The Blandford Express

Before the era of Sky Television most football fans found out how their teams had performed by buying the local Saturday evening football newspaper. Southampton had the Southampton Football Echo, Portsmouth the Football Mail and Bournemouth & Boscombe Athletic, as the club was then called, had the Bournemouth Football Echo. Each would include detailed match reports and photographs of that afternoon’s match. These dedicated football papers were printed on either pink or blue paper to differentiate them from the day’s other local publication. The colour would be determined by whether the club’s home kit was red or blue.It is believed the Bournemouth Football Echo dates back to at least 1901. By half past six on the Saturday evenings, newsagents such as Loaders in East Street, Blandford would be selling copies of the ‘Football Pink’ to a queue of potential purchasers. This was quite remarkable bearing in mind the referee of the Cherries match would have blown the final whistle at exac...

  At around eight feet tall, Chang Woo Gow was Bournemouth’s tallest man. Although born in China in 1841, he moved to Bournemouth in 1890 for health reasons. Here, he opened a tea shop and an Oriental Bazaar which sold imported Chinese goods. He made his home in Southcote Road, Bournemouth. To ensure his privacy, he built a ten feet high wall around the garden. A bed nine feet long and six feet wide was specially constructed for him. Far from overweight, nevertheless he still weighed 23 stone. On one occasion, a horse drawn carriage collapsed under his weight. It is said he travelled around Bournemouth in a rickshaw. Chang Woo Gow was a highly educated man who reputedly could speak ten languages. Most difficult language for him was English. He had travelled the world as ‘Chang the Chinese giant’ but his real name was Zhan Shi Chai. Under his stage name, he made circus and variety show appearances. He first appeared in London at the Egyptian Halls in 1865 with his wife, known as the...

Charles Gray was a Bournemouth born actor who has the distinction of appearing in two James Bond films playing different characters. He was arch-villain Ernst Stavro Blofeld in   Diamonds Are For Ever  and British intelligence officer Dikko Henderson in  You Only Live  Twice.  Born in August 1928, the son of a surveyor, he went to the same Bournemouth school as Benny Hill. The comedian was evacuated to Bournemouth during the war. Raised in Queen’s Park, Gray left his estate agent job to become an actor. He received voice training from the Royal Shakespeare Company and it was his voice which became his most valuable tool. Gray used this to play eccentric toffs and suave villains with oily malice to great effect. By the mid-1950s, Charles Gray was taking leading roles. He dubbed for actor Jack Hawkins when Hawkins was unable to speak his lines due to throat cancer. Gray’s distinctive voice was regularly heard on television commercials. In the decade from 1968, he ...

Today, most rail  travellers cannot buy a cup of tea or even a packet of crisps on a train. Yet in days gone by, in the era of the  Bournemouth Belle, things were quite different. With full onboard dining facilities, this named train from July 1931 was made up of De Luxe  Pullman car, chocolate and cream coloured    rolling stock. Each car was given a name such as Topaz, Ruby or Philomel. Smartly dressed stewards would show passengers to their seats. In the 1930s even an Inspector was employed to taste the quality of the travellers fare. Tasty afternoon teas were a speciality which could be ordered for just three shillings (15p) in the early 1960s. ‘How nice to live at Bournemouth And come up on the Belle. So chic with pale pink lamp shades A golden name as well.’ (G.B. Berry.) The Bournemouth Belle ran daily from London-Waterloo to Bournemouth and then back to the capital. Initially it was non-stop to its destination but then a Southampton stop was incorporated...

Juliette Kaplin who played Pearl in 226 episodes of Last of the Summer Wine was born in Bournemouth. As Howard’s domineering wife, she was forever suspicious of her philandering husband’s pursuit of the peroxide-blond, seductive supermarket check-out assistant, Marina. She spent her early years in South Africa and then New York before returning to Bournemouth at the age of eleven years. In her teens she attended classes at the Hampshire School of Drama. She paid her way by working as a chambermaid, telephone operator and sales girl. Juliette also trained as a dancer and appearing later in pantomime in Leamington Spa she performed the Sand Dance with Scottish actor Bob Fyfe who played her on-screen husband Howard. Her real husband, Harold, owned a series of gift shops on the Kent coast. After his death, she continued to run them until she joined the cast of Last of the Summer Wine. Juliette first played the role of Pearl during a summer season in Bournemouth in 1984 and then took on the...

Dorset Starfish are not a rare marine invertebrate found off the Dorset  coast. In fact, Starfish saved hundreds of lives in Bournemoth & Poole during World War II by preventing an estimated one thousand tons of German bombs being dropped there. Starfish were decoy sites designed to deceive German night bombers away from strategically important towns and airfields. There were several Starfish decoys in Dorset. One was set up on the western side of Brownsea Harbour. It contained a mixture of different types of fire designed to simulate a burning town. Created with the help of a technician from Elstree Film Studios, it was operated by Royal Air Force personnel from a bunker about 200 metres from the set up pyrotechnics. Once the first wave of bombers had passed drums of oil and creosote-soaked hay bales were lit to simulate the effects of incendiary bombs. This sought to attract the focus of the drops from the next bomber wave. Poole & Bournemouth were a target for a large ...

