All Ski Deals
The UK ski media lost another great character and a close friend of my own, following the death of editor and writer David Allsop last week.
It was always a pleasure and hugely entertaining to spend time with David Allsop, or ‘Del-boy’, as I affectionately knew him, and he was such good company.
During the last 35 years we enjoyed numerous ski press trips together, hacked our way around many golf courses – where Dave would always at some point loudly proclaim ‘I f***ing hate golf’ – and I was lucky enough to be invited to stay with him and his lovely wife Julie many times during their time living in London and then Kent.
After university, Dave looked to be destined to become a barrister, but decided law wasn’t for him and he was eventually employed by the Daily Express in the features dept. His love of skiing – Dave and Julie got married in the American ski resort of Crested Butte – led to him becoming an established ski writer and he regularly contributed to the Skier & Snowboarder magazine.
He also wrote ‘The Bluffers Guide to Skiing’, plus, a little-known nugget, he almost became editor of Ski Club of Great Britain’s Ski & Board magazine but instead went on to work in the features dept of Saga Magazine (circulation of over 320,000!).
In later life, he described himself as a freelance editor/writer, and numerous publishers continued to benefit from his intelligence, humour and charm.
I could go on all day relating funny and interesting stories about ‘Del-boy’ but I would end up going on for too long, so I’ll just leave you with these two ski experiences.
Dave and I were on the last day of our press trip to Mont Tremblant in March 2009 when our Canadian hosts suddenly announced we should pack and leave a little earlier than planned as they had a special treat for us – they were whisking us away in a luxury limo to Montreal to have a tour of the hotel and room where former Beatle John Lennon and Yoko held one of their ‘bed-in’ protests.
It was all very surreal – until we eventually saw the TV news in the evening before our flight home and discovered actress Natasha Richardson had died on her way to the hospital that day after a fall on a beginner slope in Mont Tremblant.
Our hosts had obviously decided they didn’t want two former Fleet Street journos – Dave and I – on the scene while this story was breaking. It did not stop us from later co-writing a piece which raised questions on whether her fame had actually hindered rather than helped to get emergency treatment.
However, one of my funniest memories of Dave skiing is when we were both on a Franz Klammer press trip in Austria. While out on the slopes, the Olympic racing legend would occasionally ‘let go’ and bomb to the bottom of a piste where he would wait for the rest of the group.
On one run, Dave, who was a very good skier himself, decided he would try and keep up with Franz. Therefore, it was a quite a surprise to some parents and their two young children, who were enjoying a picnic sat around a blanket off to the side of the piste, when a slightly out of control British journalist managed to lose his bearings and ski straight through the middle of the family and over their picnic.
‘Dave did manage to shout a heartfelt ‘sooorreeee’ as he disappeared into the distance!
Oh ‘Del-boy’, I’m going to miss you…
