Le Rallye des pays des Dittons

Dave Walton has his own memories of the once famous foot rally

You swine, Arthur. I'd forgotten all about this event, this affront to human dignity, this drunken orgy, this great charity fund-raiser - I only started sleeping properly again three years ago. Madame Pilote was so pleased that her night's sleep finally stopped being rudely interrupted by my mumbled, sometimes incoherent and sometimes shouted, entreaties of "We didn't mean to make you ill", "I've a great idea for a test involving a marigold glove, a ping pong ball and an inflatable doll", "Let's double the gherkin intake on test six", "Eureka - a Worcester sauce and Sauternes cocktail with chopped chillies will sort them out", etc.

What am I on about?

MEMORIES, dear reader, Memories!!!!!..Perhaps if I put it down on paper this awful blot on my CV can finally be erased.

After two years of competing in the event as a competitor and prospective alcoholic I received a command from Smith and Arthur - "Wanna curry?" Who could refuse such a charming invite? Henry Richardson had also received the royal summons. After six onion bharjees and a double madras chicken boona tikka fajita with lychees, Mothers Pride (rare to medium) and chips - in those days Rob Arthur considered himself to be Thames Ditton's answer to Michael Winner and wasn't afraid to experiment - accompanied by and followed with copious quantities of Ganges water complete with floating ashes (aka Kingfisher lager) we found ourselves elevated from mere competitor to the exalted status of Assistant Clerks of the Course.

We were party to, and witnesses to, some pretty amazing efforts over the years. Random MEMORIES - ahhhhh!! It was meant to be a gentle stroll on foot, using rally timing principles, with a few special tests thrown in, all in the name of charity. However, when normally sane and sensible members of the human race get involved with alcohol and competition, the principles of sanity and sensibility go flying out of the driver's window...

Noise testing before the event involving jumping up and down on corrugated steel sheeting and singing as loud as possible.

The dreaded signing-on with Sue Windward (?signing-on with the dreaded Sue Winwood) - she could find fault with an entry from the Pope himself...and she'd get him to pay a fine as well! I think you even fined the MSA one year for issuing an incorrect permit!!

Paul Smith's two colleagues who dressed up as a 'car' and, after imbibing a little too much, got lost. We found them at the head of a queue of cars on the Hampton Court road demanding charitable contributions in the name of Tadworth Court from all drivers before they could continue. PC Plod was mildly amused!

Checking for illegal footwear - Nike Airmax were on the FIA banned list at that time. As an aside we never ceased to be amazed at the amount of money some competitors threw at their footwear - the very latest from Nike, Reebok, Adidas, Saucony et al were always on show. Strangely, the winning shoe was, more often than not, the Oxfam sourced secondhand Woollies black plimsoll with medium compound semi-slick sole and knotted lace.

Me being fined by a competitor (now that was novel!) for being caught in possession of an offensive bicycle.

Being amazed at how difficult drivers found a simple driving test on foot whilst being half drunk and blind-folded - verbal instructions from the co-driver invariably meant that left became right, straight on reversing became anything but and driver after driver ended up in Thames Ditton pond.

The difficulty of assembling a jigsaw puzzle - maximum age 4 years -number of pieces six - whilst being assaulted by Autosport's Peter Foubister and his damn glove puppet (he reckoned he was really Rod Hull and Emu).

Parents, out shopping with their children, having to cover their offspring's eyes and ears as competitors swayed, lurched and belched their way down the High Street after the infamous pickled egg test (with Guinness, a bigger test of stomach power has yet to be found).

The year of the witches - two young ladies who commenced their fund-raising one year on the Wednesday night before the event in the wine bars of Kingston and never stopped until Saturday morning - their brains may have been pickled, their livers wrecked and their legs incapable of supporting upper body weight - they brought their sponsorship money along, crossed the starting line and went to sleep for half an hour before continuing.

Who punctured the water jump on the three-legged race one year - I remember forcibly removing an elastoplast from one competitor to repair the damage on the kids paddling pool.

