Graham Crompton, John Murphy, Jack Daniels.

The first of the group to be penciled in was Graham Crompton. He, during the early 60’s, was the smart local lad made good. He had become a successful businessman in the coach holiday racket running a small fleet of ‘charrabangs’ to Blackpool and North Wales. The business was very lucrative; life was good for Graham until, in a cruel road accident, a careless motorist knocked down his son, the sad result of which the young boy was seriously injured. Regrettably, his marriage as well as his business soon after suffered accordingly: it was, much later, after a lengthy period of recovery that Graham returned to the ‘Crow’ becoming his regular watering hole. He would arrive at the Crow following a late phone call, subsequently staying into the early ‘after hours’ for his last scoop. He was always accompanied with Philip, his driver. Philip was a huge, abstinent, smelly carthorse who preferred playing pool whilst Graham drank. Lurching from one non- profit making venture to another over the past fifteen years; his latest business concept was bottled spring water from his rented farmhouse at Anglezarke. Graham planned to off load this nectar to mindless Southern punters in their Mayfair clubs as the perfect complement to their Glenmorangie. It never got off the ground leaving Graham with a shit load of designer glassware. At present Graham was taking Morris dancers to their rallies at weekends at the same time liberating them of the one pound that their mothers had given them for light refreshments, namely salty bags of crisps washed down with sugary ‘pop’. He always carried around a fifty-pound note in his top jacket pocket claiming that if marooned anywhere in the whole world, it was as much as anyone needed to survive. Graham later went on to develop the ‘Sam’s’ chain of bars: he now commutes from Spain from his ‘huge fuck off’ villa. Good on him.

John Murphy was a 'spark', with his own business, which he ran with his son Damian. He was a genuinely likeable person, soft spoken, honest especially trustworthy. A good Catholic, he was married to Bet who, after he she’d had a drink or two transformed into a deranged witch. Everybody in the pub could recognize the early warning signals when she was about fall off the edge. She always found fault with John for, not requesting ice in her drink, not finding her favorite bar stool but generally, in her opinion, his hapless attempts to ignore her every pointless demand. Her glasses would progressively slip down her nose, the already sunken eyes would completely disappear inside her head, she began to dribble from the corner of her wrinkled mouth, her hair would then become possessed, mutating into a ripped bag of wire wool. Once activated the transformation could empty the pub in less than five minutes, consequently John would find himself abandoned, even by his closest, isolated ineffectively attempting to tame the monster. Because of her irrational temperament, but more importantly the embarrassment she caused John he could be forgiven anything. The boys in the fault laid bets as to how he was going to rid himself of the harridan. Butchered with a blunt rusty axe to be later buried under the patio was the favoured outcome; the aftermath would see everyone closing ranks during the police investigation offering John endless alibis to finally free himself from ‘mad Bet’. Nevertheless, John worshipped the ground that she walked on, always forgave her difficult testing behaviour, there was never any doubt that they were a solid partnership for better or worse. But he was certainly looking forward to the break in France.                     

Jack Daniels was the last person to join the group. Jack was kidnapped at midday on the day of the departure, after an extended liquid lunch he succumbed to gentle persuasion from Graham: finding himself at Portsmouth, with only a basic suitcase, without a passport, he needed to phone his wife Elsie informing her where he was and why. Jack was an old school car dealer; he probably made his first deal selling a horse and cart to some unsuspecting victim back in the 1920’s. His motto was always, ‘dress down for buying but ‘up’ for selling’. He had a craggy old face that needed a good ironing, but he was always smiling having a ready supply of slightly staged, but old fashioned corny jokes. He had been using the Crow, off and on, for all of his drinking life; consequently over the years he had developed a real affection for the place. There was no way Jack would turn down an opportunity for, potentially, a serious boozy trip, so as Graham bungled him into his car he didn’t have much of a fight on his hands.