pgpc.co.uk

How It All Began

People often ask: “Tell me about the strange beginnings of the PG&PC”.

It started in 1984 as a common-and-garden expenses scam. I had joined an illustrious firm of agents in Hanover Square and in those days of small pay cheques needed to get my shooting paid for as business entertainment.

The real problem was finding a farmer crazy enough to let me bust clays on his land. I visited all the swankier spreads in N.E. Hampshire and after having the dogs set on me many times I chanced upon a tucked-away smallholding farmed by a terrific old nutter called Dick.

We negotiated in his tumbledown barn while he castrated a beast with a wire coat hanger. “Certified surveyors, eh? You boys have got money. That’ll cost you two a session, then.” He held up a pair of pulsating but severed testicles, to emphasise the point.

F*ck. Back then, £200 was a lot of moolah. Creative though I was with expenses, this would be tough. I said I’d get back to him and trudged away with a heavy heart.

Then Dick hollered after me: “But I don’t want no rubbish. Single malt!!”

Deal. I was up the farm track faster than a ram seeing Dick holding a coat hanger. The old fellow’s eyes popped a bit when Adrian Wyatt turned up to a shoot in his Ferrari, but he stuck to the original bargain. Dick was an utter gent.

The regular Sunday Sessions in his chalk quarry would begin (predictably) with clay shooting. A trap would be set at the top with guns below potting rather flattering ‘driven’ birds lobbed over the edge. Thus, we all shot like gods.

Occasionally a novice shot would swing round a loaded 12-bore and ask: “What does this thingy do?” while, to a man, we dived headlong into the sheep crap.

Getting to lunch at the Royal Oak involved a no-holds-barred rallycross by assorted hot hatches over the tarmac – and grass – of Lasham airfield in a low-rent precursor to Top Gear. It was a major miracle that nothing got totalled.

Although the ‘punt’ in PG&PC is supposedly a pun (I maintain it is a spelling mistake), in the summer there really was punting on the Basingstoke Canal. Slightly pissed surveyors and their totty piled into boats and reconstructed Great Sea Battles of Yore. There was a lot of scuttling and “Woman Overboard!” which didn’t half wake you up for the drive back up the M3.

It was James Johnson and Tim Lineham who eventually suggested that the Sunday Sessions ‘go large’ (or at least ‘with fries’) and thanks to the efforts of energetic and talented people ever since, the Official PG&PC now rivals Alcoholics Anonymous for credibility. And members.

I got to know Dick and his family well. His youngest daughter even did time at Hanover Square to try out the noble profession of the land. Seeing so much drunkenness, gratuitous violence and sexual harassment in just a few weeks, she decided to join the police for her own safety.

We all thought Dick was indestructible. Rommel apparently spent the entire Desert War personally trying to put a cap in his ass. He went on to survive falls from the roofs of his decrepit buildings, manglings in farm machinery and gorings by terrified animals.

The big C did for him in the end, but if he is looking down now he would laugh his head off at what he started.

Roger Clarke

June 2006