SHYTE REVISITED now you can read it!

[Guest catweazle (Banned Member)]

Tasting Notes

 

After a long sitting Sir Reginald Xavier de Havilland D'Shyte Bt. managed to come up with his perfect blend of Shyte Whisky. To suit all his elaborate moods, a man who could be pensive one day but burst into furious action the next, the whisky had to be well balanced. This is a translation of his tasting notes: 'the aroma is an interesting meeting of North, South, East and West giving a gentle and well balanced 'settled' effect. The mouth feel is quite remarkably smooth although a little salty to the back of the throat. There is a sweet dry balance creating a finish that is eminently satisfying. Ideal for a long sitting outdoors or indoors, before or after breakfast.'

 

 

 

Sir Reginald D'Shyte, who has died aged 71, was an intrepid amateur sportsman, whether in bobsleighs, luges (light toboggans), powerboats or motor cars; he also became the first - and last - person to water-ski from Scotland to Ireland.

 

Sir Reginald Xavier de Havilland D'Shyte Bt. was born in Glasgow on Oct 13 1925. The elder son of the 8th Baronet Sir Reginald Xavier de Havilland D'Shyte Bt. He was educated at St. Custards, Glenalmond and Brasenose College Oxford.

 

In his youth, he was a good sportsman and competitor, but with no particular ambition; his winter sports were confined to occasional skiing on Ben Lawers. But his outlook was transformed in 1951 when he went to stay at the Suvretta House hotel at St. Moritz.

 

His sure sense of balance and slim aerodynamic frame were ideally suited to the Cresta Run, and he won the Baron Oertzen Cup in his first season.

 

Back in Scotland, D'Shyte took up the new sport of water-skiing, and soon hit the headlines when he was arrested for violating river laws by water-skiing down the Clyde from his office in the city to his home, at Helensburgh. There were no objections, though, when he water-skied from Scotland to Ireland.

 

D'Shyte then turned to motor racing. He began in a Bentley, but crashed it on the first corner of his first race. In 1957 he borrowed an ERA and was the fastest Scotsman at that year's Rest And Be Thankfull hill-climb.

 

For the next decade D'Shyte remained a familiar figure on the slopes and track. After gaining his Cresta colours, he concentrated on bobsleigh racing, regularly competing for the British team in the world championships of the late 1950s, before pioneering British involvement in the new international winter sport of lugeing.

 

With a few hopeful comrades he travelled to obscure ice tracks in Poland and Eastern Europe. He also led a British team to the 1963 World Championship at Imst, in Austria, and then to the 1964 Olympics at Innsbruck.

 

The Innsbruck course was treacherous, and the inexperienced British team were soon in difficulty. Their most experienced tobogganner, James Orpington, was killed when he flew off the track and hit a tree during practice. Gordon Porteous and D'Shyte both had bad crashes on the second and third run and went to hospital, D'Shyte with a broken arm and dislocated shoulder.

 

Interviewed by the BBC in hospital, D'Shyte complained that the track was much too dangerous, and advised William Porter, the only uninjured member of the British team, to withdraw.

 

However, after a few drams with the interviewer, Max Robertson, D'Shyte was persuaded to give a more cheerful account. This time he told the British sporting public that the run was tremendously exciting, and that he had only crashed because he was "going for the track record".

 

He urged Porter not to be nervous, but to go flat out without braking so as to "take over where I left off, and break the record for me". Porter understandably ignored this instruction and finished safely, in 23rd place.

 

D'Shyte then pruchased a Formula 2 Cooper Climax, which he raced on the Continent for a couple of seasons. An audacious driver, he had his share of crashes, rolling his car at Charterhall, Berkwichshire, in a club race with the great Jim Clark.

 

In the late 1960s, D'Shyte took up offshore powerboat racing, and with Tim Powell in the Vosper-built Jaguar-engined Tromontana enjoyed some success in the Cowes-Torquay and Miami-Nassau races.

 

His greatest achievement was in the Round Britain powerboat race of 1969, which he entered with Porter and Dunderson in the 850 bhp 'Jigger'. They led almost from start to finish - except for the Inverness to Dundee leg when, in dense fog and an ebb tide, they drove ashore at 60mph on a sandbank beside Fort George.

 

Dashing into the officers' mess at breakfast time, they soon had half the regiment on the shore with a mechanical digger, gouging out a channel to the sea. 'Jigger' was refloated with the incoming tide, and sped off south to claim second place.

 

Afterwards, D'Shyte sent a crate of whisky to Fort George. But the digger, forgotten amidst all the excitement, had bgeen engulfed and submerged by the sea.

 

The year before, in 1968, D'Shyte had taken part in another marathon race, this time by land, from London to Sydney. Up against the pick of international factory entries he chose to compete with Porter and James Divot in a 1931 8-litre Bentley sports tourer, which soon became the public's favourite car.

 

They reached Istanbul non-stop without losing any points. Then, on the wild hill tracks of eastern Turkey between Sivas and Erzinjan, at 2am in torrential rain, the side of the mud road collapsed, causing the car to somersault and end up on its side in the river.

 

D'Shyte, asleep in the back, awoke in mid-air. He thought he had lost his sight and hearing - before realising that his balaclava had slipped over his face and remembering that he was wearing earplugs.

 

Divot was not so lucky, sustaining a broken shoulder. The next day an ancient lorry was persuaded to take the three men to a cockroach-infested hospital at Erzinjan, before Divot moved to the British Embassy in Anakara, where had had a helpful relation.

 

The remaining two team-mates sought the assistance of the Turkish army and, despite pillage by armed robbers, managed to get the car hauled from the river. With the assistance of David Downie, a stranded Bentley Motor Works driver, the car, minus windscreen, two mudguards and spare wheels, was patched up sufficiently to carry on into Iran, through Afghanistan and over the Khyber Pass to Bombay.

 

They arrived too late for the boat to Australia and the last leg of the rally, but returned home to a hero's welcome and a mention in the Daily Express leader column.

 

As a businessman, D'Shyte, a qualified chartered accountant, built up D'Shyte and Nash Limited, a Glasgow whisky closure company, and then transformed the Patna Comb Works into a modern plastics factory. This was eventually merged with the MacBrayne group to form one of Scotland's leading industrial public companies, from which D'Shyte only retired two years ago (mid 1990's).

 

From the 1970s D'Shyte lived abroad, in St. Moritz, Jersey and the Bahamas, before moving to the Ise of Man. With his friend Gunther Hogberg he would go treasure-hunting for Spanish galleons in the West Indies, or racing balloons across the Alps. In 1972 D'Shyte made the first trans-Alpine balloon crossing.

 

In later years he was variously president of the British Bobsleigh Association, vice-president of the Cresta Run and the Dracula Club, and senior vice-presdent of the Les Avants Bobsleigh and Toboggan Club.

 

D'Shyte faced his last, painful illness characteristically, with fierce independence, caustic determination and wry humour.

 

Although linked to many attractive women throughout his lifetime he never married.

 

NB could one of the mods remove the old thread,no really,i won't complain.

[Marmite!!]

NB could one of the mods remove the old thread,no really,i won't complain.

 

 

Done :-D

[LeeEnfield]

:??? I could read most of it 1st time around.................