Autographs

I'm awfully sorry to demean your trade! I'm sure you provided a tremendous service but just thought your contributions to this thread would definitely enrich it. Sorry if my bits of paper from the 70's are so inadequate for you but they mean alot ot me

I must correct any mistaken impression I may have given of autograph hunters being "sad bastards" ~ what I meant to portray was that had I engaged in that pass time whilst supposedly providing a professional service, that would have been "sad"; and probably curtains for me as a career.

No one who gets pleasure collecting autographs should ever be described as being some sad person and for many people saying they got to meet someone famous is the only claim to fame they are every likely to have in their life.

I get a bit angry when someone makes unkind and unnecessary remarks about a person who enjoys doing something the other person is not interested in or somehow finds a bit strange. Train spotters always seen to be targets for abuse and why? If they love trains and enjoy recording the ones they see what s wrong with that? It really is a case of each to their own and yet some can’t help themselves and just have to say something knowing it will only cause the person to feel he is wrong to enjoy what it does.

I once had a collection of nearly 1000 milk bottles, most were pictures ones or ones that came from private dairies that found their way down here, but I never said to anyone who came to my home for the first time you must come take a look at my milk bottle collection before you leave.

As it was in the end due to changes I had to make in my life I took them all back to the dairy and it was around this time my own collection of autographs were destroyed by her who is now having to serve here sentence living in Wales.

I had been lucky to have been able to some great things signed and given to me by people like Larry Grayson and Sid Little and Max Bygraves who were customers of mine when they lived in the Bay, but they got destroyed as well.

I only have one thing left and that was only because I had leant it to someone a very long time ago and only recently got back it has not been returned in the same condition it was leant, but then that was 20 years ago and its one you have Stuart only mine has a story to it.

In 1981 I was working as a butcher in Newton Abbot any really did not like the manager who came from Birmingham and he liked me even less after I trashed him in a snooker competition that took place in the town and then again in a pool competition..

Watching snooker on the TV back then was a thing so many men did and Steve Davis was my man and I just really believed 1981 was going to be his year and he would win his first of six world championships.

I’m not normally a betting man but I broke my own rules as my manager said Davis had no chance and after winning the bet I went and bought the album Face Values by Phil Collins.

I had already booked to go to the old 400 club in Torquay a few weeks before the final took place as Steve Davis was in the line up( was taking place three days after the final) and I just had to take the album with me to get him signed by him.

Really great man to talk with and he told me he had bought the cassette tape of the album only the day before and had it on in the car on the way down to Torquay.

but it changes!