Tag: Bob Willis

An Evening With Teresa Bestard, Bob Willis & Others, Albertine Wine Bar, 19 August 1997

I am writing this memory piece on 4 December 2019, having just learnt that the great fast bowler and latterly cricket pundit, Bob Willis, has died today.

I first met Bob Willis when I was but a boy, in 1977, at The Oval:

My First Ever Day At A Test Match, With Graham Majin, England v Australia Day 3, Oval, 27 August 1977

For those who cannot be bothered to click through, Graham and I really did meet Bob that day in 1977, down in the tube station, an hour or so after stumps, as we were all heading to different households in Streatham, in his case to visit friends on the test match rest day.

I doubt very much whether Bob recognised me 20 years later on our second encounter; on this occasion in the Albertine Wine Bar in Shepherd’s Bush.

Albertine was well trendy in 1997, picking up awards and being known as a place to celebrity spot – click here or image below for ES artcle/review:

Teresa Bestard was working with me on several projects with Broadcasting Support Services, who at that time were based in Shepherd’s Bush. I had arranged to meet Teresa and David Highton to go through stuff late afternoon/early evening and we agreed we’d have a drink after work together. Teresa chose Albertine because she wanted to celebrity spot.

The bar was not so crowded when we got there and Teresa was a little disappointed not to recognise any celebrities in the bar.

The only person I recognised, on the far side of the bar, was Bob Willis. He was with two other people; one turned out to be the cricket journalist Michael Henderson, the other a mustachioed Aussie, who looked like a superannuated version of Merv Hughes but who was in fact a wine producer.

I told Teresa that a former great England cricketer was in the bar, which was celebrity enough for me. It was celebrity enough for David Highton too, who is/was a keen follower of cricket and indeed was a decent player in his own right when he turned out for the charity matches.

Teresa let it be known that former cricketers did not meet her stringent criteria for celebrity.

David didn’t hang around for very long.

Teresa asked me a bit more about Bob Willis. In the absence of any celebrities who met her stringent criteria, she suddenly promoted Bob to the “worth asking about” level.

I told her a little and suggested that she approach Bob and chat with him.

Teresa was not at all keen on that idea…

…until she progressed to a second glass of wine…

…when she asked again about this cricket business and that cricketer and I suggested that she approach Bob Willis with a greeting along the lines of…

…aren’t you Bob Willis, the great fast bowler and former England cricket captain…

…and take it from there.

So imagine the scene. Teresa Bestard, a pint-sized young woman with a big smile and a heavy Catalan accent, wanders to the other side of the bar, looks up to the relative giant, Bob Willis, presumably saying the above short speech.

I couldn’t hear from my distance, but I did see the astonished expression on Bob Willis’s face and gales of laughter from the group.

Teresa was then chatting with them for a short while, before Michael Henderson came over to me.

You set that up, didn’t you?…

..said Henderson…

…that was really funny. Is she your girlfriend?

No, I said, Teresa’s a work colleague.

Well, anyway, she’s perfectly safe with those two.

Henderson and I chatted a while, which is how I found out, amongst other things, that “Merv Senior” was a wine producer.

Soon enough, Bob, “Merv Senior” and Teresa came over to our table – I think the Bob Willis party had been on the verge of leaving when Teresa intervened with them, so all three of them made to leave.

Is this your girlfriend?…

…Bob Willis asked me, pointing to Teresa.

Oh no, blushed Teresa, you should meet his girlfriend Janie, she’s lovely!

Bob Willis turned to me, saluted me and said…

…mon capitaine…

…before all three of Bob’s party left us, with warm farewells.

Bob Willis.

My First Ever Day At A Test Match, With Graham Majin, England v Australia Day 3, Oval, 27 August 1977

Bob Willis, photo by Brittle heaven~commonswiki, CC BY-SA 4.0

The diary entry is pretty blasé about this momentous day:

Went to test match. Mostly rained off etc. V good what we saw (Graham and I).

I’m pretty sure this was my first ever day at the test. But it seems that I was so laid back in those days, perhaps my first one entirely passed me by.

Graham Majin and I had spent a great deal of that summer together making our second animated film, Speare Trek. More on Speare Trek will appear on Ogblog in the fullness of time. (Including a link to the film once I work out a way of digitally patching it back together again). We’d finished filming earlier in August and I think (reading between the lines of the diary) the last of the rushes had returned to us from the processing lab earlier in the week of this test. Younger readers will need a glossary and a book on the history of film to understand what on earth I’m on about.

Anyway, one of Graham’s uncles was a journalist who tended to be given test match tickets for the Oval. A pair of hot test tickets for the Saturday filtered down to us.

The only problem that day was the rain. Lots of it. I suspect we got about an hour of cricket the whole day – here’s the scorecard.

I have a few good memories of the day. I remember the Australian players wandering around and chatting to the few hardy souls (which included me and Graham) who stuck around in the hope of cricket.

The Aussies had been beaten up in the test series (they were an insurmountable 3-0 down before this test started). They were also, unbeknown to us, riven by the Kerry Packer business, news of which was soon to break. Yet still they did their bit for the attendees. Respect.

I especially remember Kim Hughes as part of that wandering, sociable pack; I also remember some young women, near us, drooling over Hughes. Graham and I wondered what he had that we lacked.

Graham late summer the year before
Me late summer the year before: trophy but no cigar

Despite our extreme youth, the crowd-deprived bar folk of the Oval seemed only too happy to serve us beer. Thems was different times. I do not recommend that 14/15 year old readers try to emulate our behaviour.

But the central character of the day was Bob Willis. Renowned as a terrible batsman (he famously once went out to bat without a bat), he scored 24 not out in this innings, almost his personal best. After the innings break, he then took a wicket before stumps were drawn.

Graham and I still had beers in our hands when stumps were drawn and certainly weren’t inclined to drink quickly or rush away from the ground, so we stuck around a while before wandering down to the Oval tube station.

When we got down to that southbound platform, there, with his cricket coffin, was Bob Willis. We asked him where he was going. Bob explained that he had friends in Streatham and was going to stay with them for the Sunday – a rest day back then.

I don’t remember where the conversation went after that, nor indeed exactly how we all went our separate ways, each to subtly different parts of Streatham.

Graham might remember, but I doubt it. Bob’s even less likely to remember.

Meanwhile, that sighting of Bob Willis on the underground has gone down in King Cricket/Cricket Badger folk lore as the very pinnacle of “cricketer spotted” activity – click here for recent (at the time of writing) validation – an accolade indeed.