CREATIVE CABBIES


FROM WEST END JAMS TO BEHIND ENEMY LINES - THE SAS CAB DRIVER


A London taxi driver who led an extraordi- nary double life in the SAS has written a novel based on his experiences. The writer, known only by his pen-name David Black, spent 11 years as a cabbie but could be called away on a top-secret mission at a moment’s notice. A former soldier in the regular Army, he signed up to serve with one of the two SAS Territorial Army regiments to escape the mundane nature of a taxi driver’s job, spending half of each year deployed on operations.


He remains unwilling to discuss what hap- pened on his world- wide tours of duty but


has used his experi- ences to inspire a book, The Great Satan, which was pub- lished last month. It is based around the idea that Iraq did have weapons of mass destruction, which dis- appear during Sad- dam Hussein’s over- throw in 2003 - only to turn up in London. The hero of the book, Pat Farrell, has a career mirroring that of Mr Black - SAS sergeant


and black cab driver. Mr Black, 56, told the Evening Standard: “I needed some excite- ment. I was not particularly an adrena- line junkie, but I’d had a long association with the military and the SAS is the Rolls- Royce of the military.” His double life lasted from 1975 until 1986, covering the height of the Cold War between Russia and the West and a period when IRA terrorism was at a peak. “It was such an exciting lifestyle,” he said. “I would be driving a black cab round Trafalgar Square in the evening and para- chuting into another country later that night.”


GRIMSBY DRIVER IS BACK ON THE ROAD TO SUCCESS WITH LOVE FOR POETRY


A taxi driver from Grimsby has penned a touching poem about a brave boy’s fight against a killer dis- ease. Dan Felton, 30, from Grimsby, has recently rekindled his passion for writing which first emerged at school. In his poem entitled Lucas, Dan tells the story of a five-year-old boy who is suffering from leukaemia. It is one of a series of poems he is planning to write, which he is hoping to publish as a collection.


He decided to send it in to the Grimsby Tele- graph after they featured another poem as part of their As Easy As ABC litera- cy campaign.


Dan told the Tele- graph: “I’m pretty new to writing. It’s a hidden hobby of mine and only a couple of really close friends know about it.


“I’m just an average guy who enjoys play- ing football and hanging out with my mates.


“Writing is just some- thing that I enjoyed at school and which, for some reason, has come out again after all these years.


“I have an idea for a book of 20 poems, each based on a differ- ent character.


I’ve


written three already, but before I carried on I wanted to know if people thought I was any good.”


Dan said the poems


would deal with a range of difficult sub- jects, such as bullying and suicide.


He said: “The book will be called Forever Moments. It will be about those moments that you remember for the rest of your life. I’m quite able to grasp the emotion of a certain event. I don’t know where it comes from. “Sometimes it’s just like divine interven- tion.”


Dan says his job pro- vides a great source of ideas and inspiration. “The good thing about being a taxi driver is that you get to meet a lot of different people. “I’m really proud of Lucas and I think it deserves to be out there.”


MEMORIES OF EDINBURGH TAXI DRIVER MAKE FOR A CRACKING READ! Having demobbed


from the Air Force in 1953, Douglas Findlay looked around the familiar streets of Edinburgh and decid- ed he’d better start thinking about his future. After several forays into dead-end jobs, Mr Findlay heard of a taxi circuit in need of drivers and fancied this idea...


The rest, as they say, is history - but in this case Douglas Findlay has written down his adventures as a taxi driver in Edinburgh during the 1950s. His book, entitled “Taxi! Never a dull day - a cabbie remembers”, has just been pub- lished by Birlinn Ltd., and its short-story for- mat is a delight to delve into and out of at one’s leisure.


Mr Findlay takes a trip down memory lane in this laugh-out-loud memoir of his time as a cabbie in Edinburgh. Never one to turn down a fare, he encountered an


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extraordinary range of colourful characters and ended up in the most bizarre situa- tions.


Meet Charlie the Gangster, Pedro the Pirate, Jo-Jo, Mr Gold- baum and his Housewives’ Friend, as well as Dorah Noyce, Edinburgh’s infamous madam, and a representative of the Scottish Republican Army who did all his reconnaissance from the back seat of a black cab.


Throw in assorted quack doctors, sailors, murderers and other desperadoes and the result is a riotous romp through the demi-monde that lurks behind Edinburgh’s genteel facade.


DESPERATE


As Mr Findlay says himself: “...I heard about a taxi company in Leith who were always on the lookout for drivers, so I made a beeline for their prem-


ises and was immedi- ately taken on. The owner must have been as desperate for driv- ers as I was to drive.


The fall of the flag earned you two shillings, and with luck and tips, it was possi- ble to make a small


profit. I was so keen on driving that I was content with a modest return for my labours. You could work the hours that suited you and most work came from inside the dock gates; as ships arrived with the tides, lots of night work was avail- able.


“Little did I know that driving a cab would broaden my experi- ence of life to the extent that it did. I got into fights, met hooks, crooks and comic singers, found the inside of a police cell uninviting and even became friendly with a notorious madam who ran a brothel in central Edinburgh... I got to know and like a doctor with a sideline as an abortionist. I risked my life tangling with an ex- RAF policeman who murdered two people six weeks after our altercation. “For many years I entertained and possi- bly bored some with my taxi stories; but


telling a tale, where you have the advan- tage of body language, and even bad language, is light- years away from writing amusing mate- rial. This book is my attempt at doing so...” And a very good attempt it is indeed... great fun. My personal favourite is Mr Gold- baum, who - long before pyramid sell- ing, paying “deposits” for duff samples, and such techniques became the rage - holds recruiting semi- nars to gain salesmen to sell his “House- wives’ Friend”, the Rokoko vacuum cleaner. What a hoot. Whilst the reader gath- ers that Mr Findlay has long since gone on to successfully gain his fortunes in other pro- fessions, his collection of adventures in “Taxi!” is highly rec- ommended. If you wish to obtain a copy, you can contact Dou- glas Findlay on 01387 371739.


PHTM SEPTEMBER 2010


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