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T he T rusty S ervant
Mediterranean. To give a flavour of the
breadth and the variety of his other
activities and successes, here are a few.
He arrived in 1949, just in time to join
Harold Walker as one of the assistant
coaches of the VIII which won the
Princess Elizabeth Cup at Henley that
year. He must have impressed Harold
Walker by his contribution, because by
the next year he had been successfully
proposed by Walker for membership of
Leander, and the famous pink socks and
tie often came out on rowing high days
thereafter.
His greater rowing triumph was the
1954 VIII which also won at Henley.
One of that crew recalls that Colin’s
successful verbal sparring with the coach
of Shrewsbury, the principal opposition
that year, was worth a length, in a
race actually won by a mere third of a
length. Another wrote at the time, ‘To
Mr Badcock we owe the confidence...
perhaps a schoolmaster has to be a
psychologist; certainly Mr Badcock could
make a fortune on Harley Street.’
In 1956, Desmond Lee decided that
there was a need for an old boys’
newsletter, and The Trusty Servant was
launched. As Colin put it in 2006, with
typical modesty, when The Trusty Servant
looked back on its first 50 years, ‘There
were 15 Wykehamists on the staff at
the time and Desmond chose the right
one – Ronnie Hamilton; and Ronnie,
with perhaps less unerring taste, chose
me.’ Colin co-edited The Trusty Servant
for 20 years, first with Ronnie Hamilton
and then with James Sabben-Clare.
With modest anonymity, ‘Porcinum Os’
unfailingly entertained and informed.
A second Hamilton-Badcock
collaboration was that Ronnie chose
Colin to be his House Tutor in Trant’s,
and that in turn gave rise to their third:
Pendlebury’s guided tour, with St Alban,
of all the plaster and glass saints of this
Chapel, in Pendlebury and the Plaster
CFB with Graham Hughes (D, 64-69), Jack Phelps (College Boatman), Simon Jack (Coll, 65-69)
and Mervyn Banting (Assistant Chaplain, 61-70; 04- 08) at Jack Phelps’ retirement in 1969.
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