Radio 4
Home Truths
Listen Again
About John Peel
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The Body Beautiful Alan Brown, reacting strongly to last week's account of the elderly gentelman who carried his dumbells by stairlift, came in to the studio to prove that age is no barrier to the body beautiful... At sixty seven, Alan, no stranger to keeping fit, decided to enter his first body building competion. As Alan puts it, "There were no geriatric classes for competitive body building," so the suggestion of his trainer that he should compete gave him food for thought. The Mr Hercules 2001 competition gave him the answer. Entering the Mr Hercules 2001 took Alan into the bronzed and perfect world of the body builder, "I had to be painted all over in a deep tan, then oiled. Most of the tan rubbed off on the bedclothes!" The next hurdle was which class should Alan enter? Going initially for First Timers, he thought again when he saw the line up of men in their twenties in peak physical condition. Undeterred, Alan spoke to the organiser, "He offered me the Master class - Over 40s and Old Timers! It was fantastic. I had no stage fright whatsoever in front of this enormous hall packed with groupies!" Alan performed his routine, coming an honourable second to a man twenty-one years his junior and rather more experienced, "I was a complete rookie!" Second place brought an impressively heavy silver trophy and a degree of disbelief that he'd done such a thing. Sounding astonished, he says "It's totally out of character! My daughter thinks I'm beyond the pale."  | |
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