They Don't Make Them Like 'Mad' Jack Anymore

As cricket continues its descent into Moneyball and algorithms (err, me neither), I went in search of sanity this week and found it in the shape of “Mad” Jack Russell.

- Peter Hayter

This month, as you can read elsewhere, the former England and Gloucestershire wicket keeper is celebrating the 30th anniversary of selling his first artwork, but, in these days of regimented thinking, there is even more reason to celebrate him not only for his glovemanship and dogged rearguard batting, but also for the glorious eccentricity that characterised everything he did.

And, to do so here, I asked him to confirm, or deny, some of the countless stories told of him and by him during his brilliant career which enabled all those who heard them to relax in the knowledge that, as long as Jack was around, we need not fear that the fun police would have their way with the summer game unopposed.

Where else to start but with the tale of the blindfolded decorators?

“True,” Jack confirms.

“This came from me seeing how the Press and photographers used to chase Ian Botham, how his kids, Liam and Sarah, were hassled at school.

“I thought if I get in the England side I won’t say where I live, and the fact that where I lived was a secret snowballed into a story of itself.

“So, I had a couple of young lads come in to remove some old wallpaper and they actually asked to be blindfolded for the final part of the journey because they didn’t want the responsibility of knowing where I lived.

“I’d meet them a few miles away, then drive their van to my place with them wearing blindfolds and we reversed the process when they’d finished for the day.

“Is that eccentric?”

Yes. And so is the wish to have your hands preserved in a glass jar after your death, and then placed in the gallery along with your paintings.

“That’s true as well,” he says.