hurlinghampolo.com
48
‘…Lord Vestey, known as Spam to his friends, and his brother
Mark, who is in a wheelchair after a hunting accident…’
Variations on this snippet referring to my uncle Sam
and my dad have surfaced in print over the years, but,
however many times I read it, it never fails to make me
smile. Not only has my uncle never once been called by
that admittedly catchy moniker, but the self-evident
fact that Dad had been sitting down since 1984 was
surely not the single thing of note.
Before the accident, for example, he had been at the
helm of the Latin American side of the Vestey family
business, benefiting enormously over the decades from
the success summed up in the three words ‘Brazil’,
‘agriculture’ and ‘sugarcane’. Meanwhile, on the polo side
of the ledger – entirely at the expense of any grasp of
who won what, where and when – his recollections were
couched almost exclusively in terms of the characters on
the scene and the fathomless amounts of fun that was
had by all those lucky enough to be there then. Framed
photographs in the downstairs loo of various prize-giving
ceremonies are the only acknowledgement of his
not-insignificant feat of winning four Gold Cups and
six Queen’s Cups along the way.
After the accident, his time as president of
WheelPower saw £17m raised for the redevelopment
of the world-leading training and competition facilities
at Stoke Mandeville Stadium for disabled men, women
and children of all ages and abilities. Polo remained an
overarching passion, enjoyed vicariously through others
and in an active oversight capacity, culminating in his
tenure as chairman of the Hurlingham Polo Association
from 1995 to 2000, with an overlapping appointment as
high sheriff of Gloucestershire in 1999.
Thus it was that the mention of Dad’s accident and
his subsequent confinement to a wheelchair seems so
odd when considered in isolation and without the
context of a full life lived undimmed and undaunted
on either side of it.
It is remarkable to look back on my father’s life and
recall only one occasion when he displayed anything
close to a raised temper. Disembarking from airplanes
was a challenge in the early years and the aforementioned
incident occurred when ground staff were struggling to
grasp that he definitely couldn’t walk to the door of the
plane to get back into his chair. But even that is hardly
a satisfactory rant to report.
Whenever, as children, we stumbled into the behind-
the-scenes twice-daily rituals of preparation and repose
that come with the territory of disability, it always
struck my sisters Tamara, Nina and I as a remarkably
jolly affair for our parents. Our father was entirely
consistent, both in public and in private, and the best
explanation for this must surely be his positive outlook,
