Helping other people is second nature to Loughborough College Engineering Technician Keith Large, who in his spare time has enjoyed much success as a published writer.
He explains how his offer to help best selling author Earl Spencer was to begin a fast road of fundraising for LOROS.
‘I was watching The Earl on a TV interview saying he didn’t write fiction because he struggled with dialogue. I thought I’ll invite him to our local writing group Grace Dieu Writers’ Circle in Coalville. We’ll help him.
He replied and said how about you all come to Althorp and I’ll talk about my latest book, Prince Rupert. Knowing how his sister Princess Diana loved to help charities I arranged to take representatives of LOROS and Rainbows along. We sold raffle tickets and books in advance so he could present cheques to both charities. Our refreshments at The Earl’s ancestral home of Althorp were very kindly sponsored by Coalville based Aggregate Industries.
Earl Spencer gave a magnificent talk and then arranged to speak at the LOROS Ladies Luncheon which raised £9,000 for the hospice.
It was my next involvement with Aggregate Industries that really did lay the foundations for a fast road. They had supplied some of the materials for Loughborough College’s state of the art new Technology Centre which was to be opened by the mastermind of land speed records, Richard Noble OBE.
We were determined to invite some of Richard’s World Record breaking team members to the opening of our new building. We discovered John Ackroyd, the man who designed Thrust 2, the car Richard drove himself in 1983 at 633 MPH to break The World Land Speed Record, lived on The Isle of Wight. Aggregate have a company based there and helped get John from The Isle of Wight to our big day. John, who also designed the capsules for Richard Branson’s World Record Hot Air Balloon attempts, introduced us 6 weeks later to his brother David. He runs an exciting project for schools and colleges, involving racing cars without engines… going very fast downhill. It’s called gravity racing!
John Ackroyd, David’s son Jonny, David and myself took a gravity racer to Market Harborough, where we raised money for LOROS through people paying to ride in the gravity racer. Little did they know, three months later the car they’d sat in for LOROS was to break the World Land Speed Gravity Car record.
That led to TV’s ‘The Gadget Show’ asking David Ackroyd and some Loughborough College Engineering students to build a car in a World Record Breaking four and a half days. Which they did, narrowly losing to Lotus whose car cost six figures and took 18 months to build. The race shown on Channel Five attracted record viewers.
From the success of the TV programme Loughborough College held an Engineering Day as part of their Centenary celebrations and invited schools and colleges from Leicestershire to Lincolnshire to the event, which included talks on how to build a gravity racer, Richard Noble’s next Land Speed Record attempt with a car called Bloodhound that travels over 1000 MPH and an exciting display of drifting by Westfield Cars.
Special guest was Jo Salter, Britain’s first female fast jet pilot who gave a truly inspirational talk before taking part in a head to head gravity race for LOROS.
Proceeds from ticket sales for Jo’s talk and entry fees from competitors participating in a gravity race time trial obstacle course all went to LOROS.
The time trial winner was 12 year old Nam Vu, a pupil at De Lisle Catholic Science College in Loughborough, who was driving ‘The Lotus Eater’ the car built at Loughborough College for ‘The Gadget Show’.
Nam then raced and beat Jo Salter in the head to head final.
Had I never written to Earl Spencer, I’d never have contacted Aggregate Industries. Thankfully I did and our students are having so much fun with gravity racing cars.’
Wouldn’t it be great if a school or college in Leicestershire could build a gravity racer for LOROS? Or even better find ways to use the gravity racer to fundraise for LOROS?