How the year 1970 was a record-breaker for KES pupils …
THE year 1970 was a special one for KES pupils, with two national records broken, as this spread from The Lennensian (above) shows.
Talented musician Barry Manning, then a Fourth-former, set a new record for non-stop blues playing with friends at the town’s Corn Exchange, while Neville Fickling (lower Sixth) ventured further afield – but not much further – when he broke the British zander record with a 12 lb 6 oz specimen from the Great Ouse Relief Channel (aka New Cut) near Stow Bridge.
Both Barry and Neville shared their own accounts of their historic achievements in this issue of The Lennensian, which possibly had the headmaster at that time (Pat Sleigh) spluttering on his Woodbine. It’s fair to say that neither Barry nor Neville were exactly his favourite pupils.
Neville went on to break his own zander record later the same year with a 12 lb 13 oz monster from the same venue, then made history in 1985 by breaking the coveted and long-standing British pike record, with a 41 lb 6 oz giant from the Upper Thurne area of the Norfolk Broads.
The previous record of 40 lb (also from the Broads) had stood since 1967. In beating it, Neville 
established himself as the most successful predator angler in history.
Today he runs a successful fishing tackle business in Gainsborough, Lincolnshire, and is secretary of the Old Lennensians Association.
Barry (who,incidentally, was also a very useful angler in his younger days) is now a successful businessman and Rotarian, still based in King’s Lynn.
We know Barry has got a lot of friends who are OLA members and he likes to check out this website, so hopefully he will read this and tell us all about his life since he left KES (and maybe come and meet his old mates at one of our future reunions). After all, you didn’t have to be a star pupil to get on in life.
- Many thanks to OLA member Graeme Parr for supplying us with this extract from The Lennensian of 1971.
