Fire on the Mountain

You can take many paths to get to the same place, but most of the roads in the Midlands lead to Bridgnorth, the home of poker. In 1997, we organised a charity poker tournament in Bridgnorth. People heard about it and they came down to the Midlands to play. A lot of them caught the train to Wolverhampton. Bridgnorth is about 20 miles from Wolverhampton, so I went in my flat-back truck with a bed of 16ft, and picked 18 poker players up from the train station.

Now Aidan Bennett and Howard Plant got into the cab with me, of course I was the driver, and standing on the back of the bed of the truck were Mike Magee, Julian Gardner, Alex Kong, Terry Allcock and his wife Ann, just to name a few. There were a total of 15 poker players on the back of my truck and three in the cab as we went down The Hermitage, which is the steepest hill in the Midlands. It’s unbelievably steep.

Anyway it was the summer of 1997, and if you remember there was a severe drought. The fire engines had gone on strike. The army was helping out with their “Green Goddesses”, as they were called, but they were scarce and there was very few of them on the ground. As we were coming down The Hermitage we noticed that The Bandon Arms, the most prestigious pub in Bridgnorth, was on fire. The Bandon Arms was run by a man called Dennis Smallman and his wife, Marge. Dennis and Marge Smallman had five sons and Dennis was an ex-Grenadier guard. He was a well-respected local hero and he’d turned The Bandon Arms into a mecca for live music and entertainment. As we were going down The Hermitage hill I noticed that flames were coming out of the windows and the doors. The flat back truck and I went straight across the island, straight into the forecourt of The Bandon Arms, and the truck banged up right next to where the fire was. Eighteen poker players jumped off the flat back as one. They ran into the pub and with their feet and their bare hands they stamped and stamped and patted and patted until they had put the fire out. It was a proud moment for poker.

Dennis Smallman, who was in the crowd, organised a whip round among the more than 200 people who had gathered, and they raised nearly £800. I was honored to be presented the money by Dennis Smallman, who said to me, “Martyn, what are you gonna do with this money we’ve raised?”

I said, “I’m gonna get the brakes fixed on this bloody van!”.

Here’s a quick story about my son. I have a 17-year-old son named Jak, and he recently left school. Jak left school with seven F’s and one U so obviously I said to him, “Jak, what’s a U?” He said that it means ungradeable, so I asked him, “What kind of job are we gonna find you?” Jak just shrugged his shoulders, as he had absolutely no idea. Now I’ve started this little pallet business in Shropshire in a place called Digiland. They let us go in and repair the pallets and then we sell them on to a firm in Stoke. It ends up that every week I have to do all the graft myself and give Jak the money because he’s just bought a car and has just gotten his first girlfriend. And every Friday Jak refuses to work. So I said to him last week, “Jak, I’m really angry. I want to know why you only come to work four days a week? I want to know why every week you take a day off?”

And what my son Jak said to me will stay with me for the rest of my life. He said to me, “Dad, it’s because I cannot afford to have two days off per week.”

Mad Marty Wilson is a professional gambler and poker consultant for Matchroom Sport.