Keith Turnbull (1976) – by Jonathan Turnbull (1987), his youngest brother
If you have seen the 1984 “Rockumentary” film “This Is Spinal Tap”, you will remember the amplifier with the volume controls that all went up to “11” rather than “10”. This was in order, it was reasoned, that the band could be “one louder” than all the other bands.
It seemed to me that Keith’s controls were almost permanently set to “11” (and I’m not just talking about the volume of the music he played late at night and in the early morning after family gatherings at Christmas).
Keith had such intensity in everything he did. He loved his family; he loved his friends; he loved his work, and anything tech-related; he loved his cars and sport; he loved 1970s rock music; he loved travelling, good food and drink; and he also loved living in Chearsley and being a Parish Councillor.
All easily scored ‘11’ on the scale: he seemed to do all of these things “one louder” than anyone else.
Keith was over 10 years older than me, so I didn’t know him when he was very young, but he frequently assured me (and, indeed, many others) that he was a genius from an early age. According to family legend, he constructed his own bicycle aged 12; he installed a gas stove aged 14 (he was probably not CORGI-approved); and (together with his great KES friend Nick Towers) he fitted a new clutch in Mum’s Maxi and a new cam belt in Dad’s Cortina, aged 17. Keith also took an early interest in chemistry, with spectacular but damaging results for the outside toilet at 14 Coverdale Road.
As the oldest of the four brothers, Keith was undoubtedly the pioneer – he was always the first to do everything (and not just fitting gas stoves and clutches).
But Ian, Nick and I mainly just wanted to be as funny and as entertaining as he was. I remember wondering why the comedians on the TV weren’t anywhere near as funny as my brother in the room commenting on them.
Keith was much more than the funniest person in the room, though.
Two stories summed him up for me growing up:
I remember that, in 1985, I played with Keith in the Quarter-Finals of the Midlands Eton Fives tournament, held at KES. There was no Sky Sports in those days, and I somehow doubt that it would have featured in any case. I was still at KES, aged 17, and Keith was still in his old kit (aged 27). We were playing a strong pairing – the Mole brothers (Jonathan and Andrew, both of whom could see clearly). We quickly went 2-0 down in sets. The match looked all over.
Then Keith called a “time out” and gave me a pep talk.
He didn’t talk much about tactics.
“GFI”, he said.
“What?”, I said.
“Go For It. Let’s just go for it. Whatever happens. Come on. GFI.”
Keith kept repeating “GFI” to me, as he guided me through the next set, which we won (12-6 according to the internet). We were ahead in the fourth set, before one of the opposition retired hurt – probably from hearing “GFI” in his ear incessantly – so we won. I won’t talk about the Semi-Final (we did pretty well, but not quite well enough), but it made me feel how inspiring (as well as sometimes demanding) Keith could be.
I was at that time just starting my ‘A’ levels at KES. A few months earlier, our Mum must have told him what ‘A’ levels I was choosing, as he made what seemed like a State visit to see me at home. He told me in no uncertain terms that I had to do Physics, Chemistry and Maths, and not Greek, Latin and French. I explained to Keith that I really wasn’t very good at Physics, Chemistry and Maths and that I would, therefore, be sticking with my choices.
A few weeks later, Keith presented me with a large box of Classics books that he had bought from an old college friend (Simon Gough). To me, it was the most amazing treasure trove, and I spent many, many happy hours delving into it. It showed me that, despite the earlier, fairly stern, fatherly lecture, Keith most of all simply wanted to support me and to give me the best start in what I had chosen to do.
I like to think that he has given his children – Emily, Joe and Tom – the best start in life that he possibly could. He was immensely proud of them all.
Victor Hugo wrote: “It is nothing to die; it is dreadful not to live.”
Keith didn’t get to “rage against the dying of the light” in old age (and we all know that he would have done a good deal of raging!), but he certainly lived. He didn’t wait for things to happen; he made them happen. He was the pioneer, the trailblazer, the problem-solver, and the pilot of our aircraft. In fact, he had probably constructed the aircraft in the first place…
The shock is huge for all of us. It still seems impossible to process, but I will always remember his incredible ability to entertain and to make people laugh (whether they were friends or complete strangers); his intensity in everything he did and in his love for his family and friends; and his encouragement to “GFI”, to “Go For It”.
He has been taken away from us far too soon, but his dial will always be stuck … on ‘11’.
Keith Turnbull at KES – by Nick Towers (1976)
In 1969, Keith started at King Edward’s School. It was widely considered to be the best school in Birmingham, and, being free in those days, was able to pick the brightest boys regardless of means. Being immersed in that environment inevitably sharpened minds and engendered competitive spirit. The school encouraged us to be inquisitive, but there’s a fine line between that and mischief. Being scientifically minded, Keith was keen on Chemistry and, with access to pretty much any chemical substance you wanted from back street shops in 1970s Birmingham, many of his extra-curricular experiments went off with quite a bang. One of them allegedly removed most of the produce and soil from his Dad’s vegetable patch.
Keith was an able sportsman who participated across the board, but he captained the school at Eton Fives, a game that is a bit like squash but uses padded gloves rather than rackets, He continued to play and actively support Fives, at KES as well as at Cambridge, throughout his life. He was also very good at less physical pursuits. including chess and bridge. As an aside, during lockdown Keith, myself, Nigel Ross and John Kiss started playing online bridge on a weekly basis. Our last session was just 3 days before he died.
