It’s probably all down to Charles Dickens, but Christmas is a time when we are drawn to stories of days gone by, of heroes and villains, tall tales and all round good eggs.
With that in mind, FourFourTwo got the frying pan out in December 2000 to retell the story of the great CB Fry, the Edwardian renaissance man who played football for Southampton, cricket for Hampshire, both sports for England and a man who was once invited to be the King of Albania, a post he turned down because his annual income wasn’t quite large enough.
A majestic English eccentric, whose party piece was to somersault onto a mantelpiece backwards, his tale is told in full by Paul Simpson in FourFourTwo, including the way in which, had he been king, he would have thwarted Hitler’s invasion of Albania by the simple expedient of getting county cricket sides to play there, thereby necessitating their protection by the Royal Navy.
Read up here on the man who was such a giant, that the phrase ‘small fry’ was invented to refer to those around him who lacked his gifts…
