UKC

It falls to me to let the good people of Rock Talk know of the sad passing of Darren Jackson.

Darren Jackson was assembled in a hurry by 3 drunken apprentices working on the Allegro production line. He was then sold to an owl farmer and grew up Doreen Jackson and was schooled at Mrs Pringle’s School for the Gifted and Exhausts Fitted While U Wait..

On being thrown out of school for owl groping Doreen became Darren, after completing a gender transformation using a comedy Zapata moustache and some tactically applied biro.

He spent several years fitting heat exchangers onto swans and reconditioning whippets before moving into owl design. He is famously associated with perhaps his greatest triumph the Tawny Gudgeon Owl, which was in production from 1989 to 1994 before being replaced with a hat.

A keen climber, Darren had top roped some of the greatest Mods in the Peak District and was planning an expedition to Tamworth.

Unfortunately, he died after choking to death on the offside front wheel bearing of a Ford Mondeo. He is survived by his Patagonian Whooping Owl “Binty” and his Himalyan Leaping Cow Badger “Neville”.

A memorial service will be held at the upstair room at the Spit and Bumhole, Much Larking on the Wolds, Strictly no Welsh.

In reply to John Rushby: someone is bored at work

In reply to John Rushby: No flowers?

In reply to Ste Brom:

No, they do do Timothy Taylors though.

In reply to John Rushby:

Will there be powl bearers at the funeral?

In reply to John Rushby:

A scary experience, alright, I really felt 'out there' on The Gangplank at Bichen... However, such daring pales into insignificance when compared to my efforts to mount all the Mods in Brighton, one sunny August Bank holiday weekend in 1981.

P.S. Look, all these threads devoted to me are rib-ticklingly funny in a slightly freaky sort of way, but, you're soon to be hitched for Christ's sake. Accept the fact, move on with your new life, and let our past together remain where it belongs, in the past.

You need to accept that I chose to sleep with Marc rather than you at TOaTC launch party and get over it... For the record, it was your singing, or lack of it, on No Way that finally did it. I can't be with a man who takes tone deafness to a whole new level.

In reply to John Rushby: He'll be sadly missed. I presume there'll be a wake, where we will get a chance to pay our last respects, kiss his cold brow, slap him across the face, and for those who were particularly close to him, bugger his corpse before the Rigor wears off and he gets slack.

I remember top-roping a particularly savage vDiff at Almscliff with him, back in the mists of time, when dinosaurs ruled the Earth, and Norrie Muir was nothing more than a porridge stain on a Pictish kilt (I think it was porridge anyway). He tried to send a new lying-face-down start to the route, Veiny Columns, but never managed to get off his face, the move being too hard for him, even when the assembled Rocktalk picnickers gave him a bloody good kicking to try and urge him on.

He was called Dazman in those days, a ladyboy-style halfway house between his former days as a page three stunna in "Hoist and Pulley Grease Monthly", and his later persona as "Darren" Jackson, complete with a "penis" manufactured by top Ghanain plastic surgeons from a roll of hairy fat removed from a Mr O'Rourke, a previous patient of theirs. This penis was unfortunately mistaken for bait by "Darren's" pet Very Little Owl (the smallest owl species after the Invisible Owl), which carried it off and ate it one day, since when "he" has made do with a short length of 2x2 PSE he found in a skip outside Wickes, as his principal intromittant organ. Still, he had permanent "wood", eh ladies <wink>, despite the splinters?

"Darren" obtained much of his sexual pleasure from allowing his pet Long-nosed Owl, Sloper, to use his "wood" as a scratching post, a party trick that endeared him to many outside the seedy world of transvestism and owl-fancying. The things that went on at his parties!

A sad loser, sorry, sad loss, to the climbing community, who will now have one less person to snigger about.

In reply to John Rushby: Ah no not another lad gone to a cheesestick farm

In reply to John Rushby:


a sad loss indeed.
i was on the planning committee of darren's tamworth expedition and i can honestly say that there are few out there with the vision of darren and so i don't see the expedition being completed in the near future.

the mission was somewhat secretive but since he has passed away there can be no harm in sharing his brave plans.

the primary objective of the expedition was the first ascent of the south-west slope of tamworth snow dome.
base camp had already been scouted on a previous visit and was due to be sited just to the left of the boot hire racks.
a two day slog up the beginners' slope was expected to have taken three days and gone at grade I 2.

this first stage was to be done using owl siege tactics developed by the russians in the 1970s.
trained eagle owls would airlift supplies of kit-kats, pork pies and bottles of tizer to various kit dumps periodically placed up the first slope.

once at the top of the first slope the plan was to traverse out along the balcony to the first floor cafeteria where he could rest up for a couple of days and wait for a weather window.
the traverse would probably have gone at A2 or Diff 6a depending on the techniques used. this is hard to tell as you can't get a good view of it from the cafeteria window.

when the appropriate weather window came along darren was due to make the final push for the top alpine style.
this was not due to any ethical reasons but merely because the resupply owls' wings don't work so well in the high altitude thin air.

on reaching the top he was expected to plant a flag showing the logo of the manchester canals gudgeon preservation society - his primary sponsor.

the expedition team had not got round to planning his descent.

he will be sorely missed.

ps. can you get someone to go through his stuff and send me my axes and willans box back. also if you find 50 quid it's mine.

In reply to satori:

Will do - I am still reeling from the fact that he written a book, well i say a book - he had to sign the Sex Offenders Register.