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DAVID MAUND

I am extremely saddened to report the death of long time
member David Maund. David was one of the oldest
overseas members of the club and, although far away, I
considered him a friend. I looked forward to meeting up with
him at the St. Louis shows (and the Californian shows in the
1980’s) and visited and stayed with him several times in the
UK.

Lynn, David’s wife wrote to me “David died on Thursday 21
August suddenly and unexpectedly. It was a short illness
and they really didn't know what it was.”

In the Midwest Miniature Bottle Club newsletter David Spaid wrote:

There was a twinkle in his eye and then his cheeks would redden and then David Maund would laugh. You
couldn’t be in his presence very long without laughing because he was just simply a delightful man. Now,
my friend and a good friend to many others of you is gone and we’ll all be a bit worse for it. After four weeks
in the hospital in Southampton, England, he passed away on Thursday, August 21st

I first met David and his family (his wife Lynne and their two now grown children, Simon and Karen) back in
about 1980. Being a Scotch whisky collector, David was working on getting approval for his 1981 Royal
Wedding mini bottles. Approval came but the contract with duty free did not, so David became his own
liquor salesman. There were several hundred cases of bottles to be sold...and they were. Just try to find
one now. Since he got to know so many collectors, and he saw how the clubs worked here in the U.S., he
th
became the first and only President of the UK Mini Bottle Club. The club is now in its 35 year and we know
how much he will be missed in that group.

On his trips to the U.S. for bottle shows, it became a standing joke that if David was coming to the show,
something would go wrong. Suitcases loaded with bottles would disappear, the plane would be diverted to
Texas, and my favourite, the U.K. driver’s license fiasco. It seems that English licenses do not have the
person’s photo on them. Well, how do you prove you are who you say you are when you’re in the U.S. with
only a license as your passports are in your luggage which has gone to a different city? David could and did
talk his way out of many a sticky situation. And that brings us back full circle to him making you laugh.
Many of these situations were Keystone Kops scenarios, but they all ended happily. To have known David
enriched my life and England for me just won’t be the same without him.

I have two ‘David disasters’ to share, one from 1999 and one from this year – he got no less chaotic as he
got older! I stayed with him for a couple of nights in January 1999 (he lived in a village near Southampton)
and we discovered that we were going to be in the same town in Cornwall on the same night. We arranged
to meet for dinner and David, Lynn and David’s parents picked me up at my hotel that night and we went
out of town to a large country hotel. The dining room seated 120 but, being mid-winter, we were the only
diners. Four of us had a relatively good meal. To cut a very long story short, David ended up, with good
reason, sending back all three courses. The steak was ordered medium rare and was like leather.
However, when David tried to send it back the landlady said, loudly “That’s medium rare, if I say that it is
medium rare it’s medium rare!” With a quiet word I got her to withdraw before David exploded. Her husband
then came out. He had the mannerisms of Basil Fawlty and even looked somewhat like him (I promise I am
not making this up!) There followed a farce well worthy of Fawlty Towers with frozen and partly frozen
sticky toffy puddings going in and out of the kitchen and ‘Basil’ blasting hell out of the kitchen with the door
still open. David wanted to stop at MacDonalds on the way home as he had, literally, eaten nothing.

The second story is one I was sworn to secrecy about earlier this year but David cannot be embarrassed
now. The Maund’s were leaving St. Louis on the Tuesday morning after the show this year and I arranged
to meet them for lunch on the Monday. I waited for ages then David & Lynn emerged, holding tickets for

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