In his “This is your life” series Jimmy found plenty of subjects at Scott Park Bowling Club in a long article, summarised here.
The second interviewee is Bob Lord, who is nearly 90 but never misses a day’s bowling. Bob earned his living playing the violin, often on the same bill as Benny Dixon. After leaving Coal Clough School at 13 he was an assistant in the Co-op shop before joining the merchant navy in WW1 as a wireless operator. He started playing the violin as a child, and after the war went back to the Co-op and started to learn to play properly and then became a professional. With a band he played abroad but mainly in the North. His violin was made in Italy in 1800 and when he eventually sold it to a dealer it went to America and is probably worth a lot of money now. He played a lot in theatre orchestras. He is a keen football fan recalling the days of Halley, Boyle and Watson, and recalls a German called Seeberg playing for Burnley. A demobbed soldier once told him at Scott Park that he had been billeted in a home which had a picture of Seeberg in the Burnley team. Admin note: the player in question is Max Seeburg, who played 1910/11 for Burnley. German born, he came to England as a small child and between 1906 and 1913 played for Chelsea, Spurs, Leyton, Burnley, Grimsby Town and finally Reading, where he retired and took a pub. He had never become naturalised so was interned briefly in 1914 but soon freed. He was the first European born player to play in the Football League apparently.