UKH

Today Joe Brown would have been 90 years old. A guy so great that letters addressed to “The Human Fly” would find him. The Hard Years is still a classic read. RIP Joe. 

As a child I resd Victor comic. One character wss Joe Bones, The Human Fly. Now where did the inspiration for that come from? I recall one 'incident': Joe locked off with one hand holding a frozen rivet on the underside of a gun emplacement protruding from a cliff!

Apparently he only fell 9 times, which was in his first 9 years of climbing. Then he didn’t fall off for the next 26 years! I’ve been lucky enough to meet him and his wife in his house and there’s the most amazing portrait of him on the walls there. Done by a Welsh artist, Kevin Bowen. His wife says she can just see what’s in his mind as he weighs up the climb ahead. 

There is an episode of Fireman Sam in which Naughty Norman steals his mother's washing line to go and climb a mountain and become the most famous climber....

Love it!