Although Keith excelled both academically and at sport, he never learned properly to play a musical instrument, but what he did do was to discover how the large pipe organ in the main school hall worked and how the keys were linked up to the pipes. Before assembly at the end of one term, Keith re-plumbed the organ so that the right keys were playing all the wrong notes. You can imagine the result when the organist started playing. Luckily for the church in Chearsley, Sara kept him away from the organ there.
Notwithstanding all his escapades, Keith was accepted to read Engineering at Trinity College Cambridge.
Perhaps the most transformative event in Keith’s life though, at least one in which I was involved, was meeting Sara. I was at primary school with Sara and in our teenage years she and I were regulars at the local Methodist Church Youth Club. Towards the end of senior school we transitioned to Friday and Saturday nights at the pub and, one day in 1977, I asked Keith to join us. The rest, as they say, is history…..
Like many schools, the King Edward’s school song is rather smug and full of clichés, but the last line of the second verse is very apt:
It goes: “Forward Therefore, Live your Hardest, Die of Service, not of Rust.”
Keith Turnbull at Trinity College, Cambridge by Jon Harris (1976)
So, in 1977 Keith, Steve Cooper and I headed off from KES to Trinity College Cambridge.
Keith and I took up residence in shared rooms in L4 Whewell’s Court, and here are three everyday items from those rooms to give you a glimpse into the richness of Keith’s life in Cambridge.
Item no. 1: a frying pan.
Keith loved a big fry up, channelling his inner Nigella – or maybe Fanny Craddock. The frying pan expresses Keith’s enthusiasm for life, his exuberance, his capacity to live life to the full.
He loved his music: Steve Miller, Springsteen, the Sex Pistols.
He loved the everyday: cups of coffee, fags.
He loved engineering, even though the enthusiasm was often in principle, and for the concept, rather than the study and hard graft.
He loved Sara, who, it was clear then, was the love of his life: he once disappeared for 48 hours, without warning (there were no mobile phones or WhatsApp in those days), and, to great consternation, and it turned out he’d gone to see her in York.
Item no. 2: his Cambridge Half-Blue scarf (a Blue or Half-Blue is awarded to players in the Varsity match against Oxford – Blue for big sports like rugby and cricket, Half-Blue for minority interest sports like Eton Fives).
Keith loved his scarf, and it tells us of his love for sport. Cambridge made access to sport easy and Keith had a natural sporting ability and took full advantage. As Nick Towers has noted, Keith excelled at Fives and won his Half-Blue. He was also an excellent rugby player, a passable football player and an enthusiastic, though maybe not quite so talented, oarsman. He wore his half blue scarf with pride.
Item no. 3: a pint glass.
Yes, he loved a pint; or rather, he loved lots of pints, and for me the pint glass stands for Keith’s sociability. He loved college life with its constant opportunities to hang out with all sorts: parties in the Wolfson Party Room, discos at the Grad Pad, concerts at the Corn Exchange, drinks and cards in the bar, fry ups and cups of tea, the Baron of Beef, dinner in hall, and always, Keith with his keen, edgy wit and sharp intellect, never happier than with a group of friends and challenging, debating, joking, laughing.
Yes, frying pan, scarf, pint glass: three everyday items; one remarkable man.
Keith Turnbull – KES, Cambridge and Beyond – by Steve Cooper (1976)
At KES, Keith Turnbull was mysterious to me, separated as we were by the Gulf of Different Houses, the Arts/Science Divide and the Bus Divergence – mine went south, his north. But he suddenly burst upon my consciousness with a searing line-break in the 1976 Bromsgrove match that almost led to a try in a hard-fought, low-scoring contest. To my knowledge, he had not hitherto represented the school at rugby before, the naturally talented sportsman preferring a distinguished career on the Fives courts (on which he would later win his Half-Blue).
We both went up to Trinity, Cambridge where acclimatisation to student life was aided by 20 other comrades from the Class of 1976 (and plenty of 1975ers). The English/Engineering divide was now overcome by geography and energetic sociability: we shared the same college court and he shared a set with OE Jon Harris. We became firm friends, as too with his teen sweetheart Sara, soon to become his wife.
We briefly shared a Birmingham longboat in the late 1970s, a rented London house in the 1980s and the North American Continent in the 1990s, albeit 3000 miles apart (his west to my east). A planned Californian reunion was scuppered by my relocation to the UK.
Keith and Sara threw regular dinners and parties in Amersham and Chearsley. Decades of curry-driven Trinity gatherings vindalooed in London. As his career flew into a rarefied high-tech stratosphere (and his sporting interests to driving the Nürburgring at speed), he supported every charity dinner I organised and indulged my every attempt to be an artist on the side.
It was Keith who accompanied me on a 60th birthday assault on Snowdon (a promise to myself). On the way, my ageing Volvo’s windscreen wipers (vital in North Wales) had a seizure on the M25. Determined that I should not miss out on Snowdon, Keith sat ahead in an M6 service station, commanding local mechanics and car rental companies via his phone to ensure I got there. We did not summit, knee-high snow defeating us, but celebrated over dinner anyway at the Pen Y Gwryd Hotel, where Edmund Hillary had been before us (how did that turn out for him, I wonder?). Exhausted, I headed for bed leaving Keith to befriend a complete stranger, climbing solo, over a glass of whisky. That was Keith.
Keith had the biggest heart and an unfailing generosity of spirit. When the late Simon Heng became disabled after a botched operation, we sent messages, but it was Keith who drove to see him. With Keith, I later sat at the bedside of another Cambridge contemporary, struck down by early dementia. He simply cared, deeply, about family and friends. It seems the bitterest of ironies that his greatest of hearts should fail him in the end. He is much missed.
