Crazy goings on at Duxford

Shorty,

Sorry, can’t help with the year – mid ‘90s would probably be about right but my memory runs only the selected hi-lights. I went to every IAT Fairford from 1985 -2000 (remember Live Aid? Not me! I was floating around the tanker display!) and I do have to say that, although I was getting paid to do it for the last 7-odd years it did become one long conveyor belt of USAF birds intermingled with a few Euro F16s in special colour schemes and, towards the end, the old Warsaw Pact air forces following suit (I can’t believe I’ve just typed that – would never have thought that having the chance to see East European jets would be boring! Too spoilt for choice, that’s what it is…). That’s why the little out of the ordinary things stick in my mind. Everything else is a blur – F16 in sunshine, F16 in low cloud, F16 in sunshine, oops – there goes the Bear!:D

Um, that said I have been chatting with a mate who also went to IAT on a regular basis and he thought it was actually the, erm… (reverses the spelling to avoid further censorship), The sineP Song (from the Monty Python film The Meaning Of Life, and sung just before the very funny Mr Creosote sketch – the exploding fat man scene!). This would make it easier to understand a mix up since Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life would be on the same album – how many DJs would carry an Ivor Biggun album to a public show with a view to playing it and still getting paid afterwards? My mate thought he heard it whilst he was with a group of like-minded drinking buddy’s (hic!) who carried on singing after the music was stopped – although he did admit that there was an outside chance that one of their number could actually have started singing that song and the rest of them (12-15 he reckons) just joined in. He was pretty sure it was a Saturday though!
I really cannot comment since I didn’t hear either song, probably coz at the time I was sitting in an out-bound traffic jam next to some boy racer, and his girl, in a Ford Escort whose exhaust needed fixing and was playing that ruddy song from Titanic over and over again loudly – no, actually that was Biggin Hill in ’98!

The ‘my neighbour’ reference (think Ned Flanders from The Simpsons) will be no help since he takes his kids to all sorts of events all over Britain, starting off at some unearthly hour of the previous night just so that they can be at the front of the queue. He has complained to me (why me?) about every airshow he has ever been to, about the price of entry, the price of food and drink, the lack of a chapel on the site(!), the weather (ha, I told him I did a rain dance the previous night. That shook him!), the display being too far a way for the kids to see, the noise, everything.
Maybe, for me, the worst part of an airshow is my neighbour? Yeah, just gotta sell that one to a TV prog maker!

Flood… says: Never try to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time, it sounds bad and it just annoys the pig.

A couple of Duxford memories –

Just a couple of years ago, OFMC Fury and TFC Bearcat hotrodding around the sky, absolutely wonderful stuff and displayed the aircraft at their best:

And another show where a Chinook pilot flew a fairly vigorous display in torrential rain, with the entire crowd hiding under the Vulcan.:)

Legends 98, one guy on a step ladder as the Jacquard Spit XIV roared off for the balbo, cried ‘Oh YES!’ as the five bladed prop nearly decapitated him. The things some people do for their photographs 😀

Bae Lostock families day, mid nineties:

PA474 does a flypast and one woman pipes up:

“What’s that?”

“It’s a Lancaster bomber, love”

“Oh yeah, …so where do our missiles go on that then?”

Another good one was some vague anorak clad buffoon at Woodford in 1992:

We were watching him and generally taking the piss anyway when the Red Arrows do a bomb burst from behind and over the crowd line.

Man sh*ts himself and thrashes his arms wildly spilling coffee over the maximum surface area of his body possible, then starts thrashing round again trying to get the scalding hot coffee off his shirt……

Ow!

Paul.:D

Originally posted by SteveYoung
Although there was another display, Alconbury I think, or maybe Mildenhall, one year where I was stood very close to the RAF Regiment’s static Rapier, as it tracked every single second of the F117’s display. Yanks weren’t in the slightest bit amused about that…

That was Mildenhall a couple of years back.

The squaddies were taking the p*ss and tracking optically 🙂

Moggy

Originally posted by andyxh558
howver it didnt stop a flyby by an f117 that year!

I’ve ‘seen’ quite a few of those – families day at Cottesmore, would either have been in 93 or 96 is the one which springs to mind. We’d had various aircraft displaying, and I think the next item was billed as “Stealth flypast”. So the world and his granny were quickly charging up to the crowdline for as close a glimpse of this wonderful American thing as they could get. Commentator utters “And now ladies and gentlemen, if you’d look to your right…”

Followed some seconds later by some muffled laughing on the tannoy, and lots of very sheepish members of the public realising they’d been well and truly had. Myself included. 😀

Although there was another display, Alconbury I think, or maybe Mildenhall, one year where I was stood very close to the RAF Regiment’s static Rapier, as it tracked every single second of the F117’s display. Yanks weren’t in the slightest bit amused about that…

Mine wasnt from Duxford either. This was the last woodford airshow and i perisited down ALL day (not a unusual situation) hardly anything flew so the guy on the tannoy shouted ” Due to the bad weahter we are experiencing the flying display will now be cancelled and the local scouts will be doing sychronised swimming on the runway in 5 minutes” it seemed to sum up the day howver it didnt stop a flyby by an f117 that year!

Thanks for solving that one Flood, I always had problems reconciling George with such a song ! Doc Cox used to play in one of my locals, The Southampton in Surbiton. btw can you remember what year that IAT was, 94, 95 ?

