More info on Graham Barlow from Chris Snuggs

Browsing round the site I came across the material relating to Graham Barlow, which I hadn't seen before. This was of particular interest to me, and I can perhaps add some background.

My father worked for Iliffe & Co in Stamford Street, near Blackfriars Bridge. He was Transport Manager there for many years, and oversaw the provision and maintenance of all the company's cars, including the chauffeur-driven ones for the directors.

Through this work, he got to know the then chauffeur of Sir Don Ryder, at one time MD of the Mirror Group or something equivalent, and this driver was Derek Barlow, Graham's dad. My father had few close friends during his life. He got on well enough with everyone, but there were very few people whom he saw out of business hours. Derek was one of these few. He and his wife Betty, and their boy Graham, were often at our place for tea or dinner or whatever, and once Derek helped us install a central-heating system in our house in Surbiton. Derek Barlow was one of the few men who made my father laugh.

Well, when I went to Woolverstone, it was naturally a considerable talking-point, and when I sent back glowing reports of how great it was, super sports facilities, professional cricket coach and so on, there were soon discussions taking place about Graham going there, too. And so it happened that he joined the school one year below me. He was obviously a talented cricketer. I remember very clearly Dickie Mayes being impressed. Once, on a pitch just outside the sports store (not on the main square) we were having a first-year game, and Bob Coates I think it was smashed the ball incredibly hard towards mid-off. Graham caught it with nonchalance, and Dickie's eyes popped out - it was a professional-quality catch from a first-year boy.

Well, I'm not sure if I was supposed to be a mentor to Graham. If I was, I wasn't very good, and it soon became clear that Graham wasn't that happy. I think he missed his Middlesex chums, perhaps his Mum (He was an only child*) - whatever the reasons - and I wasn't particularly close to Graham - it was decided that he should leave after the second year, I believe. A great loss to school cricket! However, in London his cricket thrived, and he played for Middlesex for several years, and for England once, I think - certainly in a couple of one-day matches. And then, after a certain time, I stopped seeing his name appear occasionally in the press, and I wondered what had become of him.

Sadly, my father and his drifted apart, too. I'm not sure if the Snuggses were blamed in some way for the Woolverstone experience, which seems not to have been that happy a one for Graham. Whatever it was, our house never rang again to the sound of my father's laughter, and that was sad, because it had never been a particularly frequent sound in the first place.

My father died in 1980, and though he never revealed the slightest thing about his true feelings for anything, I know that he must have missed Derek Barlow a lot.

As for Graham, wherever you are mate, I hope you are well.

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* Not so, says another source: "Graham had two sisters Denise and Theresa. Graham was the eldest, then Denise and Theresa was the youngest."

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