SAUCHIEHALL Street, in Glasgow, has witnessed any number of striking incidents over the years, but few to match the sight of a man steering a bath down the road.
Han Ling See, from Singapore, was photographed in mid-September 1961, and, not surprisingly, he made the front page of at least one Glasgow newspaper (clue: it wasn’t this one).
The mobile bath was en route from John O’Groats to Land’s End, and was being followed by a car-load of students from Kingston Technical College, in London, who were collecting money for the British Empire Cancer Campaign.
The story could, and possibly should, have ended there.
But then the bath found itself being driven through the Borders, when, without warning, a problem arose. The carburettor packed in, necessitating an emergency call-out.
And thus, for perhaps the first time ever, the Automobile Association found itself dealing with a broken-down motorised bath.
So well-sealed within the bath was it, in fact, that it posed a challenge to the AA patrol team.
Read more: Herald Diary
“It was quite a job fixing it,” an AA spokesman informed the Evening Times. “They even found some bearings overheating because they were not getting enough air. So they had to blow oil onto them first.”
AA patrols were said to be on the look-out for the bath as it continued making its way through the Borders prior to crossing over into England.
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