Odd this day

9 August 1922 and 1946 and 1996

So… it’s the 102nd anniversary of Philip Larkin’s birth, and what better way to mark that than by reading the Spectator article from two years ago that said he had a giant wang?

This be the curse: Philip Larkin's big problem

No, really. It includes this unimprovable paragraph:

I’ve been hearing of Larkin’s penis at intervals for much of my adult life. The first time was 30 years ago; the most recent this week. In all cases, my informants had it from his first biographer, Andrew Motion, who had been told by Larkin’s tailor that the poet’s penis was abnormally large, obliging him to alter the cut of his trouser legs. As a friend of Larkin’s, Motion was also able to confirm this rumour from an adjacent stall of a men’s urinal.

I mean, you could read An Arundel Tomb, or The Whitsun Weddings… or even the less well known Dry-Point…

…but, given the phrase “A bubble is restively forming at your tip”, I’m not sure that helps to distract us from what has gone before.

So, let us turn to more wholesome matters, and…

9 August 1946

The day Peter Adolph’s patent for Subbuteo was filed.

Famously, he originally wanted to call it The Hobby, but wasn’t allowed to, so went for the Latin name of the bird known as the hobby. As Kathy Martin put it in (the arguably slightly niche) Famous Brand Names and Their Origins:

Encouraged by the positive response, in 1947 Adolph patented Subbuteo and began production at premises in Langton Green, near Tunbridge Wells. When his original plan to call the game ‘The Hobby’ was vetoed by the Patents Office on the grounds that it was too generic for a trademark, he used his knowledge of ornithology to come up with a clever alternative, ‘Falco Subbuteo’ being the Latin name for a small falcon commonly known as the hobby hawk.

The ‘encouraged by the positive response’ bit there is a reference to the fact that he developed a prototype figure, advertised it in The Boy’s Own Paper to see if anyone was interested, and went to America on a business trip.

Whilst away, he received a telegram from his mother, informing him that orders totalling around £4,000 had been received from people who were very excited about the game

An article in The Times publicising a book by Adolph’s son, Growing Up with Subbuteo, says it was £7,500 (about £240,000 today), but either way:

He caught the next boat back and, along with his mother and a friend, set about actually making the game. They bulk-ordered buttons from their local Woolworths and spent six months fixing and sticking to fulfil orders.

The prototype had been made from a button that had come off his mother’s coat, and a washer. The Times also adds the intriguing detail that he’d been in New York “to value an egg collection”:

His first business venture grew out of a deep love of ornithology. He traded in birds’ eggs, then a perfectly legal occupation.

He’d adapted the idea from a game called Newfooty…

…which, with its lead-bottomed players, hadn’t worked well enough to catch on.

The original Subbuteo might have been an improvement on that, but was still pretty homespun, apparently.

The first sets, called Assembly Outfits, comprised wire goals with paper nets, a ball made from cellulose acetate, and two sets of cardboard figures with bases made from weighted-down buttons. A pitch was not included but an old army blanket was suggested as a suitable playing surface, on which lines could be drawn in chalk. By 1950 it was apparent that Adolph had a significant hit on his hands and as his success continued, he was able to give employment to hundreds of people in the Langton Green area, many of whom painted the footballer figures at home.

It caught on, but it was a while before it looked like this:

Things really took off after 1966 (a date I probably don’t need to explain), and “in 1970, Peter Adolph sold Subbuteo to Waddington for £250,000” (about £3.2m today). Even before then, though, he’d wintered in Cannes and enjoyed a rich man’s lifestyle:

Adolph separated from his wife, Pam, after a long-term affair with his secretary was discovered. He also had romances with a Flamenco dancer he had met in Barcelona and a woman from Tunbridge Wells, nearly 40 years his junior. Adolph saw out his days living at homes he owned in Gibraltar and Spain, where he divided his time between photography and botany, seeking out rare orchids.

…but, apparently, he couldn’t suppress the professional singer he’d been in his early years — even when he probably should have done:

He returned to England when his wife died, visiting the funeral parlour where he sang If I Loved You from the musical Carousel, while waving a crucifix over her coffin — they had been to see the show on their first date.

And finally…

9 August 1996 is the date the cast and crew of Titanic ate clam chowder spiked with PCP. You can read about it in Vice, which includes the joyous detail that one of the problems with the night was that the dishes served were of such high quality:

The chowder was unbelievable ... people ate a lot more than usual because it was so delicious.

…and in the National Post:

In 1996, the Titanic film crew was poisoned in Nova Scotia. We may soon know how

…which includes the excellent fact that Bill Paxton thought the hospital that 50–80 people got taken to was too busy, so he took himself off with a case of beer.

That is not a medically recommended antidote to PCP overdose, but Paxton told [Larry] King it seemed to sort him out.

…and in Variety:

'Titanic' Crew Recall the Night the Set Got Drugged With PCP From Spiked Chowder: 'Grips Are Doing…

…in which one crew member says “Bill Paxton was a real sweetie”, which was a common theme of his untimely obituaries. Or you could try Vulture:

25 Years Later, No One Knows Who Spiked the Titanic Chowder

…which tells us that Kate and Leo weren’t there, because they were filming the Rose-when-she’s-older scenes. Thankfully, it doesn’t appear that Gloria Stewart, then 86, had any chowder.