08/06/2006
NEWS STORY
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This week Geoff Collins paid a surprise visit to London, where on Wednesday evening he shared a beer or two with Pitpass editor Chris Balfe, deep in the heart of Jack the Ripper country... Whitechapel.
Geoff had a few a few horrors of his own, and we're not talking about the strong smell of cheese emanating from his valise, no, we refer to the questions he fired at the Pitpass editor, who, having enjoyed a couple of ales - downed purely for medicinal purposes - was in no fit state to remember who destroyed their March in the first pre-qualifying session at Silverstone in 1977, or who ran with the number 40.
Thankfully, being early summer it was a bright balmy evening, with no hint of a pea-souper, no sound of horse-drawn carriages clattering through the cobbled streets. That said, when Geoff entered the Ten Bells, a few locals looked up from their pints of gin, a haunted, knowing look slowly spreading across their faces.
It wasn't merely the women, nobody was safe, as one by one Geoff accosted them, delving slowly into his valise and withdrawing a shiny silver object that struck fear into the very souls... his Saffron pen.
"Who failed to qualify the Stanley-BRM?" he demanded of a down-on-her-luck woman clutching her baby to her breast, "Who lost a wheel?" he teased a young ragamuffin, phrasing the question in a mocking Dick van Dyke style cockney accent that made his interrogation all the more sinister.
The organ grinder, even his monkey, fell silent, as Geoff sneered at the doomed and the damned, "fools" he cried, "damn fools... does nobody know which team managed to score points by getting two cars in the top six? You damn ignorant fools!"
And with that he was gone... heading off to hail a Hansom Cab, and to terrorise another part of the city. The smell of cheese followed him out the door.
The Ten Bells breathed a heavy sigh of relief, in the corner Police Constable Harkinshaw returned to his game of cribbage with Ben Shaw, making a rare foray out of Limehouse ... it had been a close encounter.
To try Geoff's British GP quiz, click here