A Monthly Publication

John Maiden

The media has a lot to answer for, because to become a 'celebrity' is now the chosen career of an alarming number of young people in this country; and it is not difficult to find evidence of the talentless role models who have given rise to this phenomenon.

It is, therefore, very refreshing to meet a real celebrity, who has bags of talent, yet is far from being young in the accepted sense of the word. At the age of ninety-five, Wing Commander Ken Wallis is one such celebrity.

His biography, written by Ian Hancock is aptly entitled "The Lives of Ken Wallis - Engineer and Aviator Extraordinaire". The book outlines the amazing career of the man I first met two years ago when he gave an extremely interesting talk to members of Hunstanton Civic in the Town Hall.

Last month I finally got round to visiting Ken in his home at Reymerston Hall in the heart of the Norfolk countryside, a few miles south of Dereham.

I was driven there by Cllr Richard Bird in the company of Cllr David Jones and Civic Society stalwart, Brian Holmes, who had arranged the talk in Hunstanton and the return visit.

Ken's commentary and guided tour of his workshop and hangar was truly fascinating - especially when he recounted the events surrounding the occasion in World War Two, when he and his crew managed to bale out the Wellington bomber he was flying just before it crashed.

He then showed us the autogyro he built and flew in the James Bond movie: 'You only live twice". Only the name of the aircraft gives an oblique reference to the contribution Ken made to the success of the film.

It was called "Little Nellie", in recognition of the fact that during the war any serviceman with the surname Wallis, or Wallace, was almost certain to be nicknamed 'Nellie' because of the popularity at that time of music hall star, Nellie Wallace!

To round off the occasion Ken then rolled out and started an autogyro from his collection - all designed and built by the man himself. He took off and carried out several impressive manoeuvres over his own airstrip, proving that he has lost none of the skill and daring displayed in: "You only live twice" when he was simply the best 007...