Who is Tony Trude?
Why do I ask? Let me explain dear reader....
There are a fair few blue plaques around this city, and I understand that they cannot be just put up willy-nilly and there are restrictions and conditions on how and why. Being really very dead indeed is one of them I think. Famous helps too. There are imitators. One such imitation is part of the Wandle Trail. I would put my picture of it here, but cannot find it. It looks a lot like this and this link also shows the amount of interest across the web for this plaque, i.e. not much.
It states that a chap called Tony Trude lived in a boat in the Wandle and watched wildlife until the boat sunk in 2001. Now we are lead to believe that you can find out everything on the interweb, yes? So I did a little search to try and find out what this Trude dude did, because it might be interesting. How long did he live in a boat? What wildlife did he watch? What could it tell me about the history of the patch? Did he also find Coots frustrating and fascinating in equal measure? Is the hull in the Wandle his boat? Did he think that his patch was rubbish? Could he spell properly?
Couldn't find a thing about him other than a picture of the plaque, a picture of the boat (assumed to be his) and a question to the local council asking them the same question - Who is Tony Trude and what did he do? Nothing. Nada. Nowt. There are occasional mentions of the boat that he lived in, the Land of Cockaign but that only deepens the mystery. The land of Cockaign is evidently a fictional medieval utopia (but utopias are always fictional, right kids?), so perhaps the boat was fictional, perhaps Tony Trude is fictional? Who knows?
So there you have it - Who is, or was, Tony Trude? Answers on a postcard to...
A boat doing sunk
7 comments:
Tony Trude is one of the Kate Humble impersonators who have been causing trouble at the Bill Oddie impersonator's AGM in Aberystwyth this week. A pitch battle took place between them and a newly-arrived group of Vera Duckworth impersonators from Chile. You can read about the shenanigans at mostlybirdingwithray which might shove my blog over the iconic 2000 unique visitors mark over the next couple of hours.
So, is Trude false?
I know Tony Trude, He lived there on the river for many years.
I know Tony Trude very well, He lived on his boat for many years and worked around the wandsworth area.
Dripdrop - can you let us know more about Tony? You might be surprised by the amount of people that land here looking for more info. If you would rather keep info under wraps please mail me and I'll keep it to myself. Thanks for the reply.
He's real alright and a very Colouful character. He owned a Victorian salvage shop in the Battersea area for a long time.
Tony now lives down in Siddlesham, near Chichester
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