Free Wish You Were Here by Nick Webb Page B

many extracurricular activities. In 1964, however, he participated in the Sir William Wynne-Finch Award in “A” camp. It was some kind of privately sponsored version of the Duke of Edinburgh Awards, for it featured orienteering, pitching a bell tent, coastguard training, map reading and various other chunky, practical skills. It conjures up a vision of freezing wet boys, soggy canvas snapping in the wind, and burnt food floating in cold water.
    When he was ten, Douglas heard Hank Marvin and the Shadows, and was entranced. His mother recalls that he wanted Hank to come down to Essex and play on Douglas’s birthday, and was bemused when she said it wasn’t possible. “But, Mum, it
is
possible,” he said. He knew his geography and could see no physical impediment. “There’s even a plug.” It was the start of his intense love of music. His enthusiasm for the Beatles went almost beyond passion; he was totally besotted. In 1964, Douglas was given his first left-handed guitar, and he taught himself to play it by studying the finger-picking styles of guitar heroes and by practising relentlessly. For the piano he had more formal training, and he shared a teacher with Paul Wickens—aka “Wix”—who was supremely talented and went on to become the keyboard player in Paul McCartney’s band. Later Wix was to play an important role in Douglas’s passion for music as an adult. “Wix and I were both taught music,” he said, “but in his case it worked.”
    Douglas was actually a proficient left-handed guitar player, but his standards in music were as demanding as his standards in writing and he knew that his playing would never catch fire in the way he so admired in great musicians. All his life a streak of perfectionism ran through Douglas like quicksilver, both a boon and a torment.
    He was also in the choir, singing like an angel until his voice broke, and he remained an assistant in the chapel, towering over the other choristers. Rather incongruously for one destined to become a militant atheist, he won a Service in Chapel Prize in 1966.
    The Beatles, however, were his first love. Douglas used to tell a story of bunking off school on Friday 20 March 1964, to sneak into town to buy “Can’t Buy Me Love” from Radiogram in the High Street. He fell over and badly cut his knees on the way back, though he pointed out that knees are self-repairing whereas self-repairing textiles are still decades off. Lacking his own record player, he snuck into Matron’s office and managed to play the record three times, bleeding profusely, before being caught, bandaged and slippered.
    Such was his passion for the Beatles that the only time anybody can recall Douglas using his awesome bulk for intimidation was when he learned that another boy had heard the latest Beatles single, and insisted that he hum it. In
The Salmon of Doubt,
Douglas is quoted as saying the song was “Penny Lane” from the Magical Mystery Tour, so it must have been 1967. He added: “People now ask if Oasis is as good as the Beatles. I don’t think they’re as good as the Rutles.” For Beatles fanatics who would like to compare judgements, there is an appendix listing his favourite Beatles’ tracks in order of preference in the form of an elaborate document devised by Richard Curtis and others on 25 May 1999.*  42
    In fact Douglas seems to have been a gentle boy, and well enough liked if sometimes a little lonely. His mother recalls that he had a good friend called Steven Prosser, whose surname he appropriated for the jobsworth character from the local authority whose plans to knock down Arthur Dent’s house for a bypass were frustrated by the end of the world.
    The question of Douglas’s great height is easily over-egged. We’re all aware of our bodies and conscious of how conspicuous, attractive or grotty we appear to others. In a closed order like a school he must have been aware of it all the time. When you are over six foot tall at twelve with legs