HOBBIES

Bodybuilding

Charles 'Wag' Bennett

Charles Wag Bennett (1930-2008) was born into a Canning Town that sold bicycles and motorcycles and which was also involved in Speedway. In 1961 he and his wife Dianne opened the Forest Gate gym in Wanstead.

In 1966 Arnold Schwarzenegger, a nineteen-year-old Austrian, wanted to participate in the Mr Universe competition. The Bennetts were impressed with how he performed. They took him into their home¹ and prepared him. Mr Bennett selected the theme music from the movie Exodus (1960) as Schwarzenegger's posing music. The boy failed to win the 1966 event because his legs and musculature were judged to be insufficient. Bennett set out to address these areas and in 1967 Schwarzenegger won the first of his five Mr Universe titles.

¹. It was a full house. The Bennetts had six children.

The British Model Flying Association

The Society of Model Aeronautical Engineers changed its name to the British Model Flying Association.

Website: https://bmfa.org

Model Railways

The Anglo-German enthusiasm for model railways has led to the imperial-metric hybrid scale that models exist in.

See Also: RAILWAYS; TOYS & GAMES Teddy Bears

Website: www.themodelrailwayclub.org (A model railway club that is based in Islington)

Model Yachts

The practice of sailing models on the pond in Green Park dates back to at least the 1820s.

Langford s Marine Antiques

Langford s Marine Antiques is a marine antiques business that sells 19^thC and 20^thC model yachts. Laurie Langford (1927-2020) was born into the family that had set up the London Silver Vaults. He also worked independently. In the 1960s he was offered a mirror-backed ship model with silver fittings in part settlement of a debt. He appreciated that there was potential to create a market for shipbuilders models. By the mid-1980s the market for model ships and marine antiques was sufficiently that the big auction houses started staging their own sales. The market peaked a decade later when they held five in a single year.

Location: The Plaza, 535 The King's Road, SW10 0SZ (red, yellow)

Website: www.langfords.com/our-story

The Model Yacht Sailing Association

The members of The Model Yacht Sailing Association sail model boats on Kensington Gardens's Round Pond. The society was founded in 1876.

Location: The Round Pond, Kensington Gardens, W8 7PZ (red, white)

Website: www.mysa-uk.org.uk

Stamp Collecting

Stanley Gibbons

Stanley Gibbons started dealing in stamps while he was working in his family s chemist's shop in the coastal town of Plymouth. On the death of his father, Mr Gibbons disposed of the business s pharmaceutical aspect and became solely a stamp dealer. In 1865 he issued his first monthly price list. The publication was to grow into the Gibbons Catalogue. In 1874 he moved his business to London.

Location: 399 Strand, WC2R 0LX (purple, pink)

See Also: REFERENCE WORKS

Website: www.stanleygibbons.com

Robson Lowe

Robson Lowe is a stamp auctioning business. The firm was founded in 1926 by the postal historian Robson Lowe. In 1980 the business was acquired by Christie s. In 2009 it was owned by Spink.

See Also: AUCTIONEERS

Website: www.robsonlowe.co.uk

Trainspotters

Trainspotting has probably been around for almost as long as there have been trains. The activity only appears to have been noticed as a sociological phenomenon during the Second World War, when the authorities became concerned that young boys were taking down details of train movements. The hobby overcame this Fifth Columnist phase to emerge during the 1950s as a proper past-time for nice lads . It went on to become the subject of derision when many of the nice lads grew up to be boring men .¹

The godfather of trainspotting is generally acknowledged to have been the publisher Ian Allen. In 1943 he issued his first trainspotters guide - ABC of Southern Locomotives. The 2000-long print-run sold out very quickly. The publisher went on to found the Locospotters Club.

Location: 45-46 Lower Marsh, SE1 7RG. The Ian Allan bookshop closed in 2020.

See Also: RAILWAYS

Website: www.ianallan.com

¹. Trainspotting inspired Stephen Dinsdale's play Anorak of Fire: The Life and Times of Gus Gascoigne, Trainspotter (1991). (Within the fraternity the hard-core devotees are known as anoraks .)

Gricers

Gricers were trainspotters with attitude. They trespassed on British Rail property in order to take photographs on trains that were due to be scrapped or that moved only at night either along private or freight lines.

See Also: STREET ART & GRAFFITI

Twitchers

Ardent bird-watchers are known as twitchers. They will happily traverse the breadth of the country at a moment s notice if it means that they have the chance of catching sight of a species of a bird that they have not previously seen in Britain. In order that they can be kept up-to-date minute-by-minute, many of them subscribe to one of a number of rival paging services that are devoted to relaying news of the latest sightings of rare birds. The Scilly Isles, off the coast of Cornwall, are a frequent destination for twitchers to travel to. This is because it is where North American birds, that have survived being blown across the Atlantic, are most likely to be spotted.

See Also: BIRDS

David Backhouse 2024