Reg Varney

Peter A. Rushforth writes: In the late 1950s I was a salesman with Quaker Oats and when it held the yearly sales conferences it arranged for actors and actresses to entertain us between the presentations.

One year when the conference was held in Bournemouth we had the enjoyment of Reg Varney (obituary, November 17) as a schoolboy and Jon Pertwee as the gown-clad teacher complete with mortar board.

Major Spud Gibbon

William Lane, QC, writes: As a National Service subaltern I joined my regiment in Hong Kong, 5 Field Royal Artillery, and served as a troop commander in Major Spud Gibbon’s battery (obituary, November 14). We all knew in the regiment that he had been awarded the George Medal and there were vague stories that he had been tortured as a prisoner in North Korea. Until I read his obituary I did not realise the level of torture he had endured and he, of course, never referred to it.

He was one of the nicest men that I have ever met and one would never have guessed the awful ordeal that he had been through ten years earlier. He was a man of great charm and humour and unlike his fellow battery commanders took a more relaxed view of life — maybe because of what he had suffered. Both he and his wife Ros were very generous in entertaining the junior officers, especially on Christmas Day. Everybody who ever had the privilege to know Spud Gibbon never forgot him.

Jack Scott

Alton Douglas writes: Once walking along the BBC corridor, in Shepherds Bush, with Jack Scott (obituary, November 14), a man shouted out: “Jack, I’m going fishing tomorrow. What’s the official weather forecast?” Without missing a beat he walked to the window, looked out for a second and said: “Looks as if it’ll be fine to me.”

Douglas Parmée

Professor Roderick A. Smith writes: From my first arrival at Queens’ College, Cambridge, as a mere research student in 1971, I was lucky to strike up a warm relationship with Douglas Parmée (obituary, November 12), then the tutor for graduate students.

This friendship prospered later when I was elevated to a fellowship, but I was always very aware that Douglas was by no means shy in expressing his dislike for those he considered fools. A fine example of this occurred when the fellowship was gathered in Queen’s College Chapel for the preliminary stage of electing a new president (master). A large number of possibilities had been floated. In order to cut down the field, it was suggested that we should all be given the chance to eliminate those whom individual Fellows could “not countenance at any cost”. To save embarrassment, it was agreed that this could be done privately by writing such names on a ballot paper. The gloom was matched by a silence only broken by the scratching of pens. Then the voice of Douglas boomed out very clearly, “How do you spell xxxxxxx?”