10things

30 things you didn't know

you didn't know about Johnny B

and probably didn't want to know...

His middle name is Greatrex. Apparently he was supposed to be called 'John Beech' after his paternal grandfather who was killed in the First World War. On the way to register his birth as plain 'John Beech', John's father saw an advertisement for an 'End of the Pier Show' directed by one Greatrex Newman. Struck by the name, John's father promptly registered him as 'John Greatrex Beech'. Understandably this was not well received by John's mother, and until he was five his father called him Greatrex and his mother called him Johnny. She reluctantly gave in at this point. Today, only John's step-mother still refers to him as Greatrex.
He was born deaf, and only recovered his hearing at age about 12 months.
As a youth he once took a hat-trick spin-bowling, and has even scored a try at rugby (no laughter please). Otherwise his only claim to fame as a sportsman was winning the potato race when at prep school.
He managed to fail five O-Levels, including physics and chemistry, but, two years later, he passed four A-Levels at Grades A, A, B and B. The A Grades were in Physics and Chemistry. He also has two S-Levels with Distinction.
His first degree is in Natural Sciences, but in his final year he specialised in History of Science.
The official result of his first year as an undergraduate student, when he took and failed his exams while ill, was 'Deemed to have passed'. In modern terms this means 'Condoned - you don't actually have to bother with doing resits'.
When hitch-hiking as a student, he was given a lift by Nicki Lauda, then the unknown Austrian no.2 to Jochen Rindt.
As a student he participated in the so-called 'Garden House Riot' which resulted in students being charged with Conspiracy to Riot. He finds today's students disappointingly unradical.
For two consecutive summers when a student he worked as a dustman for eight weeks.
He drove from the Arabian Gulf back to Britain in the late summer of 1972.
His car for this trip - an unmodified Mercedes 190 - was Saudi-registered, which in those days meant numberplates with only Arabic lettering and numerals. As members of the Israeli team at the Munich Olympics had just been assassinated, the car frequently attracted police interest once he had got back to Europe. In Austria John was first detained on the grounds of being dodgey because of the car and then held on suspicion of being a member of the Baader-Meinhoff Gang, a notorious German urban terrorist group. Interpol had a warrant out for member Hans Buche, which is a literal translation of John Beech - as if an urban terrorist would disguise himself by simply translating his name!!!
He lived in Perth (the real one, in Scotland) for twenty years.
In his mid-twenties he was X-rayed following a fall from a horse, to discover that he had a small bone missing from the base of his spine.
He once drove the 130 miles from Ipswich to Coventry having just hurt himself slipping on a badly lit step but not realising that he had actually broken his leg.
His longest solo drive in one day was from Vienna to Bedford.
He has been a third husband twice, to Billie (d.1991) and to Sue (since 1994). Between them Sue and Billie have had ten children, nineteen grandchildren, and five great grand-children.
He has a very slight limp as a result of polio at the age of 5. During physiotherapy following breaking his leg, it was pointed out that the big toe on his left foot is partially paralysed - something he hadn't noticed in 51 years. Mr Unobservant or what!!!
He has lived abroad twice - once in Austria for a year and once in Saudi Arabia for two years - and worked on secondment in Germany and in Serbia.
When working in Austria he was told to take all Protestant holidays. As every other member of the Department he worked in was Catholic, he had to take the Catholic holidays too. Bummer!
He has visited over 70 countries.
He is violently allergic to Christmas trees.
The only food he will actually refuse even allowing for politeness is peanut butter.
Every three years he meets up with 60+ American cousins at a gathering in Auburn, Maine.
His wife Sue and his daughter-in-law Jenni went to the same school in Manchester... and share the same birthday, also the birthday of Sue's niece Jennifer.
He has voted most frequently for the Scottish Nationalist Party. In a local election he and Billie voted SNP, the candidate winning by just 3 votes. Had they voted Conservative (heaven forfend), the Conservative candidate would have won by one vote - voting can make a difference!
He is prone to absent-mindedness, once stubbing out a fountain pen in an ashtray.
At a tourism conference, in front of a large audience, John once told the academic who had just delivered a paper "That's all bollocks!"
The paper had been a very erudite one on the Punk Festival in Morecambe and, in the absence of any other response to the invitation for questions at the end of the paper, John felt unable to resist what was probably a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to say that to a conference speaker. Fortunately the audience and more importantly the speaker shared the joke.
His grandmother, Annie Nellie Griffith, was an expert on alpine plants. She named one after him - auricula greatricola.
His uncle, John Griffith, worked with Crick and Watson, and is mentioned in The Double Helix. Before Crick and Watson discovered the actual genetic code, John Griffith co-authored a journal article with Crick and Orgel proposing a model for the code which has been described as 'a much more elegant solution than Crick and Watson's, but unfortunately wrong'.
He does not see himself as over 70, more a case of 60 + VAT.