Concordia Magazine 2025

Paul Anthony Bailey

(1956–1959)

Jazz played a large part in Paul’s life. During his retirement he played regularly when he lived in Spain, and he may have played later in Cyprus. He was there at the time I wrote my article about jazz and folk at MTS for the Spring 2007 issue of the OMT News Sheet , living with Sue in Episkopi in the Troodos mountains. My wife Avril and I were regular visitors to the TRNC (Turkish Republic of North Cyprus) and would occasionally visit the British Services Sailing Club at Dhekelia in the south with our expat friends. On one occasion we met Paul and Sue midway for lunch at Governor’s Bay. I got an enormous hug from Paul and the four of us became firm friends. One January they decided to come north for a few days to the Bellapais Gardens Hotel where we and our hosts joined them for a delightful dinner to celebrate Sue’s birthday. A couple of days later Paul and Sue drove eastwards to join us in Esentepe. We went to the local restaurant where someone found Paul a drum, and I joined him on a borrowed guitar for an impromptu gig. Years passed before we had a call from Sue to say that Paul had been seriously ill and was convalescing on the coast an hour or so from their new home near Bocairent, high on the Serra Mariola, inland from Alicante. It seemed that months in hospital had undermined Paul’s typical resilience, and something was needed to get him motivated. Whether we were the right people to do that I don’t know, but with love and persistence from Sue and the help of his son, Paul returned to his beloved Devon and, as he had always done, set about putting his stamp on their new home. Invited there to dine sumptuously, we were slightly puzzled as Paul and Sue looked at each in a ‘shall we?’ sort of way, then asked us to be witnesses at their wedding the following Saturday morning, with Paul’s 80th birthday party booked at Kingsteignton Village Hall in the afternoon. It was slightly surreal: just four of us at a coffee and cake wedding breakfast before the afternoon’s dual celebration. Sadly, Paul suffered a recurrence of his illness before we could fulfil our plan to join them at Sandy Park to watch the Exeter Chiefs. He died on 23 May, aged 83. David Young (1963–1967)

When speaking of his time at MTS, Paul seldom missed the opportunity to say how much he appreciated the support he received from Hugh Elder (the Head Master) and his family after his father died. It is a difficult time for any child, but I learnt recently that his father, because of his knowledge of Indian languages, was on Mountbatten’s staff during the Partition of India. How tough for Paul to have his father back for a few years only to be bereft in his early teens. Perhaps that helped him to become such a resilient character. We were contemporaries in Science VB. On one occasion, some of us were preparing to go into Mr Tillott’s geography room in a Conga-like formation, but we felt the piercing gaze of Hugh Elder along the corridor and entered in a calm and collected manner. Hugh Elder then entered with a quiet nod and walked to the back of the room to observe the various modes of entrance of the rest of the form. We were all sitting quietly when Paul burst through the door with a cheery shout of ‘Sorry I’m late, Sir’; a chilling voice from the Head Master remarked ‘You don’t sound very penitent, Bailey!’ A few years ago there was a mention in Concordia of the reappearance of an LP by the Boodle-Am Shakers, essentially the MTS Jazz Band. Many will remember Paul not only as its drummer but also as the driving force behind the recording session, in July 1959 in John Bales’s Pinner studio. Paul spent much of his childhood in Hatch End, and St Anselm’s Hall featured strongly in his early musical endeavours. One of those young musicians went on to fame and fortune: Richard Wright of Pink Floyd. Paul played with all the talented MTS musicians including the pianists Chris Brough (son of the famous ventriloquist) and Stewart Anderson. In the heady days of the 1960s he shared a flat in Swiss Cottage with Dick Wilcox, the BBC Radio producer and renowned OMT trombonist. We played together in the Lawson-Turner Big Band. Paul’s ‘proper job’ was insurance, and he was with NFU for many years. We lost touch for a long time so I am unclear on details, but it may have been on retirement that he followed another love of his life — food. He had what today would be called a gastropub, in Devon; it may well have been at Hope Cove on Bigbury Bay, an area not unknown to OMT rugby tourists.

Concordia Winter 2025 68