Obituaries
Barry Martin (1943-2025)
He spent sixty years making art out of movement — steel rods that crept in and out of their own structures, discs…
Members
A Prince Among Goons
In the winter of 1973, the future King came through our doors in pursuit of the three silliest men in England —…
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Manners, Monkeys and a Moat of Tea
He emptied his grandfather's shed to build an imaginary chocolate-biscuit machine. Forty years on, he is still doing much the same thing…
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The Rakes' Progress
One of them wrote a Reformation rap battle between Luther and Leo X. The other canoed under the Rialto singing "Greensleeves" until…
Eccentricity in the Blood
In the 1960s, John Blythe recalled growing up in the Eccentric Club founded by his grandfather, Jack Harrison. Half a century later,…
The Del Boy of the Forties
He played every wide boy, tipster, black-marketeer and fast-talking chancer that the British cinema of the rationed years required — and it…
They Turned Out to Be My Friends
A personal recollection of representing The Eccentric Club in Devon by our member Colin Shaddick, who won one of The Most Eccentric…
The Eccentric Charigs
Wes Anderson had The Royal Tenenbaums. The Eccentric Club knew the Charigs — meet a court jeweller dozing under the club clock,…
Obituaries
Nic Wing (1958-2016)
At twenty-one, he stood about in the grounds of Knebworth House while Trevor Howard, blacked up and in a tutu, rode a…
Obituaries
Benedict "Ben" le Vay (1953-2022)
He judged the Club's Greatest British Eccentric of the Year award in 2009, and went on insisting to the end that he…
Obituaries
Christopher Lee (1941–2021)
He was expelled from grammar school over a cricket pavilion that came very close to burning down, and ran away to sea…
Obituaries
Gary Bowman (1952-2020)
He took bets on American football from a call centre in Manchester, moved the whole operation to an island in the Indian…
The Peer Who Turned Down a Kingdom
Kipling wrote The Man Who Would Be King - the fable of an Englishman who travels east, is taken for a god…
Obituaries
Martin Miller (1946–2013)
He wrote a dating manual at fourteen, before he met his first girlfriend. And sold a hundred copies in a week. He…
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The Fabulous Czainskis
He stuffed a dead pigeon and got the legs on backwards. She waded into the river at Hebden Bridge to rescue a…
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The Six Faces of Lucy Freud
She spent a year at art school under her married name, saying nothing. Then she turned out the lights.