Cardiff Corporation Bus Depot
My maternal grandfather Noel worked there as a tyre fitter for most of his working life.

So, apparently, did:
Harold Sakata, who played 'Odd Job' in the Bond film Goldfinger;
Harry Belafonte, popular Calypso singer and sometime actor;
Paul Robeson, famed American singer, socialist and civil rights activist;
Mako, Japanese-American screen actor;
Marcello Mastroianni, Italian actor.

Of course, my gramps could just have been a bit ignorant and racist, and worked with a big Chinese bloke, a light-skinned Afro-Caribbean with a tenor voice, a dark-skinned Afro-Caribbean with a deep voice; a Japanese and an Italian, and just assumed they must be the same as the big Chinese bloke, light-skinned etc. that he later saw on the small black & white telly in his sitting room.

Or he could have been a Walter Mitty-style fantasist who imagined working with famous exotic people to distract himself from the dirty monotony of changing bus tyres and so clung to the idea he came to believe it.

Or maybe all these people really did spend some of their working lives in the Cardiff Corporation Bus garage with my grandfather. It would certainly explain his indignance when my dad took the piss out of him over it.

He was certainly so stubborn over it that repeated challenges just made him more adamant that it was true. But then he'd been one of the kids who got beaten in school if he was caught speaking his native language - Welsh - but hadn't let it get him down. I guess a degree of stubbornness would come in handy faced with that.
( shinyshinyscalp less a man, more a way of life, Wed 8 Jun 2011, 13:09, 1 reply)

Or he was taking the piss.

( The Mock TurtIe ™ --- Thinks you are a cunt, on, Thu 9 Jun 2011, 0:09, closed)