Today’s speaker was Paul Whiteley of Elland, a local man with a bountiful supply of stories, anecdotes and jokes from his various jobs of which undertaker’s assistant and radio sports presenter featured heavily.
His stories included transporting a deceased lady’s body back from Cornwall to Yorkshire, by seating her upright in the rear seat of a large saloon, rather than in a coffin-laden hearse. This evaded numerous excess costs involved when bodies are transferred across county lines; rather obvious in the back of a hearse, but in the back seat of a saloon?
A well-oiled elderly gentleman from Elland was accused by the police of being unfit to drive, to which he replied, “Aye lad, but I’m definitely not fit to walk!”
His sports stories included references to Bob Shackleton, Gary Lineker, Neil Warnock to name but a few, and he mixed regularly with the likes of Frank Carson and Rod Stewart.
He also recounted stories about his time with Loomis, a cash security company, one of which involved supermarket staff substituting two bags of noodles for £4k cash to boost their redundancy pay.