In Depth: Tales of Adventure and Derring-Do!

You might expect Ski Club Members to be good skiers, but not necessarily good writers… Yet Frank Gardner, the former Ski Club president, is lauded for his books, both fact and fiction. And, going back a bit, Lord Dowding of Battle of Britain fame – another former Ski Club president – also wrote some cracking books.

So perhaps it shouldn’t come as a great surprise that three other long-serving Ski Club Members – the late Jimmy Riddell (another former Ski Club president), his late wife Alison and Olivia Gordon – have each written highly entertaining books.

Jimmy, a giant among Club members, penned several books in his own lifetime, but it was his wife, Alison, who wrote a book about his life, the acclaimed Looking Forwards, James Riddell’s Adventurous Life on and off the Snow. Olivia, meanwhile, chose to publish her own memoirs, 80 Years Plus With a Pinch of Snow, in her inaugural foray as an author.

How inspirational to have such literary talents in our midst. The Ski Club is always supportive of Members sharing their experiences – not just skiing tales, but tales of general derring-do.

FORMER ‘SKI CLUB REP OF THE YEAR’ OLIVIA GORDON SPILLS THE BEANS ON THE ‘NO NOOKIE REPS COURSE’ OF 1986

In 80 Years Plus With a Pinch of Snow, Olivia, who I once skied with in Portillo, Chile, introduces her book thus: “My parents, Buster and Margot Browne, were penniless musicians… They lived by strict Victorian principles, were incredible snobs, lifelong smokers, and I never saw them naked.”

Skiing didn’t really play an important part in Olivia’s life until her mid-20s, having been on one school trip to Wengen. Now skiing became an annual family event.

“In fact, my divorce started on a T-bar in Serre Chevalier,” she writes. “Skiing became my main focus, and while the children were at school, I used to ski with the representatives of the Ski Club of Great Britain.

“I will never forget being in Niederau in the mid-’70s, and after a great day out with the Rep, being told by one Member that I wasn’t a good enough skier to join the group the next day. That was a wake-up call and I immediately embarked on private lessons. It was during a holiday week in Megève in 1985 that I decided I was going to become a Ski Club Rep, and we happened to be staying in a chalet run by Jean Stanford, a former British Olympic skier. I asked her if she would sponsor me and she agreed.” Olivia adds that she was accepted “somewhat reluctantly” by Caroline Stuart-Taylor, who said she “could be useful for a few years”.

“And so I duly turned up in Tignes in December 1986,” she writes, “for the famous Reps’ course at the Hotel Neige at Soleil, sadly long since demolished. The course was tough but a great success.

“We had to learn how to set a slalom course. We were each given a bundle of wooden slalom poles to carry on our shoulders up a T-bar – at least two of my poles fell off and went speeding down a steep hill, never to be recovered – at least by me! That exercise was a complete and utter waste of time, as we had no idea about spacing, slope angulation, etc.”

Olivia continues: “We also had to pass the British Association of Ski Patrollers’ First Aid course, and all the Club’s silver/gold standard skiing tests.”

On the group’s first night, they had an introductory talk, and learned that there was a ‘no nookie’ rule.

“I don’t know how we all managed to keep a straight face,” writes Olivia. “Our group has specially printed T-shirts with the words ‘No Nookie Course 1986’ emblazoned on the front in red, and in the corner at the bottom in black… ‘failed’. We were never quite sure how well it went down.”

Says Olivia: “I cannot begin to count the many escapades that happened during my 18 years as both a Rep and holiday party leader.”

She was made Ski Club Rep of the Year in 1988 and went on to notch up more than a million vertical feet with CMH (Canadian Mountain Holidays).

REMEMBERING THE LIFE OF JAMES RIDDELL – FEARLESS SKIER, LIFELONG ADVENTURER AND FORMER SKI CLUB PRESIDENT 

If you ask me who my ski hero is, I’d have to say Franz Klammer, with whom I’ve often skied. But my British ski hero has to be James (Jimmy) Riddell.

This delightful ski racer – dubbed ‘Sunny Jim’ by his mother – was vice-captain of the British ski team at the 1936 Winter Olympics in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, president of the Ski Club of Great Britain, a Ski Club Pery medallist, and Chairman of the Kandahar Ski Club.

Although he himself was a prolific author (and cartoonist and newspaper columnist), Looking Forwards: James Riddell’s Adventurous Life on and off the Snow, published earlier this year, was penned by his second wife Alison, who sadly died in July 2021.

Jimmy died in February 2000, aged 90. He and Alison were married in 1973 and had a daughter, Jemma, in 1976. He was 30 years older, but Alison said he had such a zest for life, and joie de vivre, with friends of all ages, that this difference in age “just vanished away”.

Among his many friends was the author Nevil Shute, who once flew him in his light aircraft to Australia and back on a mission to gather material for his next book, Flight of Fancy, and wanted a travelling companion.

Richly illustrated with photos, sketches, cartoons and paintings, Alison’s book not only transports the reader to the Alps, with frequent visits to Mürren and Zermatt, but also to the Congo, the Cedars of Lebanon, Jerusalem, Bali, Australia and beyond.

