David had prepared his students well and they smashed into their opponents, most of whom were limp wristedly standing in a single whip posture with a dreamy look on their faces.  Most of these lost before they even realised they were in a fight.  I had not received any martial arts training from Richard Farmer but had managed to form some connections between the unarmed combat training I had received some twenty years earlier and the forms which I had learnt from Richard and Bob.  I managed to win the heavy weight section although I doubt if T'ai Chi was involved much, if at all.  When the first iron handed steel worker grabbed my arms and tried to break them I threw him as far as I could and kept on in that vein for the rest of the day. 
I have seen quite a lot of photographs of that competition and it is noteworthy that in every single photo I am standing on one of my opponents feet, so my techniques demonstrably owed more to the SAS and rugby field than to T'ai Chi.
Nigel Sutton and Ben Clark were also at the competition.  Nigel was not competing but Ben was in another weight category to me (which he  won).  I did not meet either of them at that time.
Meanwhile I was running several T'ai Chi classes a week in Huddersfield and surrounding villages, teaching initially Yang's Long Form.  I am delighted that so many of my students of that time are still my students and friends.  In 1990, September I think, one of my students, Anna Logue suggested that I go with her to a seminar being held by Nigel in Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire.  She felt that Nigel and I would like each other regardless of T'ai Chi and she was right.  During the course of the day someone I was pushing hands with mentioned that he was hoping to go to Taiwan as part of the British Team in November of that year.  Chatting to Nigel later he told me that there was a selection/training meeting in London a couple of weeks later and it was there that I met the rest of the team.  I have always felt that it has greatly helped Zhong Ding as an organisation to have a team spirit at the root of the relationship between several of the members of the Technical Panel. During the course of the next few months I met Master Tan Ching Ngee who impressed me enormously.
As I recall we met at Heathrow at an unearthly hour on Tuesday morning and arrived in Taiwan at teatime on Wednesday evening.  Master Tan met us at the airport and took us straight to a Karioke bar to drink and sing for eight hours.  Whether he had been paid to do this by the American team I do not know but I never recovered from jet lag, compounded by heat and alcohol, for the rest of the trip.  The competition was over the weekend.  I got to the quarter finals but felt I should have done better.  My only excuse  is that I did not realise that you were allowed to use locks and throws.
Socially on the tour I spent my time with Dan Docherty who is mellower company than Ben Clark who varied between wanting to fight me or telling me he loved me like a brother.
We left Taiwan with only one injury, one of the team got a compound fracture of the nose in a night club.  Dan and I were very smug because we had stayed in the hotel chatting and drinking a bottle of scotch after the beer had run out.  I believe it was  a novel experience for both of us to be the sensible ones.
From Taiwan we flew to Singapore and the drove up to Malaysia.  There I had the great pleasure of meeting Fong's family and experiencing Chinese hospitality at first hand.  In Batu Pahat we visited the local brothel where John Fowler and I did nothing more reprehensible than drink tea.  I make no mention of the rest of the team.
It was therefore particularly distressing that when the police raided both the tea drinkers and those less innocent were ushered by the owners into the same room.  Presumably money changed hands because the police never did find the room where fifty or so male customers crowded together in the dark, without, so far as I could judge, any girls.
Being serious martial artists we did, of course, do some T'ai Chi.  Nigel and I went for a quiet drink together when we went to a T'ai Chi class to push hands against the locals.  No one told me till afterwards but I was "set up" to push hands against the new Malay world champion.  Relaxed as I was it was no problem to help him fall over but without twenty pints inside me it might not have been so easy.
At the time I was doing Yang's Long Form and rather cruelly the rest of the team would ask me to demonstrate whenever they wanted to drift off for two or three pints (you probably know Yang's Long Form takes twenty minutes or so to perform).
I carried on competing for a couple of years after 1990 and I think it is quite helpful.  At the very best it does away with fantasy.  That is, you find out how good you are.  However, long term I think it hinders the learning process in that you concentrate on your strengths and the concept of "investment in loss" goes out of the window.  Sooner or later, I think, you get beyond it.
I have hardly, I realise, mentioned Nigel at all in this article.  I therefore close by saying that I regard him as a great friend who has had major success in bridging the gap between East and West, Zhong Ding members are greatly privileged in having access to Nigel as a teacher and the masters whom he has unselfishly made available to us.  I like to think that he and I have certain characteristics in common. 
What is wrong with reading Biggles?
Vincent.