Obituary: Gerald Plumbly - Cricket-lover and bon viveur who looked after Queen’s horses dies at 95

Published: 19 February 2010
By JAMIE WELHAM

A VET who tended to the pets of showbiz stars and the Queen’s horses for more than 20 years, but was better known as cricket-mad bon viveur and “terrible driver” has died aged 95.

Gerald Plumbly, who worked from a surgery below his flat in Wimpole Mews, Marylebone, was the stuff of legend in Soho drinking dens for a  dramatic rescue operation that saw him pull a boa constrictor from a stripper’s neck as she was being strangled midway through a show. 

He calmly walked onto the stage of the strip club, drawing the curtain as he did so, and proceeded to pull out his lighter and give the serpent a shock it wouldn’t forget. Upon raising the curtain, the girl was free to continue her routine. He received a standing ovation and awarded of a year’s free membership. 

Mr Plumbly nurtured a lifelong love of horses, believing them to be more intelligent and better company than humans, according to some of his friends. 

This passion combined with a disarming charm got him into the position to call himself chief vet to Buckingham Palace’s stables, al­though friends say even he was never allowed near the corgis. His unmistakable Rolls-Royce was a fixture in the palace car park. 

When breweries in the West End gave up their drays in the 1970s he was inevitably the man they called to get their horses checked out, probably because he was such a familiar face on the other side of the bar. Such was his reputation, as much for his gregarious nature and obsession with cricket, as for his expertise in the surgery, that he was head-hunted by wealthy Arabs to treat their pampered race horses.

The son of a south London blacksmith, Mr Plumbly went to school in Catford before studying veterinary science at London University. He built up the large city practice, popular be­cause of his work ethic that meant he would be willing to turn out any time of night or day. He counted dozens of West End actresses among his clients, as well as animals at circuses and pantomimes. Despite his affinity with animals Mr Plumbly was said to have “fallen into it”. 

His dream was to be a professor of French.

Outside of the surgery, Mr Plumbly turned out  for one of the oldest cricket clubs in England for more than 70 years. Friends at the Stoics Club, where he was life president, described him as a “backbone”, despite being “not an outstanding batsman”, never scoring a century and “only a steady change bowler”. 

Team-mates recall a speech he would make when he heard a player had dropped out. He would say: “Stoics comes from a Greek philosopher – the school of thought was started by Zeno in 308BC in Athens. It made virtue of the highest good, concentrating attention on ethics, inculcating control of the passions and indifference to pleasure and pain, a person of great self-control or fortitude or austerity and pain. When there are withdrawals from the side we have to show fortitude and make the best of things.”

He could still be seen manning the clubs scoreboard in his 90s. Needless to say, his cricket obsession filtered into his social life, and Mr Plumbly was a regular face at the Cricketers Club in Blandford Street, where he could be seen with the likes of Denis Compton, Keith Miller and Ian Botham.

He was equally infamous on the roads. On one occasion when Mr Plumbly went off the road onto a ledge, it was suggested that he might consider retaking his test. 

He replied that he had been driving since before tests were invented and that: “I don’t think it would be a good idea now”.

Gerald Plumbly married Topsy Rayner, also a vet, in 1942. She died in 1996 and he is survived by a daughter, Geraldine.

A memorial service is to be held on April 16 at the Church St Mary in Paddington Green.