This is a serious post by the way ...
I was out cycling the yesterday near Worthing and it brought about a childhood memory.
In the late 70's /early 80's my grandparents would take us to the coast for the day or weekend in their campervan (An old Bedford Dormobile)
Does anyone remember a strange old man who used to stand at the A24 roundabout just outside Worthing at the weekends ?
He would have a sit-up-and-beg bicycle and on the back of it a stereogram playing Jazz, and he would have a cigarette holder with which he would conduct the music and wave at the cars as they passed
He would frequently be wearing a bowtie/dinner jacket.
He was obviously as mad as a hatter, and one of the local "characters" - perhaps he had been "let out" for the day !
My grandfather would often drive round the roundabout several times so we could wave out the window at him, at which he would pull quite a few very funny faces.
I can rememebr after a few years he progressed to a motor-scooter, presumably as he got older and frailer :-)
It was one of the highlightsof the dayout ( apart from the fish & chips in the seafront gardens !)
Does anyone else remember him ? I canot recall if one day he was simply not there, or my sister and I got older, and so didn't go with our grandparents anymore.
In a way a shame you don't see things like that anymore.
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Sounds like the Lord Mayor of Lancing (as I remember him being called). As you say, he regularly occupied the lay-by just by Offington roundabout and continued to do so all through the '90s, but I belive he sadly died about five years ago - I remember reading something about that in the local press.
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Does anyone else remember him ?
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Oh yes.
My inlaws lived at South Lancing and we regularly saw him , over many years, as you describe.
I was last regularly visiting in 1993 and I think he was still around.
He was always beautifully attired. One option was a mid brown suit with a matching bowler, a flower in his lapel etc.
Harmless and entertaining.
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SS
You mean the "Mayor of Lancing." Can't remember the old boy's real name [not sure if he could either] but he was a frequent visitor to the AA RSC on Offington roundabout in those days. Local legend had it that he was a dustman who just liked to get all dressed up in his '30's garb and pose at sites all over the area. He was around from at least the early sixties until around '85, then he just seemed to fade away.
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Probably a high ranking policy maker somewhere in Downing Street or Westminster. Sounds like the type who would fit in well!
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I'm glad I'm not hte only one who remembers him....
I expect everyone else on this forum thinks we/I are mad !
My sister and I had a nickname for him, I can't think what it was. Might have been Lord Fauntleroy or somesuch.
Does anyone know of any other such characters currently to be seen on the roads of britain ?
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On the A45 travelling from Birmingham towards Coventry, there is a guy on horseback dressed in a long leather coat on the verge usually somewhere near Meriden who takes great pleasure in doffing his stetson at oncoming motorists..
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Yes I remember this chap, he was there is in the early 1960's. I lived in Broadwater then. He used to frequent the Offington roundabout, fondly known at the Dead Centre.
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In Newbury, Berkshire, in the late fifties to mid-sixties, one often used to see a tough-looking but handsome lady with short hair driving a Sunbeam motor bike - vertical 2cyl in line engine (not side by side like Triumph or BSA) with shaft drive to rear wheel instead of chain.
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