Face to face with Sir Robin Day

Yes, another well-known TV personality ticked off my list! 

I never thought we would actually meet, but the encounter happened by accident only yesterday in the village of Whitchurch Canonicorum, east of Charmouth in west Dorset. I'm guessing that Sir Robin had some longstanding love for the place, and it was indeed lovely; and at the end of his days this is where The Grand Inquisitor wanted to be. There was the church. I was doing my usual careful walk around the exterior, camera in hand. The encounter occurred near the south door of the church.

Sir Robin, originally a journalist, was the first of the great TV interviewers. He took a forthright and no-nonsense line with all pompous politicians. In his glory days on the screen, he was feared - just as some later exponents of his art have been. No great person ever wanted to bandy words with him, but political expedience would demand that they submit to his incisive questioning, however they might privately squirm or shudder at the prospect. Few escaped without laceration. 

He was not afraid of anybody, and certainly not deferential. If he felt that some important questions needed to be put, he put them. He could look avuncular, with his glasses and bow tie; but he was a hunting hound with a sharp nose and sharper teeth; quick to attack, and relentless. He often drew blood, leaving many with careers hanging in the balance. 

These were not of course innocent victims. They were people, mostly men, mostly clever and well-educated, certainly men of the world, who carried responsibility for the crass actions of their government department, or for some policy that was controversial. No doubt they found Sir Robin's blunt ways with words trying, if not downright rude. Defence Minister John Nott famously unclipped his microphone and walked off the set after being asked a particularly awkward question in a 1982 edition of Newsnight. Sir Robin had asked why he, a 'here today, gone tomorrow politician' - which frankly was his position - had wilfully brushed aside the weighty views of a senior defence officer of many years standing and experience. It was a just question. But you can see how it might easily provoke anyone. Actually, it had been an impossible question for John Nott to answer, at least while wearing his ministerial hat. He was skewered, whatever he did. But walking off the set was a public admission that Sir Robin had definitely scored.

Here are some screenshots off my phone. I searched on Google for pictures of Sir Robin Day. Inevitably there were some of John Nott too.

Recalling Sir Robin's personality, I felt I would stand no chance whatever with this man if the conversation took an unexpected turn, or became personal. Sir Robin used to have a reputation for embarrassing women whom he thought were straying into territory they shouldn't be in. Would he still be the same? 

Thankfully I was not put to any test. Nothing was said. Nothing could have been said. For the poor man had died twenty years previously, and I was looking at a half-faded inscribed stone set in the grass near the church door. His ashes were underneath. This, I felt, was probably the best way to meet the man. But all the same, I was still very glad that I had nothing shady to explain. These are my own shots:

I think you'll agree that I had a narrow escape.

A shame, though, that it's such a small memorial to Sir Robin. 'In loving memory.' Who loved him? Why not a grander gravestone? Were restrictive churchyard rules the reason?

In two of the pictures above, you can see a figure in a niche up on the church side wall. It catches the eye. Let's go closer.

It's a female figure. She seems to be standing on a hoary lichen-covered base, and I can't see a join, so I'm supposing that she's old and original and has merely had a good cleanup from the ankles upward. She seems to be smiling, and appears to be holding a big ice-cream cone, although I reckon it's really a torch with stylised flames (which are hard to get right in stone). 

Although the carving looks modern, I do think it could be very old. After all, there are many examples of modern-looking carving on church exteriors, and inside too, that are in fact the work of artists in centuries long past. Elsewhere in Dorset, I can think of the sexy ladies that adorn the top of a monument in West Chelborough church - see my post on 22nd October 2016, Topless beach babes in a remote Dorset church - which look modern, but are not. Here they are, reclining symmetrically on their striped towels, getting an all-over tan:

And when in Beverley in east Yorkshire in 2018, I noticed that on the exterior wall of the ancient Minster, in a corner sheltered from weather, there were many clean-looking carvings of male and female saints, although admittedly one of them looks like Pocahontas, the Red Indian princess:   

Anyway, who is she, the lady on the church wall at Whitchurch Canonicorum? Well, the church is dedicated to St Candida, aka St Wite (pronounced 'white-a' in Old English, hence 'Wite-church' in the name of the village). Very little is known about her life, but inside the church - which was locked, because of the Diocese of Salisbury's policy on coronavirus pandemic access - is a shrine to her. This shrine, with three holes through which visitors can pass limbs needing a cure, is one of only two in England that still survive. The rest have been destroyed. Concealed within a hollow part of this structure were found female bones that said she died when forty-odd, and was a small woman. There have been speculations that in past centuries Whitchurch Canonicorum was the centre of a St Wite cult, but there is no physical evidence beyond the survival of the shrine, a nearby holy well, and the figure on the outside wall. I'll have to come back another time to see the shrine, when the church is open again. The well too.

Here's a thought. Perhaps the church has now become a spiritual focus for those venerating Sir Robin Day? (But I met no pilgrims, so perhaps that's another supposition going nowhere)