Farewell Fat Man On A Bicycle

Saturday 28th September 2013

Fat Man On A Bicycle – Tom Vernon [Photo: Rex Features].

Danny Howell writes ~

There’s an obituary for Tom Vernon ~ aka “Fat Man On A Bicycle” ~ in today’s Western Daily Press. Tom died on Wednesday 11th September 2013, aged 74, and there’s no doubt he will be remembered as a larger than life personality, in more ways than one, by everyone he came into contact with. I met Tom some 19 years ago when he came to Warminster purposely to see me. The occasion still stands out vividly in my mind, and for the benefit of dannyhowell.net readers, here’s a piece I wrote about it (written in December 2012).

People Come And People Go
December 2012
Fat Man (Without A Bicycle) Came Calling It was the summer of 1994, when I was the Curator of the Dewey Museum in Warminster. Tom Vernon, aka “Fat Man On a Bicycle,’ (the title of his first travelogue television series broadcast in 1979) came into the Library, looking for me. He was accompanied by his wife, and he said he wanted to have a chat. He quickly suggested swapping the leisurely confines of the bookshelves and the archives and artifacts for the pleasures of an alehouse. So, Tom, his wife Sally, myself, and Glenn Head (the Deputy Curator of the Dewey Museum and my trusty friend) walked through the Three Horse Shoes Mall to the Market Place and the Bath Arms. Tom got the drinks in and we sat by a window, next to the pub’s front door, where we could see the pedestrians and the motorists passing through the historic main street. We had the lounge bar of the Bath Arms almost to ourselves; just us and a member of staff and a couple other patrons.

Of course, I had heard of Tom Vernon and I had seen his programmes on television, such as the aforementioned Fat Man On A Bicycle, Fat Man On A Roman Road (1983) and Fat Man At Work (also 1983). There were other series too and I thought all of them were very good. I knew Tom had once been a presenter/interviewer on BBC Radio 4 but that’s about the sum total of what I knew of the famous Mr. Vernon at the time.

Tom and I, sitting, both bearded, face to face, did nearly all the talking; Tom’s wife Sally and Glenn said very little but they were avidly listening (or so it seemed) to what we were saying. Sally, I believe, was involved in some capacity with Tom’s film-making company, Fat Man Films Limited.

Tom didn’t reveal to me the full details of his forthcoming venture but it was obvious he had plans to make a tv programme about Wiltshire, or even a series of programmes about people and places in Wiltshire. He had a reason for coming to see me, he wanted to know what single thing summed up the county for me. And that was easy for me to respond to.

I said Wiltshire was a county divided – “a county of chalk and cheese.” Where I live, in south-west Wiltshire, we traditionally grew corn and grazed cows and sheep on the chalkland of Salisbury Plain. In the top half of the county, Swindon way and beyond, it was fill-pail cows and plenty of good cheese making. I told Tom that I am a Moonraker – a resident of Wiltshire – but my Wiltshire is really south and west Wiltshire. The northern part of Wiltshire is, for me and others, another distinctly defined place, a northern land, although not the north of England or the far north as we know it, but considered definitely north nevertheless when compared to the part of the shire where I live, work and play.

Tom, who was exceptionally jovial, and a slimmer reincarnation of his chosen personal epithet, appeared to absorb everything I had to say. But time soon passed quickly by. Another drink – in my case, a lager shandy – and about an hour later, it was time for Tom and Sally to leave, to return home. We stepped outside the Bath Arms, saying our thanks and goodbyes under the inn sign with its golden stag and scarlet lion both rampant and its inscription “iucundi acti labores” – Latin for “work that is all done is delightful”.

Glenn and I made our way back up through the generally-considered bland, concrete-like, 1970’s precinct that was the Three Horse Shoes Mall, to the contrast of the dark reddish brown brick of the John Hazel designed Library and Museum. As we passed Artichoke, S&K Fruits, Etre Belle, the Corden Bleu frozen foods centre, and Lo-Cost (all closed after the day’s trading, because it had gone 6.00 p.m.), Glenn seemed happy and said he had enjoyed not only meeting Tom but also listening to Tom and me discussing things. It had been something out of the ordinary.

Tom did indeed go on to make some programmes about my home county, and the series was appropriately called Fat Man In Wiltshire. The series was shown on television in 1995. Among the places and things featured were Salisbury Cathedral and the Oak Apple village of Great Wishford, the Stone Circle at Avebury, dowsing at Stonehenge, sheep shearing on Salisbury Plain, old bicycles, and the trade in Wiltshire bacon – and if I remember rightly, Tom also took a look at a Hercules plane at RAF Lyneham – what you could refer to as: “Fat Man meets Fat Albert.”

Tom, I believe, made one more series of films, broadcast the following year, in 1996 – a series called Fat Man In Kent. But that appears to have been his last media venture.

I still see Tom’s books occasionally on sale at book fairs and car boots. I once bought a cookery book he did, although I hasten to add that I’m no preparer of culinary cuisine, or of any cuisine for that matter. I would have certainly been a sore thumb in Tom’s kitchen in Muswell Hill, London, where he filmed his Fat Man In The Kitchen series (in fact, two series, 1985 and 1986, broadcast on BBC). I am a prime example of “can’t cook, won’t cook,’ and, dare I say it, also ‘don’t cook’ but we had better leave it at that.

I have not seen Tom or heard from him since that one and only meeting in Warminster eighteen years ago, which is a pity, because he was such good company. Looking on the internet in 2012 I came across a forum, on which someone had noted that Tom, who is now nearing his mid-seventies, is now living in a little village in the Massif Central, France, where he has forsaken his bicycle but is apparently growing lots of fruit and vegetables. It seems, for Tom, that “work that is all done is delightful”.