by Roger MacCallum

Although best remembered as teacher and lecturer in English, author, editor, and fisherman, Clive Gammon also trod the boards when with us in Pembroke Grammar School.

His first entry onto stage was in Thornton Wilder’s ‘Our Town’ in 1954, that strange play set in New Hampshire. In this, he played one of the Townsfolk, Simon Stimson the choirmaster. One can imagine him at River, Lake or Surfbeach, practising conducting with a fishing rod. He ‘rested’ whilst ‘The Merry Wives of Windsor’ and that spectacular, colourful play the ‘Beaux Stratagem’ were staged in subsequent years, no doubt ‘resting’ with fishing rod in hand.

Then, in 1958, GS Shaw chose Shakespeare’s ‘Coriolanus’ as the school play. The lead in this – Coriolanus, the Roman general - was no doubt thought to be too onerous a part for any pupil and was taken on with gusto by Clive Gammon. He brought to the part his wonderful voice, the bearing of a Roman General and his incredible memory for all those speeches. His portrayal was masterful particularly when giving the crowds and the mob, who formed the core of the play, a lashing with his tongue. There were those pupils who believed he was rehearsing the part when addressing them in the classroom during English lessons. He became Coriolanus.

Since I had never been in one of his English classes, in school I thought of him as Coriolanus, and out of school we would talk fishing. We met one Christmas in the late 1960s, purely by chance on the Gower Coast, where he and my eldest brother and I discussed the prospects of inshore cod. Then, the night before the school Reunion in 2006, I walked into the Old Kings Arms and there he was, sitting with a group of former pupils. I looked at him and said, “Beggar me, it’s Coriolanus!” He thought that was really funny and we both laughed. Well, he was Coriolanus.