A couple of posts back I mentioned Brian Wilson of Wilson Generators in connection with the aborted All British event that was to have taken place in Tehran. The first photo here is of Mrs Wilson taken at the Baghdad Fair sometime in the 80’s.
All the photos posted today were taken at the Fair during the 80’s. I have no idea of the years but many are early on.
Please click on a photo to enlarge.
Mentioned recently how my old lorry EPU 305T was transformed into the ‘Pink Panther’ and her subsequent demise. I have just been sent a photo of her as she appeared in ‘Eastenders’.
Fame at last!!!
Couple of photos from the Baghdad Fair in the 80’s.
I meant the dartboard, what did you think I meant?
The second photo shows John Preece in the lounge watching a darts match.
As I’ve mentioned a number of times the ‘Baghdad International Trade Fair’ was one of the biggest exhibitions we serviced. The freight aspect of the operation was the most important element of the ‘Full Service Package’ we offered to the exhibiting companies and we worked hard to maintain our reputation. It wasn’t a case of just transporting the exhibits. Customs clearance in the fairground had to be undertaken, exhibits had to be unpacked, heavy items had to be positioned on the stands and empty cases taken to storage. Of course at the close of the Fair everything had to be done in reverse.
But things don’t always go as planned and sometimes egg has to be wiped off one’s face and a bit of grovelling and humility shown. However, its much harder to stomach when the problem is completely out of your hands but you know you’re the ones that are going to get it in the neck at the end of the day.
One such incident happened early to mid 80’s and of course it had to involve one of the Uk’s biggest businesses, GEC/BICC, who were after a lucrative railway signalling contract in Iraq. We had the job of transporting the exhibits to Baghdad but on this occasion we couldn’t get them on to our last outbound trailer as there wasn’t room. The consignment was in the region of 4m3 and so we approached Jazzandy who had room on a trailer heading to Iraq and the job was handed over to him. We would still do the onsite work at the fair though. By now you may have guessed the opening ceremony of the ‘Baghdad Trade Fair’ came and went with no sign of the GEC/BICC exhibits. I am sure at this point we will hear from the little fella ‘Jazzandy’ who will give his version of events but I shall continue with my recollections as I remember them.
As was blatantly clear by mid afternoon on the opening day the lorry with the GEC/BICC exhibits on board was not going to arrive. Andy, together with our joint agent Saeed Hadi set out to find it. The thought being that it may have been held up at the border. They headed north and just before Mosul found the lorry parked up and the driver about to get his head down for the night. After a few words the driver was told if he wanted any more work from any freight forwarder back in the UK (Andy knew a lot of people) he better get out of his bunk and get his a-se in gear immediately. Needless to say he registered at Fallujah first thing next morning and was at the fairground by midday.
At one o’clock, the start of the afternoon break, Chic Steadman, myself and the boss, Peter Calderwood were all in attendance. We had the lorry parked up near the British Pavilion, offloaded the consignment, sorted out the customs, unpacked the exhibits and erected them on the GEC/BICC stand. We had the two Yugo standfitters, who were there to look after the stands, give us a hand and to wire in the power. By four o’clock, as the evening session started we cleared away the last of the crates and rubbish. Job done.
Promotor driver, Tommy Birch, was always the ‘■■■■ of our jokes’. He never complained, not that it would have done him any good if he had. I’ve just found the first photo, in my shoe box, of him being interrogated during the buildup to a medical exhibition in Baghdad about 85. The other two photos have been seen before.
A great bloke as a driver and friend and handy to have on the exhibitions as he had been an electrician in an earlier life. Sadly Tommy is no longer with us.
And here we have another photo of Promotor driver, Tommy Birch in Baghdad. He’s the one, if you don’t recognise him from the photos in my last post, with the ‘supercilious’ look on his face. My pal, Awat, who lived in Baghdad, is sitting behind Tommy. I’m on the left and the rest of the gals and guys were from the Medical Exhibition group.
The photo was taken in the bar of the Sheraton Hotel. Tommy and I shared a room there for ten days whilst we set up the exhibition stands and sorted out the freight and travel arrangements for the exhibitors. I stayed in the Sheraton on four occasions but my usual hotel was the Meridian which was on the opposite side of the road.
The full names of the hotels were of course the 'Ishtar Sheraton" and the ‘Palastine Meridian’. By about 82/3 we had, at last, decent hotels to stay in.
Is it me or are there a lot more guests here on our "Old Timers’ forum page than before!!! A week or so back a saw on a couple of occasions over 500 guests at one time and even when numbers are down there’s still more than usual. Perhaps the ‘administrators’ have been secretly advertising somewhere.
