Next month

A sneak preview at what's scheduled for the next issue.

collectors to make a selection for “Desert Island Diecast” is quite tough and I’m pleased to see interesting and varied choices each month. In July 2021, the Dinky Bedford VAL Duple bodied coach featured. I received one when new and found the change to large scale Spot-on type disappointing having been conditioned to smaller scales, for which the flashing indicators, steering twin front axles and odd opening boot couldn’t compensate. I once hankered for a Corgi Bedford S Mobilgas Tanker when new and was offered a bigger Spot-on Shell BP by a canny retailer, but stood my ground (obviously as a child not looking at future investment potential). They say when waiting for a bus, two come at once, but not with the big VAL despite I believe there being a rare PTT version. Really it is the big Harrington Bedford VAL from Corgi that next appears in “Italian Job” guise from the 1969 film. This was of interest to me, as once working as a surveyor in London I visited a closed camera shop, where the keyholder told me he had worked as a commercial photographer and dug out a battered book that contained the progress photos he had taken 40 years previously of the conversion works being undertaken on the coach for the film. I later bumped into Michael Caine near Piccadilly Circus, but not a lot of people know that.

Patrick Hogan, Beaconsfield

ED Fabulous, thank you for sharing, Patrick. Of course, now, I am humming the “Self Preservation Society” to myself and contemplating blowing some doors off.