Profile David Piggott My subject this issue is a well known and, dare I say it, popular local character. Anyone who has ever taken the train to Kings Cross or Cambridge will know our erudite sales assistant (mustn’t say Station Master – they were abolished in 1963). I was amused one day waiting on the platform when a party of Spanish students arrived and were completely taken aback when David emerged from his cubby hole and addressed them in fluent Spanish! But to the beginning. Born in Royston at St George’s Nursing Home in 1947, David’s parents lived in Buntingford where father was a butcher. He has a sister who is married and living in Royston and he has a niece and nephew of whom he is fond. His father gave up the butcher’s shop and moved to Green Drift in Royston when he took a job at ICL in Letchworth. David had attended Hertford Grammar School and won a place at The Queen;’s College, Oxford where he studied modern languages. He worked hard at his studies because, due to an inherited kidney problem, he had a number of periods of bad health including two kidney operations and was constantly having to catch up. When he graduated, he took a job in London at a bank and commuted to New Oxford Street for four years until the bank wanted to relocate him to Kensington. Although he very much enjoyed the London scene, he was not keen on the idea of the move and a chance comment to his old headmaster at a school reunion led to him being offered the post of Spanish teacher back at Hertford Grammar, his old school. Whilst working in London he had developed a taste for the theatre and amateur dramatics. Under the leadership of Fred Sillence he spent happy years as a member of the Royston Drama Group, acting in most of their productions and loving every minute of it. One Victorian farce they put on, called
Dandy Dick, needed a strong female lead who just happened to be the wife of the commandant of Bassingbourn Barracks. The CO was anxious that all his men should see his beloved in her leading role and arranged for a staging of the play at the barracks. With 5 days to go no tickets had been sold, so in a Draconian move, all leave was cancelled, all bars closed except the theatre bar where beer was advertised at 10p a pint and miraculously within 24 hours all the seats were sold. The performance went ahead to a packed house, although with the cheap beer the audience was paralytic and the farce was not confined to the stage! This play was also staged at another location, where the scenery had on one side been placed close up against a wall, with the result that the poor actor who was first to exit left opened the door to find a brick wall and he couldn’t get off the stage. Panic. It was during his teaching period that David became involved in Quizzes. Two of his pupils were desperate to appear on the ‘telly’ and applied for places on a TV quiz show. They needed to have a third member of the team, an adult, and so (without asking) they entered their form master. By the time the BBC took up their entry, the boys had actually left school but they still entered the quiz (Angela Rippon was the quiz master). One of the them was working on the underground and the other was a student at a pharmaceutical college. They were anxious to have their mascot on view, but it happened to be an 8’ stuffed alligator and the trauma of getting this thing across London and negotiating a revolving door is still vivid in David’s memory. They didn’t win, but one of the boys was lured by the spotlights and, as David said, would start performing if he opened the fridge door and the light came on! They got onto a quiz programme called Today’s The Day – the prize at the end of all the rounds was a round the world ticket – for one! They must have made a good impression because when the format of the programme changed and each contestant was paired with a celebrity, they were called back and David was paired with Cheryl Baker. Then he appeared on Mastermind both radio and TV. It is an urban myth that David was the winner of Mastermind, but he certainly put up a good show. On radio, he got through to the second round – his specialised subject was Roman Britain but in the second round his subject was supposed to be 20th century British battleships but somehow it was turned into the history of the British Navy and David came unstuck. On the TV show, his chosen subject was the French West Indies where he had taught for a year. Yes, that was another surprise. After four years at Hertford Grammar teaching Spanish, French and occasionally melbournmagazine
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