Jimmy had sworn to “see Jerusalem before I die”. Once there, as war broke out, Jerusalem became a wartime hub and he was taken on as aide-de-camp to the British High Commissioner. Then came work as a political officer in Syria before his unlikely role running a ski school in Lebanon for hundreds of Australian troops.

Alison noted that Jimmy “very rarely threw anything away” and her book “almost wrote itself”. She wrote that she had thoroughly enjoyed re-living her husband’s “remarkable life” through his many letters, books, articles and notes.

Alison’s book has also enabled me to re-live my first encounter with Jimmy, which was for a telephone interview with the Financial Times. I called him Mr Riddell, with the emphasis on the ELL. “It’s Riddell” he said, “Jimmy Riddell” making his surname sound like “riddle”. I reminded him that “having a Jimmy Riddle” was back-slang for a man visiting the loo, but he was adamant that this was the pronunciation he preferred.

Jimmy first put on skis in Mürren in 1920 while celebrating his 10th birthday. His last visit there was in January 1999, aged 89, for the Kandahar Ski Club’s 75th anniversary celebrations.

It was his race from the top of the Schilthorn all the way down to the valley floor at Lauterbrunnen in 1929 that marked Jimmy as an epic skier.

The run would later feature as Piz Gloria in the film On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, yet, as Alison explained, Jimmy tackled it “long, long before James Bond was even a glint in Fleming’s eye”.

The race was the second ever Hell Fire race, later re-christened The Inferno. The winner of the first race, in 1928, was Sir Harold Mitchell, who took one hour and 12 minutes to complete the course. Jimmy did it – uphill sections and all – in just 45 minutes.

Speaking of the “fabulously difficult Grutsch-Lauterbrunnen descent” he said: “I was confident I could get down to Lauterbrunnen very much faster than anyone else,” avoiding the treacherous wood path and “taking a far more direct route down, which involved very high-speed side-slipping back and forth between tight trees.

“It was, I suppose, quite dangerous, but in the event it worked, and none of the other competitors ever saw me again.”

The funniest part was yet to come. “When I got to the finish,” said Jimmy, “there was absolutely no-one in sight. No timekeepers, no judges, no spectators – not even a flag to mark the ziel [finishing line]. It suddenly dawned on me that there could only be one answer to this absurd situation.

“I poled myself frantically across the square towards the pub, the Drie Sternen, pushed open the front door with my sticks, and, wet and dripping, looking like some very abominable snowman, clattered my way on skis right through the Gaststube, between tables of astonished people… right on into the back room… and there, glasses of Dunkles Bier in their hands, there they all were! Timekeepers, judges and all. ‘My god’ came the cry, as they leapt to their feet, ‘it can’t be, no-one is due down here for another half hour!’

“‘I can’t help that’ I puffed. ‘I am here, and all I need is some of that beer’.”

The next skier arrived seven minutes later. “In those days,” writes Alison, “the course was on untracked snow, while today the piste is prepared. Skis, boots and tweeds were a far cry from today’s racing skis and streamlined suits.”

Now, whenever the race runs on its complete course right down to Lauterbrunnen, a James Riddell memorial medal is awarded to the fastest Kandahar man and woman.

Jimmy the author would surely have proved a devotee of Alison’s writing skills after the recent publication of this – her first book.

The book is divided into 32 chapters and includes many direct quotes from her husband. In fact, completely understandably, she devotes so much space to her husband’s stories, quotes, cartoons and even poetry, that I was left wanting to know a little more about her own thoughts, feelings and stories. But this is very much Jimmy Riddell’s life story.

One of the most bizarre and colourful periods of his life was teaching mountain craft to the Australian Imperial Forces.

As chief instructor in a wartime ski school at an abandoned hotel at the Cedars, 6,000 feet above sea level, Jimmy and his fellow instructors were required to train troops to ski, move safely in the mountains and survive in extreme cold.

Alison notes that there were 100 instructors capable of training 2,000 troops on the snow at a time. Altogether, more than 15,000 troops would pass through Jimmy’s hands at the Cedars – British, Australian, New Zealanders, Greeks, Gurkhas and many others.

Jimmy noted afterwards that at a party following one training course a regimental sergeant major said: “Fancy a stuffy Pommie being able to behave like this as well as ski. When we heard about you first, me and my cobbers had it in mind to debag you and throw you down the mountain.”

Alison tells us that when Jimmy asked why they hadn’t done so, the RSM replied: “Well hell – there’s hardly a bastard up here that doesn’t bloody near love you!”

In later years Alison recalls that for 10 years Jimmy, together with Jeannette (later to become his first wife) represented the SCGB and the Kandahar for part of each season.

In a chapter mischievously entitled ‘Zermatt – Three in a Bed’, it’s described how one evening after returning to the village with a big party of Ski Club Members everyone indulged in a glass or two – or more – of Pernod in the Zermattstübli.

Jimmy woke up later in bed in his hotel, but when he tried turning over “the top half of my body turned reasonably well but the bottom half turned not at all”. He began an exploration of his bed. “Casually, almost” he wrote later, “I dismissed two long, cold sticks, one on each side…” You’ve guessed it – he’d been put to bed still wearing his skis and boots.

Jimmy was a prolific cartoonist