Becoming a Beefeater Clive’s switch from village life to Tower of London
CLIVE Towell is living proof you can overcome a challenging start in life and have considerable success later on.
When he was a youngster at Cleeve School in Bishop’s Cleeve in the late 1970s and early 1980s, he picked up a somewhat undesirable nickname.
Children can be really mean at times and, because of his surname and the common use then of towelling nappies, Clive became known as Nappy.
At least he was by his peers at the Two Hedges Road-based secondary school.
Roll on 40 years and Clive is able to look back on a 29-year career in the Army and revel in the fact he now has a very different job.
The 51-year-old father of two is a Beefeater at the Tower of London.
His official title is a Yeoman Warder and he has held the job since May 2012.
He said: “There are 37 Yeoman Warders.
“We live and work in the Tower and look after it for the Queen.
“I’ve been doing the job for six-anda-half years. It’s absolutely fantastic. I would grade it as a 10 out of 10 job.
“We wake up in the morning here in central London, we open the gates and the tourists come in. We meet a lot of really nice people.”
It’s all a far cry from being teased by youngsters over his name at school.
But then a lot has changed in Clive’s life since he grew up in Bishop’s Cleeve.
After leaving the village’s secondary school in 1983, he joined the Army, to follow the path his father had taken before him.
And it was a long and winding road for Clive because he spent 29 years as a soldier.
It was mostly with the King’s Royal Hussars, with whom he rose to the rank of Regimental Sergeant Major but also latterly with the Household Cavalry and Royal Armoured Corps for two years as Sergeant Major and Acio Bromley as Senior Recruiter.
Clive served in the UK, Northern Ireland, Germany, Canada, Belize, Bosnia, Iraq and France.
Funnily enough, although he had been known as Nappy at school, in the Army he was called Strawberry or Strawbs.
It was because it was how his father had been known after once burning his nose so badly it was almost as red as a strawberry.
Clive said becoming a Beefeater was not something he had planned, though he was aware it was an option for some soldiers.
As with life in the Army, the job demands dedication.
“We live here 24 hours a day, seven days a week. We’re not security guards, we’re custodians of the tower,” he said.
As well as meeting and greeting visitors to the attraction, the Beefeaters conduct three daily hour-long guided tours of the site.
In order to know what they are talking about, they all have to know about 1,000 years of history.
He said: “We call it The Story. You get about six months to learn that. It’s the biggest thing that we do here.”
His parents and two brothers still live in Gloucestershire.
“Central London is awesome but we do like escaping. I still regard Gloucestershire as home,” he said.
Central London is awesome but we do like escaping. I still regard Gloucestershire as home Clive Towell
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