And talking of guests, I have added a few more photos from the Baghdad Fair taken during the mid 80’s.
1st Photo. Some wag put this sign on the door to the ‘Promotor Hospitality Suite’. OK, so it was a small storeroom in a corner but it was the most popular corner of the pavilion as we had the coffee machine there.
2nd Photo. Shows the get together at the end of the fair, a popular social event. Guests from other pavilions would come along as there was always plenty of booze as well as the final of the world famous ‘Promotor Darts Tournament’. The guy in the red shirt is Bill. He was the USA Pavilion Director and no doubt high up in the CIA.
3rd Photo. This shows Promotor driver, Clive Newman being shown by American Bill how to present the darts tournament trophy to the winner. Those yanks thought they knew everything.
4th Photo. We also had a lot of Iraqi girls at the end of show get together. However, if you look at the sign in the top left I think that has more to do with their visit though.
5th Photo. A lady from the Swedish pavilion. They were always welcome.
Plse click on photo to enlarge.
A photo of old Promotor drivers Micky Packam, on the right in the green sweatshirt, and John Mantle with the big bushy beard at the back. I have added a couple more photos of Micky when we used him as a waiter on one of our Roadshows. Must admit he did scrub up well.
Another photo of Johny Mantle from 1988. He is with John Cox on the left, who I thank for this photo. They are together in Monte Carlo but unfortunately I have no idea what job they were on.
I think this is the same unit as shown in the previous post where it’s shown painted black. In the late 80’s we were doing many Roadshows and it often necessitated a unit or units being painted to the clients requirements.
The first photo, according to Jazzandy, shows the lorry George Fardell was driving when he worked for OHS prior to joining Promotor. I have added a couple of photos of George which have been aired before but its always nice to see them again.
When I was on the road I very rarely had the urge to get home, I have never had the homing instinct and unless there was a vey good reason, I didn’t chase the next available ferry. More often than not I would park up on the last services in Belgium or France and poodle in to Zeebrugge or Calais next morning. I would still be home that evening.
Fast forward 40 odd years and I haven’t changed one bit. At present I am sitting here in the sun in a little place called ‘Los Lobos’ just up the road from ‘San Juan de Terreos’ in southern Spain. Temperature is about 21C and very pleasant but I must admit its the worst March we have experienced in the 12 winters we have been here. Been some heavy rain recently so you may find a shortage of lettuce on your supermarket shelves to go with the other shortages I hear you have. I went to the Mercadona Supermarket yesterday and it was almost fully stocked. Even though the lockdown here is more onerous than you have back in the UK theres not the panic buying seen on the scale you are experiencing.
Unfortunately we have to head north tomorrow as many other winter sun lovers have done in the past few weeks. But I shan’t be hurrying. I’ve allowed six days which allows me to amble along towing my trailer which weighs about 1,500kg. But there are others that are panicking. Those who must get home at all cost. A dutch friend of mine drove 1,000km the first day heading home and 760km the next. And that was towing a caravan. An elderly couple left here 3 days ago, again towing a caravan, and are on the train this afternoon and home in Cirencester tonight. Thats just 3 days. And he’s 80 and she is only a year or so behind him. Another couple we know did an 18 hour journey from central France to deep down in Cornwall getting home at 2 o’clock this morning. Why? We are in an area in Spain that is relevantly safe from coronavirus. I feel a lot safer here than back in the UK were coronavirus is still looked upon as a joke. Especially by the young.
So why are we coming home? Only because there is a serious illness in our immediate family. But its no different than forty years ago. I won’t be joining the herd driving at breakout speed or going without sleep. I shall arrive a few days after them and feel comfortable with my performance. I’m looking forward to the trip, as I did forty years ago but would much prefer sitting out the pandemic here with a glass of Spanish red in my hand.
Back from quarantine in Spain to quarantine in the UK. Much tighter controls there and in France but we had no problems driving back partly helped by a letter from the British Embassy in Madrid which stated we were British national’s returning directly to the UK. I did show the letter at police checks a couple of times. I’m sure they thought we were diplomats. However, as we know you don’t need fancy letters. Any old driver worth his salt would have breezed through without any bodies help just using a bit of gump.
I’ve copied and attached the letter. I hope it comes across ok as seems a bit a bit small. Please click on it to enlarge.
Not sure if I’ve posted the first photo on here before but the second one was certainly put on a couple of years ago. The reason I’m posting the photos is I need help identifying the drivers. I have been showing the photos on various Facebook sites but nobody recognises them. It was I think 82 and I we were on our way to Baghdad. The photos were taken down Gaziantep way in southern Turkey.