In the early nineties Kevin Stapleton was still in his experimental period of pyrotechnics and he enlivened proceedings considerably at Old Cranleighans Rugby Club one year with assorted bangs and crashes - who would have thought that he would go to travel the world as a much sought after consultant to major terrorist groups?

We inflicted all sorts of culinary delights on competitors and killed their taste buds for weeks to follow - cream crackers, stale crisps, date expired gherkins, pickled eggs followed by Guinness, flat Fosters, a lethal vodka and tequila surprise that the landlord of the Cricketers devised (this was so horrendous that David Williamson, in charge of the test here took pity on the drunken wrecks that arrived and offered a chosen few a Guinness option), cloudy Directors - we had the lot. We once thought that we'd start the event with the biggest, greasiest fry-up ever seen but discarded that idea out of respect for the pavements of Thames Ditton.

Competitors came in all shapes and sizes and in all manner of costumes. Celebrities (?) came and tried the event - who can forget Simon Davidson and Steve Bond? These two poor deluded soles actually believed that this was a serious event! Having spent the day bribing test officials to get good times they found that they hadn't won due to a Paul Smith "error" when filling in a timecard so they were encouraged to enter an official protest. This cost a lot of money - they still didn't cotton on. They still lost! Mark Lovell and Roger "Preparation H" Freeman collapsed in a drunken stupor at the lunchtime service halt and so missed the culinary delights of an Adrian 'Salmonella' Grinstead BBQ. Two Geordies came down one year and failed miserably - they couldn't crack the language barrier. There are hazy recollections of Ronan Morgan doing something thought to be anatomically impossible with a cream cracker and a Cox's Orange Pippin. Roger Evans and Peter Griffiths always made the trek up from outer South Wales to run a couple of tests - a word out of place by any competitor automatically meant an additional penalty of another drink (for them, not the competitor). One "Orstrayleyan" competitor was so impressed that he was heard to mutter something about running an officially sanctioned copycat event "down under" as he was stretchered back to Heathrow, still clutching his bottle of "Diamond White" lager (now that WAS an awful drink). The Croydon gang looked after the results, displayed in time honoured manner on a clothes line - I'm convinced that at the time they displayed them upside-down no-one knew....or really cared.

Remarkably no-one ever caused themselves serious injury - not even Lesley Stapleton! All we ever had was some temporary amnesia, loss of rational thought and some serious inability to co-ordinate limb movement. No - that's wrong - we had someone break an arm whilst playing some Club 18-30 game involving a traffic cone and a rugby ball.

Some thought that the highlight of the day was the awards presentation - hidden away somewhere (for fear of causing serious offence to decent spirited folk) is the infamous Basildon Bond Spittoon - it could be in the New Inn which had the dubious honour of displaying this and the rest of the horrible grotty tat that masqueraded as perpetual awards. Awarded on an annual basis to the winners this three foot high plated plastic offence to decency was actually awarded to a competitor in an overseas rally and smuggled back through Customs (I'm sure it would have been confiscated if it had been seen). As for the rest of the crap that was dished out.....we almost felt ashamed.

Tina Thorner, ace German co-driver, was persuaded to come along and present the awards one year. This delightful young lady, from the land of leder hosened, stein wielding Oktoberfest lager drinking festivals, was heard to say as she gazed out over a playing field littered with wrecked humanity "Zey must be, ow you say, tickled (?pickled) in ze 'ead".

The real winners every year, of course, were Tadworth Court.

In the end it all became too much. Two letters summed it all up. The first was from the Licensed Victuallers Association pleading with us to increase the alcoholic content of the event. The other came in an official looking brown envelope (with a window) and was marked "OHMS" - it was from the Minister of Health who admitted that whilst it was not in his power to stop the event kindly asked us to somehow vary it's format in order that the National Health Service did not get swamped with demands for stomach pumping services and the removal of strange objects from the anatomy (e.g. ping pong balls, balloons - both in - and de-flated, Freemans out of Lovells, crisp packets, etc). How can you satisfy two such diverse requests?... You can't.