I'm putting this picture taken by my brother in my gallery, because it's another interesting historical one, and also because I climbed (bouldered and in the Alps) with John Syrett quite a lot.
Joker's Wall is a very strenuous E4 6a, but Syrett gave it HVS!! This is my brother's account of the ascent, taken from his climbing log of the time:
"John Syrett did first ascent of Joker's Wall (at last!). On the first attempt of the day he fell off, his Clog 0 tore out and he fell to the ground. Then he practised on a top rope, and then he soloed it."

Excellent! - One day you should write a book Gordon! ;0)

Well, one day I am going to write an autobiography. I have a major philosophy book to write first, amongst other things. (But no more photographic books, as such.)

I climbed this route tonight and, having seen this photo, I'd thought there's no way that that's the way to climb that move. When you get there it's obvious and midway through the move it occurred to me "Oh my god! I'm doing that bloody Syrett's foot jam mantel"!

That's fascinating. I wonder how often the route gets done?

The UKC logbooks would have me believe that this is the first ascent in 6 years! This obviously can't be true but it does seem sadly neglected considering it really ought to be a 3 star classic testpiece. It was lichen free and not scrittly all the way to the top.