Jeremy Way being interviewed by Derek Robins

I was invited to join Derek Robins today to meet and talk to a mutual friend Jeremy Way, whom we hadn't seen for some time. Derek has started to gather the stories of people involved in the early development of frisbee and disc play in Britain since the 1970s. All three of us had been there in different capacities and times.

Derek is one of the key figures in frisbee disc history, and  not only in Britain, as he has been honoured in the international Disc Golf Hall of Fame. He has also created his own unique Quarry Park Disc Golf centre, near Leamington Spa in the Midlands, which is open to the public, and will host the British National Disc Golf Championships in July 2018. You may well see pictures from there as I'll be attending to take photographs.

Jeremy invited us to his home in Fareham, near Portsmouth, so that we could record his stories and anecdotes in conversation with Derek and I. I decided to concentrate on the video recording which went well.  Derek's purpose is to create an archive about frisbee history, and as he said 'you have to start somewhere'.

Jeremy was involved in promoting frisbee in the UK in the mid-1970s when he worked for the company selling their versions of 'frisbees', which were under licence from the Wham-O Corporation, a toy company still based in California, USA.

I first played with a frisbee in about 1972, when a friend returned from New York with a couple of the original American plastic frisbees, using the back streets of London, and then parks, and then beaches, and then the world. I fell in love with them and after a chance meeting with Martin D., who prior to Jeremy's involvement was also promoting the spread of frisbees, I met some American specialists who taught me new throws. Two years later in 1977 a friend and I entered the UK National Championships for a laugh, and I won the long-distance competition, much to my amazement, and came second in the overall competition. One of the other close competitors was a young teenager from Northampton, a certain Derek Robins. The next year he won the overall competition and has been playing brilliantly ever since. A month ago he returned from playing in the National Disc Golf competition of Ethiopia! He probably holds the record for having played in tournaments in more countries than anyone else in the world.

So yesterday we had fun, which seems to be the watchword for those who play with discs, ('frisbees' are no longer the leading brand, so we have to call them 'flying discs'). Hopefully it is just the beginning of us all telling our stories and  it is intended for access to the archive to be made publicly available in various digital guises, in due course. At the moment there is a Facebook Group called UK Frisbee History where there are already anecdotes and photos from a lot of people, and if you are interested it is a good place to have look. I'll post a couple of other pictures of Derek and Jeremy later today. Derek has already posted this selfie of the three of us after we had finished filming.

ps
I took this snap of Jeremy whilst filming him as he was busy talking to Derek. I liked the tee shirt Jeremy is wearing, featuring 'Fat Freddy's Cat'.