh yeah, I think we played a bit of rugby as well…badly.

Brecon Jazz

I once persuaded John, along with a number of others, to come with me to the Brecon Jazz Festival in Wales. We had such a laugh that we made it a regular fixture and so returned on several occasions.

The various trips we had there kind of merged into one long series of memories, so I can’t be sure which year we got up to what, so to speak.

We always seemed, unwittingly, to get ourselves into some sort of bother at Brecon though. One time we had descended on a particularly busy pub (I think The Wellington) on the Saturday evening of the festival, desperate for a beer. This pub has one of those L shaped bars, so we adopted the usual routine in a busy bar of this layout and encamped, one of us at either side of the bar, first to get served buys the beers, you know the sketch.

Anyway, John finds himself a suitable spot, parked next to a thickset Welsh bloke who looks to be pretty much the worse for wear through drink. Said Welsh bloke, for some reason, decides to try and strike up a conversation with John, “Don’t I know you?” he says, in a fairly aggressive fashion. John thinks about it for a bit and replies, “Probably, you might have seen me on the television, I am quite famous you know”. The thickset one scratches his head a little, and you can almost hear the cogs whirring in his bonce, whilst John smirks quietly and gives me one of those knowing looks, you know the sort of look that says check out this idiot, he really hasn’t a clue, ha ha. John decides to turn the heat up a bit and goes completely over the top for full comic effect and says to the bloke, “ You know, I am fulfilling one of my life’s ambitions here”, “What do you mean like?” retorts the bloke, getting increasingly agitated, “Well, I’ve always wanted to be standing at an overcrowded bar talking bollocks with a pissed up Welsh man”.

I just about got round to the other side of the bar in time to drag John by the collar out of the way of an almighty haymaker the Welsh bloke was about to land on him. We ran out of the bar, pursued by an angry mob with John still in fits of laughter and managed to mingle with the crowd to avoid getting beaten to a pulp. At first I was really angry with John for getting us in that pickle, he just couldn’t resist an argument for fun, but we laughed about it within, ooh lets see, about 2 minutes, and I still laugh about it when I’m telling the story today. The look on that blokes face was a real picture…

Evangelical Mountain Biking

I once asked John if he had ever been mountain biking. He said no, but was willing to give anything a try, so the next weekend I arranged a suitable steed (my old bike, I’d just bought a new ’un) and told him to pitch up at my house at 7:00am Saturday morning complete with appropriate clothing for a day's off-road two wheeled shenanigans.

I’d already loaded up my car with bikes and stuff when John arrived and we made our way post-haste down to the New Forest (not many mountains I know, but great fun all the same).

During the drive down there John asked me what character I was going to assume for the day. It’s something we had done before on other outings to unknown territory and provided quite a giggle, you know, pretending to be a Cattle rancher from Texas on his holidays or similar when striking up a conversation with someone in a pub. We decided that as we weren’t actually intending to spend much time in the company of others, what with being in a big forest all day in February, that we should adopt characters that were easily played out during any chance encounters we should have with passing members of the public…Evangelists spreading the word of God in a natural environment. The scene had been set.

We were cycling up a particularly long incline on a track across some heath land leading into part of the forest. John decided to get a spurt on (he always was incredibly competitive) and beat me to the top of this hill. When I crested the hill I saw John ahead of me conversing with a couple of walkers at a gate.

I rolled up to them and John asked me if I could get my map out of my rucksack so that we could help this couple who were a little lost. I sensed that in all the excitement he had forgotten our characters, and decided to see if I could subtly try and remind him. “ Why do you want the map John?” I asked. “Because these people are lost you numpty” he replied. I tried again, “ Are you sure you need a map John?” “Just give me the map.” he said. “But John, don’t you think that there’s another way?” I said whilst slowly lifting my gaze towards the heavens.

I think at that moment John twigged, “Oh shit yeah, why do we need a map, the Lord Jesus Christ will show us the way, hallelujah!”

I’ve never seen two lost people say their goodbyes and scurry off in any direction other than the way we were going so quickly. I wonder if they are still there?

Himalayan climbers in Malham

I often wonder if other people, that we don’t know, talk about Spinksy without actually knowing him. I mean he had a gift for making an impression on strangers. To illustrate that…

Once we went with another mate of mine, Nick, walking for a weekend in Malham, North Yorkshire. This particular weekend as always, was littered with funny situations but the one that really got me was when we were coming down Malham Scar (I think that’s what it’s called anyway). We had a had a great day walking on the hills (our characters by the way just in case you were wondering were, Me – Helicopter pilot, Nick – Vet specialising in horses, and John – Gynaecologist) when we decided our best route back down to the village of Malham was via the steps along the side Malham Scar. These are really big, wide steps and the best way down, especially if you want to get to the pub early, is to run down them. Big bounding steps one at a time. So we’re bouncing down these steps in high spirits amid a number of other tourists labouring slowly up them in the opposite direction. We got the inevitable few tuts and curses from some of the more “Meldrew” elements that we sent scattering out of our way so John starts up in a loud voice to me “ This reminds me of when we went to K2, you know, that Indian restaurant in High Wycombe”. I was laughing and so were a small group that we were passing at the time. When we got in the pub that night, I was standing in a queue at the bar trying to get a drink when this woman in front of me starts telling this story to her friend, “ We were walking up Malham Scar today, and this bunch of lads came running down the opposite way, one of them says to the other hey this reminds me of K2, you know that Indian restaurant in High Wycombe”. The two women seemed to find it really amusing. I was desperate to say to them hey that was us, but somehow it didn’t seem right. I wonder if they still tell that story to their friends?