A stand-up on parade

QUESTION Did Bullseye’s Jim Bowen serve in the RAOC at the Kineton central ammunition depot in Warwick around 1951/52?

In THAT time, Jim Bowen (or Whittaker as he was then), was still at Accrington Grammar School, often entertaining a group of smokers in the toilets at break times with his hilarious jokes.

Keith Ellel, Rishton, Lancs. JIm BoWen is the stage name of James Whittaker, who was born Peter Williams in Heswall, Cheshire (his adoptive name was James Whittaker).

Bowen, now 79, did serve in the Royal Army ordnance Corps, but he was not called up until July 1955, when he was 18. He was ordered to report to Hilsea Barracks near Portsmouth to begin his two years of national Service.

There he was one of 90 recruits bashed into shape by Sergeant Shelton, a man who, despite being just 5ft 3in tall, had the presence of a giant.

After basic training, Bowen attended the School of Ammunition in Bramley, Hants, a job which carried an automatic promotion to corporal: ‘nine months at Bramley equipped me to defuse a 40mm Bofors shell and to dispatch ammunition of any shape, size or calibre to wherever the Queen deemed necessary.’

once he had finished the course, he was posted to the central Ammunition Dump at nesscliffe near oswestry. During the Suez Crisis, Bowen helped to supervise the loading of ammunition on to ships at Barry Docks.

In his autobiography, Right Place Right Time, Bowen extolled the virtues of national Service: ‘I watched the growth of self- esteem, pride in appearance, acceptance of decisions without dissent or question. I really didn’t see too much erosion of imagination; in fact, within this disciplined structure, I could see a security that bred innovation and awareness of life around one.’

on discharge, Bowen enrolled in teacher training at Chester College and subsequently became a Pe teacher before In the Army: Bullseye’s Jim Bowen becoming a deputy headmaster of Caton Primary School near Lancaster.

In the Sixties, he worked part-time as a stand-up comedian on the northern comedy club circuit. The advent of Granada TV’s The Comedians gave him the chance to appear on TV. He gave up teaching to become a full-time entertainer, later hosting Bullseye for 14 years.

Martin Ash, Chester, Cheshire.

QUESTION Is the Fibonacci sequence (0,1, 1, 2,3, 5, 8, 13 etc) found in nature?

In THe year 1202, Leonardo of Pisa, whose nickname was Fibonacci, published a book on arithmetic called Liber Abaci. It was one of the first books to use Arabic numerals.

In it, he wanted to know how rapidly a rabbit population would increase starting from one immature pair, assuming that none of the rabbits died.

He assumed each pair of rabbits would take a month to reach maturity and that these would produce another breeding pair and so on, while the older pairs of rabbits would continue to breed.

So to begin with you have one (1) immature pair. A month later they mature, but there is still only one pair (1). They then produce another pair so now there are two (2) pairs, one mature and one immature.

A month later the original mature pair produce another immature pair and the first immature pair matures, so now there are three pairs (3), two mature and one immature and so on.

The sequence that results from this is 1,1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, 233 etc, so you quickly end up with a startling number of rabbits.

The important thing is that each number in the sequence is the sum of the previous two numbers. This is why they tend to occur in nature because many organisms grow by adding to what was previously grown.

examples are the number of petals on flowers and the number of spirals on fir cones, pineapples, sunflowers and vegetables such as cauliflowers.

It was more than 600 years before the sequence gained its name when a number theorist called edouard Lucas was studying the book written by Fibonacci and decided to honour him by naming the sequence after him.

Denis Sharp, Hailsham, E. Sussex.

QUESTION What activities popular with children 50 years ago would not be allowed today?

FuRTHeR to earlier answers, in the early Sixties Sandyford Road School in newcastle upon Tyne took us on a day trip to the nearby W. D. & H. o. Wills tobacco company, to show us how cigarettes were made.

Paul Bruce, Newcastle upon Tyne. AS A teenager in the early Fifties, my hobby was aeromodelling, using a diesel engine to propel the model aircraft.

We made our own fuel and bought bottles of ether from Boots. We also bought saltpetre for making the fuses for the de-thermaliser device.

You could also buy all the ingredients to make gunpowder. Roy Broomfield, Maidstone, Kent. I WAS born in 1963 and grew up in north-West London in an era when we were largely left to our own devices.

one of our favourite pastimes was to get a single rollerskate and old piece of floorboard or similar piece of timber about 18 in long and balance it horizontally on the skate.

once balanced and comfortable, we would lie back on our contraption and launch ourselves down the steepest and smoothest hill near our homes.

During one long summer evening of the summer break, I was racing downhill — only to be pulled over by a passing panda car and read the Riot Act by a none-toohappy copper.

Mick Power, Dorchester, Dorset.

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