David
'Jock' Lyle - Dave, or Jock as he was known, was a member of our mythical FTQL ‘Day-One’ Club
in that he played in our first ever week, 28 October 1991, when he was a member of the Junction Castleford team that competed
in the FTQL as the longest serving member team in the same premises right up to the end of the season before last, 2009-10
and he racked up 213 FTQL league appearances over 15 years with the league.
David moved on from the Junction to be a mainstay of the Crimea and Garden House teams of the 1990s, where along
with the likes of Denis Taylor, Keith Carr, Chris Addy and Mick Cass they formed a formidable team, culminating in their glorious
lifting of the Division One title in 1996. Jock’s most recent success was winning the 2006 Pairs Competition at
the Top House partnered by our own Egghead Barry Simmons.
In more recent times Jock moved on to play with our then Chair Brenda Clayforth’s
team at the Rock Inn in Glasshoughton and doubtless this is where most of you will know him from as part of the Old Rockers,
a not inappropriate name for a team including Jock, as his love of '60s and '70s rock music was well known, as was
his partaking maybe, in what I will euphemistically call many other aspects of the rock and roll culture! He never tired of
telling his vast collection of stories of his very ‘interesting’ life!
Your Secretary and then Chair Brenda both attended Jock’s funeral and cremation
at Pontefract Crematorium on 14.7.11 and afterwards at the Early Bath in Castleford and whilst it was clear that Jock had
a small circle of family and friends, it was also clear nevertheless that they were tightly knit and it was a poignant and
fitting event, one where I had to smile to myself when his coffin was brought into the crematorium chapel to the sound of
Eight Miles High by the Byrds. I smiled because I knew that it was just that sort of self-deprecating humour that
made it just exactly the sort of choice that Jock would have made himself. Good on you mate, great choice.
So to finish,
David ‘Jock’ Lyle was one of the Five Towns Quiz League’s good old boys, he loved his music and he loved
a quiz. He was inoffensive, pleasant and he was well-known and well thought of throughout the FTQL as simply Dave Lyle, good
bloke.
David 'Jock' Lyle - born 1955, died 2011.
