Spyke Golding: a life lived on the bright side

Known for his work with CAMRA, and his upbeat outlook, Spyke Golding leaves a fine legacy.

We buried Spyke Golding in Nottingham on Friday. He was officially Peter Golding but for countless thousands of Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) members he was known as Spyke.

He was 61 years old, a shockingly early age to die. He was diagnosed with cancer in August and his decline was too rapid to be saved by surgery and chemotherapy.

Spyke leaves a fine legacy, one based on commitment to the cause of good beer. In the ranks of CAMRA, there's a simple word that sums up the likes of Spyke Golding: stalwart.

He never sought high office in the campaign. He was happy to confine his activities to Nottingham, where he worked tirelessly to promote the cause of cask beer.

At first sight, he seemed to embody that old stereotype of the CAMRA activist: he was large and he had a beard. But he was never a real ale bore. He was unassuming, polite and quietly spoken and he had other interests that overlapped with his CAMRA work. He was a passionate environmentalist and one of his last requests was that people should go to his funeral by bus rather than car.

He earned his nickname early in life. Fellow school students said his ribald sense of humour reminded them of Spike Milligan's. So he became Spyke and he adopted the odd spelling to distinguish himself from Milligan. But in common with the famous Goon, he had a rebellious streak.

In the mid-1960s, when pirate radio stations were challenging the cosy world of Aunty BBC, Spyke and a friend set up Radio Castle in a disused railway station. The standards were not high. Weather forecasts, for example, were rudimentary: "It's pissing down outside and it's likely to go on pissing down for several more days yet."

Inevitably, the police arrived, closed down the station and threatened Spyke and his friend with arrest. Ironically, this early broadcasting activity earned Spyke a regular slot on BBC Radio Nottingham. Once CAMRA had arrived in the 1970s, any story about beer led to Spyke being called to broadcast his opinion at the station whose monopoly he had challenged briefly in the Sixties. He became a well-known local figure. Someone once posted a letter addressed simply to "Spyke, Nottingham" and it was duly delivered.

CAMRA was a natural home for him: it combined his love of good beer and his dislike of large companies that attempted to restrict choice. He threw himself into CAMRA activity, chairing the local branch and helping to launch its newsletter Nottingham Drinker. He was one of the driving forces behind the annual Nottingham beer festival, which became one of the best-attended in the country.

Spyke had studied science and went to work for Boots, whose head offices are in Nottingham. When he was made redundant, he turned to teaching science with great success. His CAMRA experience spilled over into the classroom where his startled students were told that while there was nothing wrong with natural carbon dioxide, applied CO2 should be avoided like the plague.

Legacy​

On the beer front, there was much to do locally. The city lost three major breweries, Hardys & Hansons, Home and Shipstone. But the gaps they left were filled by a clutch of new craft breweries, promoted by Spyke and his fellow CAMRA members. Spyke's legacy can be seen by the roll call of new breweries in Nottingham and its suburbs: Alcazar, Castle Rock, Holland, Magpie, Nottingham Brewery and Reality.

Spyke took early retirement from teaching and stepped up his CAMRA activity. He became branch chairman again and took over the editorship of Nottingham Drinker for the second time. Under his guidance, its content and design improved so radically it won the annual award of best CAMRA newsletter three years in a row. Spyke's last appearance on a public stage was at this year's CAMRA annual meeting in Douglas, Isle of Man, where he proudly picked up the latest award.

The affection and respect for Spyke were evident at the funeral. Every chair in the church was filled. Latecomers had to stand both inside and outside the building. Spyke had issued a last request: come in bright clothes, no black. Even the pall bearers and the funeral director heeded the call. There were many bright red Nottingham Forest shirts to be seen: Forest was another passion of Spyke's and he loved to recall the club's glory days under Brian Clough.

The service was a Humanist one but, typical of Spyke, it was held in a church as he knew some of his friends were religious. We applauded his memory and then the congregation moved back into the centre of Nottingham to down a few pints of Harvest Pale at Castle Rock's Canal House.

How fitting that a brewery Spyke had done so much to foster won the Champion Beer of Britain award in August shortly before he died.

He had the last laugh, too. We left the church whistling along with Monty Python's Always Look on the Bright Side of Life. Message received and understood.