Looking for film of 1976 bath tub race

✒ I AM sending out a plea for any cine film of any sort of the first Tewkesbury bath tub race in August 1976, run by the officers and men of Tewkesbury fire station.

As I was at a station in Cheltenham I entered the 1972 race with a colleague. This was exceedingly hard work, having started in a wig, a dress and a very old pair of mother’s knickers.

The wig, followed by the knickers, kept falling down went very quickly and after finishing we were saying “never again”.

In 1976, there was the 1st Tewkesbury Bath tub race advertised and we were given a bath and told we had to make it float ourselves as all the Tewkesbury tubs were unsinkable.

On advice we were given a tractor inner tube by a local garage, getting sponsorship and beer from Whitbread Brewery, and as an ex-motorcycle racer £5 from rider Dave Parry.

We asked the Echo to do a photo of myself and fireman Jim Mason (later to become Mayor of Tewkesbury in the 2000s) at the boys’ college baths next to the fire station and immediately tipped over, but the photo helped publicise the event.

We added oil drums, a Union flag, with names such as Titanic, QE3 and we did win the contest, but everybody was booing us, as we later found out the licensed victuallers had lost a lot of money as they had bet Tewkesbury would win.

We were persuaded to accept the trophy and I was going to go back to Whitbread to see if they would give more money to charity as we won, only to find on the front page of the paper: “Cheltenham fireman win 1st Bath tub race” on other side “Cheltenham fireman accused of cheating in charity event”.

So I would love to know if any readers or their parents took cine film of the bath tub race.

George Ridgeon Churchdown