During this trip I had a problem at the border with my Iraqi visa. I related this story a couple of years ago but for the benefit of new members I will repeat it. In those days many of us got our Iraqi visas in Belgrade. We would park up at the National Hotel, get a taxi to the Iraqi embassy. Get our visa and continue on our way. Bit of a hassle and we could be stuck there for a couple of days. So the enterprising taxi driver came up with the idea of collecting all the drivers passports, taking them to the embassy, obtaining the visas and normally returning them to us by early afternoon then charging us in D-marks for his services. This was great for us as. We could have breakfast in the National, laze around till lunchtime and be ready for the off in the afternoon. Of course for some drivers lunchtime meant pivo time and the rest of the day would then be cancelled. Now this particular trip proved to be the last time I used the taxi driver to get my visa.
I met up with the two drivers in the photo in southern Turkey and we made our way to Habur where we spent half a day in the queue before clearing Turkey and crossing into Iraq. All three of us went to passport control where the first thing the Iraqi guy in charge said was, ‘from where did you get your visa’. I thought this a bit odd and waited for the other two lads to answer first. They both said London and by then realising I may have a problem I also said London. He took all three passports and laid them on his desk. He ramped up the first one then the second one and then looked at mine. His eyes lit up, he started jumping up and down and looked at me and shouted, ‘you lie, you lie, you got your visa from a taxi driver in Belgrade’ and with that he stamped cancelled right across my visa. The other two drivers, seeing this crazed demented Iraqi waving his rubber stamp in all directions did exactly what I would have done. They grabbed their passports and did a runner. After a few moments of deliberation I went back to my lorry and made a cup of tea.
An hour later, having wondered how I was going to get out of this predicament, I went back to the immigration office where the Iraqi official had by that time calmed down. After he had made me wait another fifteen minutes or so he called me forward where I apologised profusely. He then told me that my visa was a fake and that the taxi drivers brother worked in the embassy visa section. He had stolen the stamps and set up in business issuing Iraqi visas to the clients his brother found. Namely us drivers at the National. I humbly asked the Iraqi guy what I should do now as I had an urgent load to be delivered to Baghdad. He took a piece of paper, wrote on it in Arabic and then rubber stamped it and gave it to me together with my passport.
I took the paper out of the passport, looked at it then looked at him quizzically. ‘You can now go to Baghdad’ he said. ‘The piece of paper cancels the cancelled visa in your passport’.
Theres always stories and photos out there somewhere waiting to be told and seen and courtesy of Bob Anderson we have some new stuff not seen for many a year.
In the Autumn of 81 Dave Stagg, our then transport manager, took on four or five extra drivers to help with the transportation of exhibits to that years Baghdad International Trade Fair. Most of them were employed to drive Coles Cranes but Bob was given one of our lorries to drive. It seems odd somehow that one of our regular drivers, Ramsey Patterson, drove one of the cranes. Perhaps it was one of the heavier cranes and Ramsey had driven it before. Bob, Ramsey and another crane driver Paul set off together.
I remember working at the fair in 81 together with Chic Steadman and Peter Calderwood, the boss. It was a huge event with so much gear being shipped in, not just from the UK, that the adjacent football stadium was commandeered as an overflow storage area. Bob and the rest of the lads ended up there. I don’t know how the lads got home but certainly some of them, including Bob stayed on for a couple of weeks helping out.
Bob appears in many of the photos wearing mainly red shorts or/and a white hat. Ramsey is shown driving a crane. They were all left hookers. There is one photo of Paul standing with Bob and Ramsey.
Following on from the last post Bob Anderson has kindly supplied some more photos and information about the trip he did for Promotor to Baghdad in October 81.
Bob was taken on, for this job only, to drive a Coles crane and thats what he did even though some of the photos show him driving one of Promotor’s lorries. It seems Ramsey Patterson was driving his lorry and Bob and Paul drove the cranes but as the journey progressed they would swap vehicles just to add a bit of spice to the trip. The cranes had a top speed of less than 40 mph so they would agree on somewhere to meet later in the day. It took 15 days to get to Baghdad and once there Bob stayed on for a couple of weeks helping out. One reason he stayed was because of the Iraq/Iran war there were very few flights out. Finally he got a lift from another driver returning home who dropped him off only one mile from his house. What a result.
I have posted in the past of a job I and a few other drivers did of ferrying Coles cranes to Baghdad. We had run back from Baghdad to Iskenderen and Mersin where we collected the cranes but at least we had hotels, well turkish doss houses, every night unlike Bob and Paul.
Many thanks for the info and photos Bob.
Paul Goodall has just told me its him, as a young boy, and his brothers and sister in the attached photo. It seems his father worked for Promotor but he doesn’t know in what capacity. Perhaps Nottsnortherner knows?
