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It is not often that a top haulier is offered a job as a part-time film extra, with six weeks all paid in Spain, as well. Such is the luck of Arthur Slater, the wealthy Yorkshire businessman, managing director of Slaters Transport and also managing director of the quarrying division of Tilling Construction Services.
The film, The Last Remake of Beau Geste, which is being directed by Marty Feldman, requires a one-legged double for Peter Ustinov, and the producers advertised for "an athletic middle-aged one-legged fat man". This is for the part of a crazy Foreign Legion officer.
Mr Slater, who lost a leg in a crash during the Monte Carlo Rally in 1959, is a yachtsman of international fame, and he seemed to fit the part; Mr Feldman insisted on somebody with a missing left leg and it turned out that the majority of men who have lost a leg nearly all have the right leg missing. Anyway, it just shows what good sports transport men are, especially Yorkshire transport men. I wish I could follow that with a Lanes story.