She baked pies, wore slippers, loved gardening and was particularly fond of her roses in the front garden. Melita ‘ Letty’ Norwood was the most unlikely of spies  and it has been jokily said she  ’took her cocoa shaken, not stirred!’ She was born Melita Sirnis in March 1912 at 402 Christchurch Road in Pokesdown, East Bournemouth. Her father, Sacha was a Latvian political activist who produced a newspaper, the Southern Worker from their Bournemouth home. In Russia he had worked for literary giant Leon Tolstoy - author of War and Peace. Sadly, Sirnis died the day after Armistice Day suffering from TB. Her mother, Gertrude was a suffragette. ‘ Letty ’ spent her childhood in Bournemouth among a group of dedicated revolutionaries exiled from Russia who must have surely greatly influenced her. Yet this apparently kindly, but slightly dotty lady was recognised in Moscow as the KGB’s most important female agent and became the longest serving Soviet spy in Britain. In 1979, she wa...

Chalkie White and Lobby Lud were once regular summer visitors to Bournemouth and Weymouth sea fronts; but who were these curiously named characters? ‘To my delight, it’s Chalkie White’   was all you had to say to Chalkie to win a £50 prize. This was providing, of course, you were holding a copy of the Daily Mirror. This was a scheme to boost newspapers sales when circulation traditionally fell during the summer months. The Mirror would announce which days the mystery man would be in town and readers would be challenged to seek him out. To help his identification, a picture of Charlie’s eyes would be published daily. A forerunner of Chalkie was Lobby Lud created in 1927 by the Westminster Gazette. Like Chalkie, Lobby would also visit Bournemouth and Weymouth. Prizes equivalent to over £300, in today’s money, were on offer which led to a sort of Lobby Lud mania. Holiday plans would be changed at the last moment in an attempt to catch him. There was even a Lobby Lud train which would ...

  Cumberland Clark (1862-1941 ), the ‘ Bard of Bournemouth’ , is reckoned by many to be England’s worst poet. ‘The Bournemouth air is toney It bucks you up, and fills you out, if Thin as macaroni.’ ‘To learn about the Milk Supply, I nosed about with stealth. Reports I found, were published by the Officer of Health. The cowsheds and the dairies are inspected, you may read And authorities assert that they are very fine indeed.’ ‘That beautiful creature called Kate I met near Kensington Gate. She’d a costume like Eve’s Minus stockings and sleeves But otherwise quite up to date.’ ‘Let me say a few words on the Square From which you can get anywhere. A well-designed centre, there isn’t a doubt With features that fascinate all round about. The sea trips from Bournemouth are many Don’t say you haven’t tried any. They’re cheap and enjoyable, when you’re in fettle And doubtless they put a man on his mettle.’ ‘The Canford Cliffs Hotel will do you very well I’ve met girls when I’ve stayed the...

Ken Baily was the England football and rugby cheerleader for three decades and Bournemouth Football Club mascot from the 1950s. An eccentric character and lifelong bachelor, he had a love of trifle and in his spare time could be seen riding his bicycle around the town dressed as either Winston Churchill or the Emperor of Ethiopia, Haile Selassie. As a cheerleader, he was recognisable in his trademark costume of Union Jack waistcoat, scarlet tails, white gloves and top hat. When meeting royalty, Prince Charles is said to have once remarked ‘ where did you escape from?’ He is also the only man to become both a Freeman of Bournemouth and a Subbuteo figure. Ken Baily was a keen runner and swimmer and maintained his fitness by regular sea bathing. This included regular dips in the Bournemouth briny on Christmas Day and on New Year’s Eve. He worked as a clerical assistant in a Bournemouth telephone exchange and also wrote a gossip column for a local newspaper using the pen name Genevieve...

Forty years ago AFC Bournemouth, in 1982, had just celebrated promotion to a higher division. However it was not to the Premiership but to what was then called the Football League’s Third Division. So unlike today’s Premiership, the club could not look forward to the receipt of shed loads of money. While the club opened the season with a three goal victory over Walsall, the attendance at the Dean Court stadium was just 5,330. The Cherries were losing £2,000 per week and needed gates of 7,000 to break even. Club Director Derek Lever had launched an appeal to raise £50,000 over the coming season. The appeal would involve a series of money raising events to include a race night, a sportsman dinner, a sponsored walk and a medieval banquet. Mr Lever said that while the Cherries were not in danger of going to the wall he emphasised that the appeal target must be met just for general running expenses and to provide manager David Webb with some finance to strengthen the side during the season....