Looks like a Saturday morning at our West Kent Cold Stores depot.
Please click on photo to enlarge.
I think it was me collected the Bluebird from Beaulieu Museum - or perhaps it was I dropped it off afterwards? Alas it’s all a bit of a fog these days. Staggie warned of the dangers of sending someone as youthful as me to the museum and suggested I act with great caution. Nice to see this photo. I didn’t mind the Ford flatbed because it had a sleeper - unlike the bloody Pantechnicon which didn’t. Trying to sleep across the seats in the Pantech was just too dreadful for words.
That flatbed used to take me to Spain to collect smashed up cars and caravans. A fantastic job as the Spaniards are always on holiday for local saints days which meant I could go and see - and meet - the local sights! What a great time! On the way back I often had a caravan to live in which I towed behind. Happy days indeed for any young fellow.
Moving on to Coles Cranes, I was flown up North to collect from their factory to take a crane to Zagreb show. I pulled out of the factory, half out of the main gate when it broke down. Not an auspicious start to the trip. The gate-man called the factory and the factory said as as I was outside the gates it was my responsibility to fix the bloody thing… He then put me on the phone to them and I told them that only the front wheels were outside the factory… The grumbled a while and then sent someone to get the thing started…
I remember doing a Baghdad and passed a Coles crane broken down at the side of the road… If I remember correctly it was on the military road which has the minefield and iron fencing on the other side which is the Syrian border… I think John Preece told me a story once that he was driving one in Turkey and the counterweight fell off the back and sank into the road and he managed to work the crane to lift it and put it back.
Efes:
I think it was me collected the Bluebird from Beaulieu Museum - or perhaps it was I dropped it off afterwards? Alas it’s all a bit of a fog these days. Staggie warned of the dangers of sending someone as youthful as me to the museum and suggested I act with great caution. Nice to see this photo. I didn’t mind the Ford flatbed because it had a sleeper - unlike the bloody Pantechnicon which didn’t. Trying to sleep across the seats in the Pantech was just too dreadful for words.That flatbed used to take me to Spain to collect smashed up cars and caravans. A fantastic job as the Spaniards are always on holiday for local saints days which meant I could go and see - and meet - the local sights! What a great time! On the way back I often had a caravan to live in which I towed behind. Happy days indeed for any young fellow.
Moving on to Coles Cranes, I was flown up North to collect from their factory to take a crane to Zagreb show. I pulled out of the factory, half out of the main gate when it broke down. Not an auspicious start to the trip. The gate-man called the factory and the factory said as as I was outside the gates it was my responsibility to fix the bloody thing… He then put me on the phone to them and I told them that only the front wheels were outside the factory… The grumbled a while and then sent someone to get the thing started…
I remember doing a Baghdad and passed a Coles crane broken down at the side of the road… If I remember correctly it was on the military road which has the minefield and iron fencing on the other side which is the Syrian border… I think John Preece told me a story once that he was driving one in Turkey and the counterweight fell off the back and sank into the road and he managed to work the crane to lift it and put it back.
Morning Efes. Tell me, did Bluebird still have its engine in. I know the F1 cars Promotor moved around on the Johcan Rhint (incorrect spelling) show had their engines removed. Well the ones I moved had. I assume you also don’t recall the Goodall chap whose children appear in the photo.
Those Coles Cranes certainly caused Promotor a headache at times. I remember two of the smaller ones on their side near Gaziantep when we subbed out the onward movement to Baghdad to a Turkish company. I have attached a photo of John Preece and Tim the Australian just after they arrived at the Baghdad Fair after the trip where John had to lift the counterweight back onto the crane after it fell of in southern Turkey.
Hi all i worked for Pro’s about 1975/6. Worked at Dunton Green in the workshop with Charlie Phipps, Peter Balfour, Peter Thornton and my self another Peter. I mostly looked after the trailers. Names i remember from then are Alan Sewell, Dave Thomas, Billy Heath, Bob heath, Tony Grainger, Dave Clark, Roger Oakley, Dave Stagg, Sue Ashdown, Stevie Smith, John Mcfall? , Roy Cloke [subbie], Joe Alexander [subbie], Barry Mason, Chick Steadman, Roger Graver, carl Denhart, Phil Bishop. In the office at Bromley were
Peter and Liz Calderwood, “wobbly” Bob,[ sorry cant remember his surname] and Christine ■■?.
The trailers were mostly parked up at Lavers Quarry at the foot of Pol Hill and what a muddy filthy hole that could be in the winter. One of the best things was the meat ration we got off Borthwicks next door every week for ocassionally doing repairs on their cars in the lunchtime. I eventually moved away from the area but lots of good and interesting memories.
