The legendary stature of Professor Brian Thrupiece is such that - almost without exception and perhaps inevitably - he completely overshadows any and all of the other members of his extended and far from undistinguished family. True, his paternal grandfather Ferguson Thrupiece [aka Fernando Mediantepieza of Fernando Mediantepieza and his Latin Rhythm fame] occasionally gets a mention on Dorset Radio's Vintage Classics Show*, but that's about it as far as the wider Thrupiece family goes.
* Younger generations may know something of the once popular act's repertoire through the activities of the tribute band Fern Pizza and the Rhythm Queens. ["The best Fernando Mediantepieza and his Latin Rhythm Tribute Band to have emerged in recent years" Piddletrenthide Social Club Newsletter June 2003]
It is good then to be reminded that the Professor's uncle - Senior Civil Servant Sir Reginald Havergo Thrupiece ["Reggie"] who was almost single-handedly responsible for keeping Dorset out of the Second World War [until September 1939] and was four times winner of the Best Rolled Umbrella and Bowler Hat Ensemble Competition - would have been 125 today had he not died in 1946 at the comparatively early age of 47.
Sir Reginald - who never married - was a stalwart of the Bothenhampton Reform Club and a founding member of the Gay Chevaliers [1932-1946], a recondite group of single men who kept their own company, exchanged favours and abided by a series of codes, rules and protocols never revealed to the wider public. Known as a "natty dresser" who sewed his own curtains, "Reggie" was generally regarded as a soft pair of hands and a wizard with a treadle-powered Singer. He was author of a brief memoire - Men Without Women* - in which, according to Bengt-Asa Forcke [author of Organised Intimacy: A History of Gentleman's Clubs] "he revealed little of his private life and raised far more questions than he answered".
* A title also used by Ernest Hemmingway though the novel and the memoir have a quite disimilar "take" on the subject and reach very different conclusions.
Though Professor Thrupiece was only six at the time of his uncle's death, it is widely believed that the older man had a profound influence on his impressionable nephew and may even have been responsible for his early interest in the bio-mechanics of fluff. Visits to Uncle Reggie's batchelor pad would have brought the young Professor into contact with the various stuffed cushions and pillows strewn about apartment. He himself recalled that many of them appeared to have very obvious bite-marks out of which tumbled "all manner of materials including some very interestingly textured shreds and assorted fluffs". It could be argued of course that such was the curiosity of the young Professor Thrupiece that he would have stumbled upon this protean substance with or without his uncle's inadvertent help; but one cannot but wonder if the breakthrough later responsible for both the thrupiecediet™ [HERE] and the fortune it generated would have been later in coming and the course of history significantly altered as a result.
In any event it is surely time for Sir Reggie to come out from the shadows and for us to celebrate him in gratitude for all that he may or may not have been and everything for which he may or may not have been responsible.
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