BRITAIN bid a fond farewell to aircraft carrier HMS Illustrious this week after 32 years in service with the Royal Navy.
The ship, which weighs 22,00 tonnes, is 210 metres long and has sailed 900,000 miles across the world’s seas, left its home port of Portsmouth for the final time after the Ministry of Defence sold it to a ship recycling company in Turkey for £2m.
It is a rather ignominious end for Illustrious, which started its life in the Royal Navy when it was rushed into service in 1982 in the aftermath of the Falklands War.
It’s a pity it couldn’t be turned into a floating naval museum, like HMS Belfast, which still attracts plenty of visitors moored on the Thames in central London.
The latest Royal Navy ship to be retired, nicknamed Lusty, carried out many missions including in the Adriatic to help maintain a no-fly zone in Bosnia in the 1990s, supporting operations in Afghanistan following the September 11 attacks in 2001 and in on an aid mission in the Philippines after Typhoon Haiyanan in 2013.
I spent three days on HMS Illustrious in 1998 when it was operating in the Gulf.
The Ministry of Defence flew a group of journalists out to Bahrain where we boarded Lusty and spent three days aboard while she was involved with British and US Navy warships on manoeuvres in the Persian Gulf.
The highlight was watching her Harrier jump jets taking off and landing on the carrier’s runway and being flown by helicopter low across the dark blue waters of the Gulf to land on the frigate HMS Monmouth where we interviewed members of its crew.
With a crew of 685, Illustrious felt like a floating village and us journalists needed a Royal Navy escort to keep us from getting lost, rather than going off where we shouldn’t.
I was awe-struck by the size of the aircraft carrier, up until we docked back in Bahrain next to the US nuclear powered carrier the USS John C. Stennis which was more than 120 metres longer and had a crew of 3,200 – almost five times that of its dwarfed British counterpart.
It was like a floating city.
While we were aboard Illustrious it took part in war-games with other British and US warships to test their reactions and operations in a battle situation.
I remember one morning we were sitting having breakfast in the galley and I commented to our host, a bearded former Royal Navy submarine commander, that I had never had a better night’s sleep than in my bunk in the middle of the Gulf.
“That’s good, because we were torpedoed and sunk three times during the night,” he said matter-of-factly.
I nearly choked on my porridge.
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JUST a couple of weeks after we launched the Big Ticket event for Yorkshire’s dealmaking community, three-quarters of the tickets have already been sold.
It’s great that the region’s corporate finance community have embraced the idea with gusto – no speeches, no black tie, no bland three-course meal and a key aim of raising money for a fantastic charity.
If you haven’t booked your places at the Big Ticket at the Belgrave Music Hall & Canteen in Leeds on Thursday, February 2, then details are below for the event which includes live music, street food and a well stocked bar.
Hang about, no speeches? What am I going to do?
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WHO is the best dressed man you know?
Coffee in Harrogate with Peter Davenport the other morning confirmed that in my opinion he must be a contender for Yorkshire’s best dressed man.
The chief executive of Acceleris Marketing Communications is a former Daily Mail and Times correspondent and has a wealth of stories from his newspaper days covering the Pope’s visit to Ireland, going to tea with Fred Astaire and being taught a few dance steps by the Hollywood legend and interviewing the ultimate cinematic cowboy, John Wayne.
Peter is a million miles from the traditional image of a scruffy hack.
Dressed in a close-fitting double breasted Italian blazer, charcoal grey flannel trousers, brown monk shoes, blue bengal stripe shirt and orange knit tie, he looked like he’d just stepped out of a Jermyn street shop window.
Corporate financier Mark Eardley came over to say hello and commented that he hadn’t seen me that smart for ages, so I must have dressed up because I was meeting Peter.
True.
Mark now opts for chunky knitwear, a far cry from his sartorial days when he was named C&A’s Man of the Year 1989.
I’ve always been impressed by people who dress well.
During my Yorkshire Post days the best dressed business person I interviewed was Harold Tillman, the flamboyant rag trade entrepreneur who once owned Jaeger and Aquascutum.
When I met Alan Lewis, the owner of another iconic British menswear brand, Crombie, I described in the interview in the Yorkshire Post how he was wearing a torso-hugging black cashmere sweater.
My colleague James Graham told me he enjoyed reading the interview but said he felt the description of what the businessman was wearing seemed a bit “homoerotic”.
Once I’d looked up the meaning of the word in a dictionary, I’d have been more offended if it wasn’t for the fact that James was not into his clothes so felt comment on what other people were wearing rather irrelevant.
When I sent him out to interview the chairman of Lloyds Bank he made a special effort and polished the scuffs off his Cornish pasty-shaped shoes and ironed the creases out of his cagoule.
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HAVING agreed to speak at a private dinner for some Yorkshire entrepreneurs last week, I arrived at The Crown Inn at Roecliffe in North Yorkshire looking forward to some fine food and conversation.
Both were certainly on the menu but as we all sat down in the pub’s private dining room two of the diners, both large former rugby players, proceeded to tear the sleeves off each other’s shirts and apply temporary tattoos to their biceps.
As I looked aghast at their antics, one looked over at me and said: “You’re next.”
As my jaw dropped further, my host Duncan Chapman, the managing director of successful Leeds business Omega Signs, sensed my panic, poured me a large glass of wine and informed me: “Nothing to worry about!”
Fortunately the removal of sleeves stayed at the other end of the table and we tucked into a fine dinner.
When I told Alex Duckett, the former property agent who has recently left automotive business Twisted to launch a new venture, that I was off to The Crown at Roecliffe to speak at a dinner, he said he hoped I got a better reaction from the guests than from the two mannequins dressed in walking gear that sit at a table outside the 16th century coaching inn.
The group appeared to enjoy my stories about some of the characters – good and bad – that I met during the course of my journalistic career, but that had consumed considerably more wine than the mannequins.
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I DIDN’T watch the latest series of I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here mainly because I didn’t recognise many of the “celebrities” from Adam.
Apparently it was won by a girl called Scarlett who made her name on Gogglebox talking about TV.
I’m pleased to see that she won’t fritter away her prize money from ITV and plans to invest it in her future.
The front page of The Sun newspaper this week had a quote from the celebrating celebrity.
“I’ll spend winnings on a caravan and new boobs,” Scarlett informed the newspaper.
Have a great weekend.