When The Big Cat Came Out To Play

Way, way back in 1974, I worked as an apprentice motor mechanic. The owner of the garage was a very good friend of a world-famous football club manager, one of the most successful in the modern game, none other than Mr Bob Paisley.

Quite often Bob used to call in for a cup of tea and a chat about football and horse racing with the owner. One Saturday Bob dropped in to have his new car serviced. It was a Saturday morning and the owner of the garage was taking Bob to the stadium for the big match. So the boss gave me the job of servicing Bob’s car and asked me to take the car back to his house when we locked up at one o’clock.

A fellow mechanic, a nice lad called Jack, well he was to follow me to the legendary manager’s house and then take me home in his Jaguar 420G after I dropped off Bob’s car. All well and good, except for one small problem.

Jack’s Jag had a dodgy choke and he had to feather the throttle to get it going from cold. At first, the Jag’s engine would die as the throttle was pushed to the floor, then a split second later would suddenly take off like a scalded cat, scaring the living daylights out of anybody who happened to be in front of it.

On the way to Bob’s house in the posher part of the city, I turned left out of a side road onto the ring road and headed to a big roundabout a few hundred yards down the road. I looked in my rearview mirror to see if the Jag was still behind me and saw that it was having trouble keeping up with me due to that choke problem, so I eased off the gas in Bob’s car to allow him to catch up. And oh boy did he catch up.

As we approached the roundabout I looked in the rearview mirror once again only to see the big, powerful Jag now hurtling towards me at great speed. As there was now another car in front of me I had nowhere to go and the inevitable happened.

The Jag smashed right into the back of the manager’s brand-spanking new car. Jack was beside himself with worry, fearful he would lose his job. So I did what I could to protect him from that fate. I broke my own golden rule to never, ever tell a lie.

On Monday morning, back at the garage me and Jack were hauled into the boss’s office to explain the damage to the rear end of Bob’s car. The boss was hardly what you would call over the moon about the mangled car. To protect Jack I said it was a hit-and-run accident and had no driver details. The boss asked Jack for confirmation of this cock and bull story and Jack nodded his forlorn head in confirmation. Jack looked, to coin a phrase, as sick as a parrot.

Liar, liar, said the boss. Your pants are on fire. Did you not think for one moment….

(No we didn’t, we were scared, green behind the ears, teenage grease monkeys)

……how many tens of thousands of football fans going to the match saw exactly what happened and knew exactly whose car that car was?

Jack didn’t lose his job, he just got put in the dog house for a few days. I had the error of my ways pointed out to me in a very caring way and Bob’s car was duly repaired at the expense of the garage,

I did what I did for a lad who was a good friend. Was I wrong to lie? Absolutely yes I was. I have never broken my golden rule again. It was a one-off, born out of misplaced loyalty to a mate and it didn’t feel good.

Would I do it again? NO.

Although this is a true story which took place about fifty years ago, I still felt a duty of responsibility to change or withhold some details to save any undue embarrassment to those who may still be around. The makes of the car and the real names of those involved have been changed.