TLA Sport

with Roger Jackson Please email full details to sport@thelocalanswer.co.uk

Paul Jolley is a real star turn

Paul Jolley is a West Ham football fan. Nothing too unusual about that, there are a few about.

He was born in the East End of London just 100 yards from the club’s old Upton Park ground and grew up watching the great Bobby Moore, Sir Geoff Hurst and Martin Peters play the beautiful game.

“The first game I watched on TV with my dad was the 1964 FA Cup final,” said Jolley, who is now 67 and living in Churchdown.

West Ham fans will know they beat Preston 3-2 that day and the club have certainly had some great moments since then, although they’ve not won a major trophy since 1980.

The thing about West Ham, though, is that they’ve always had a reputation for playing the game in the right way.

It’s a good philosophy to have and one that Jolley seems to be adopting in his role as seniors’ captain at Brickhampton Court Golf Club.

Jolley took on the role at the end of January and he said: “I’m very competitive and I like to win, but for me, winning is not the be-all and end-all.

“The main aim for us is to have fun, have a great day out and enjoy ourselves.

“We’ve got 26 fixtures and we need only 12 players, but last year we were struggling for a team. This year I’ve got 50 players on my books.”

Jolley first started playing golf back in the 80s in Essex with his brother Pete, but he didn’t play with any regularity until he joined Brickhampton in 2000.

Jolley is an interesting person to talk to. He moved up to Gloucestershire in 1996 and for the past 30 years has been a professional musician.

Keen golfer Paul Jolley has been a professional musician for 30 years

“I’d always worked in pubs and clubs in a duo or a trio, it used to bring me in a bit of extra money,” he said.

He didn’t enjoy his full-time job – he was a director in the family’s contract cleaning business – and after a particularly bad day he decided enough was enough.

“My agent was always saying I was a good musician, better than some of the professional acts she’d got so I challenged her to prove it,” he said. “She got me plenty of work right from the start.”

Jolley is good, he still does a gig every week – he’s even performed at Brickhampton on a couple of occasions – and clearly enjoys what he does.

“I sing, I play the guitar, bass, keyboard,” he said. “I’ve got my own 24-track studio and I do all my own backing stuff.

“I’ll cover anything from Glenn Miller up to Coldplay. I do loads of 50s, 60s and 70s music, I grew up with the Beatles, I’m very much a tunesmith.”

He’s also produced albums with his nephew Rob Smith who is the same age as him and lives in New Zealand.

“It’s the wonder of the internet.” Jolley said. “We’d never been able to work together, he’s a brilliant guitarist.

“Our drummer was Jeff Lethborg, who lives in Melbourne. Someone in Melbourne heard our music and asked him if we could do a gig.

“He said, ‘Yes, as long as you pay our keyboard player’s travel expenses’!”

Jolley’s music, as well as giving him a lot of enjoyment, also gave him the opportunity to play golf.

“I was working in the evenings and had the days to myself so golf seemed very attractive,” he said.

These days he plays off 17, although at his best he was down to 11.

That’s pretty decent and he was a good sportsman back in the day.

“I played a lot of sport,” he said. “I was an average footballer and an average cricketer, tennis was my game.

“I remember playing in this tournament on the south coast when I was 16. It was a big tournament and I got to the final.

“But the lad I played in the final wiped the floor with me, it was John Lloyd who went on to play in the Australian Open final, he was rather good!”

A shoulder injury means that Jolley is unable to play tennis these days but that means more time for golf, a sport that his wife Gail also plays.

She, too, is a member at Brickhampton and Jolley said. “She used to play off 18 but she injured her knee and now plays off 24.”

They both enjoy playing at Brickhampton, a course that Jolley describes as “challenging”.

Full story online.