Crazy times, krazee peepul!

Really had to think for this one!

IAT Fairford, probably 1995-98 period.
An American soldier in full ‘Universal Soldier’ get up – ie camo uniform, dark wrap-around shades, mean look on face, shaven head, muscles revolving on his arms like a bunch of ferrets in a potato sack, studied and determined movements, combined thin line earphone and microphone set, batman utility type belt, boots so shiny that they were almost a hazard to photography, and a pink-haired gonk sitting on his left shoulder complete with uniform, boots, head set, and a gun – which was obviously what it’s owner was looking for!
This guy was strolling through the crowd like some sort of Terminator and seemed to be totally ignoring the amused attention of the crowd. If it hadn’t been for the fact that he looked so genuine I would have thought that he was some sort of street theatre type.
In fact for quite a while I had a print of him in my portfolio but I’d be damned if I can find it now.

Just bizarre!

Of course this is just my view and in no way counts against the giant cuddly Wile E Coyote (IAT again) sitting in the cockpit of a static F16 (forget which Air Force but pick any one of the dozen or so nationalities that send them – it’s bound to have been one of ‘em!) wearing a bone-dome and with the mask perched on his snout with kiddies pointing at him, or the young lady at Yeovilton Air Day, possibly 98 or 99 – whenever it was hot actually, who happily posed for her boyfriend and his camera beside an F14 with the boys from the US Navy in various states of undress until she wore, erm, not much at all (and no, I didn’t get any pix coz it all took place during the ‘Royal Navy plays at being The A Team and saves the world, again’ slot at the end of the day and, yes, I had run out of film by then. But there were quite a few around who hadn’t, even a few who still had enough power for their videos!), and what about the bar-be-cue (gas-fired, mind you) on the wing of an Orion (IAT again, but my warped memory doesn’t remember when – although in the late afternoon slots you could always find a party or two taking place on any of the larger transport types!).
And then there was the Alize pilot at Portland Navy Days in 1981 (um, probably) who wouldn’t speak English (I was visiting the Wasp on a frigate and the aircrew on duty were laughing their double knit socks off!).
Or maybe when the B2 made it’s first appearance at Farnborough and I was standing, with a lot of people, watching the radar guided AA and SA missile units tracking it through it’s flying display – and the subsequent (and rushed) press release claiming that it had a radar responder on board which made everyone chuckle!

Oh, and Shorty, that was probably (er, better get this correct!) Ivor Biggun and the Red Nosed Burglars ‘Winkers Song (Misprint)’! Strange that he subsequently went on to become Doc Cox with Esther Rantzin… Didn’t hear it myself, though my staid god-bothering next-door-neighbour tried to ask me the next day if they always played such filth to make people leave a bit quicker – and I didn’t know what he was talking about!

Flood… says smile – it’s the second best thing you can do with your mouth!

They don’t make ’em like they used to 😉 thanks for that Shorty, that really made my day.

Tom

Not Duxford but IAT Fairford, mid nineties. After the airshow we were waiting for the traffic to clear watching the departing aircraft whilst sipping a beer in the evening sunshine. I think it was the year they had an Il-18 there. Anyway, the tannoy bursts into life with the commentator saying something along the lines of “here’s a song from Monty Python”s Life of Brian to cheer up all of you stuck in the traffic”. Unfortunately he had a bit of finger trouble selecting “always look on the bright side of life” on the CD player & got George Formby’s “I’m a w*nker” song instead. The first few bars , which contain those words, blarred across the airfield before being replaced by static and a very sheepish “oh”.
The beer nearly came out of my nostrils.

Legends, mid-show, a few years back. Some Cessna-type thing crossing overhead.

Oh to have formated the balbo on him and taken a close up of his face.

Bit of a late post,but I remember the Storch at Duxford, a few years ago, flying towards the tower-into wind-and coming to a virtual hover.The commentator couldn’t do much for laughing!

Must be around 1987.

Lofty and I had been to Fighter Meet, stayed over in Gt Dunmow, then routed back with throbbing hangovers via Duxford on the Sunday.

Huge excitement! The (original) Blenheim had been pulled out in front of the tower and showed every sign of going for an air test. Lofty was torn. His wife is a bit of a harridan and was not going to be pleased if he was late back. But a Blenheim? Remember none of us had ever seen one fly in those days.

Problem solved, when we got back to the car it was parked-in as some inconsiderate slob had parked in the access track at the end of the row. So decision made we sat in the Renault drinking Fosters from the eski (I was much younger then and had immature tastes).

However in the row beyond ours an argument was developing. Somebody wanted to get out and politely asked the guy in front of him to move his car. For some reason the pea-brain refused, and in rather agressive terms.

Eventually a massive slanging match developed and for whatever reason the pea-brain moved his car out of the way. As the guy behind him drove out he walked back to where his car had been parked and stood plumb in the middle of the space shouting abuse at the departing car.

We started up, as the way was now clear (except for pea-brain), purred up to within about a foot of his totally unaware back….

….. and hit the horn!

Best bit of flying I’d seen for ages. 😀 😀 😀 😀 😀

Moggy

As we left we consoled ourselves with the fact we’d see the Blenheim at the Duxford show in about two weeks time.

Of course, that was not to be.