The Sex Pistols were formed by music maestro Malcolm McLaren in London in 1975 that was the date on the Jester’s jacket. SEE The Masked Singer Spoilers: Season 6 Cast Revealed

We are now sure that the Jester is John Lydon, who came to fame as Johnny Rotten, lead singer in the Sex Pistols. But rules prohibited someone singing their own song on the show (“The Masked Singer UK” allows this, hence aha star Morten Harket getting to perform the group’s signature tune “Take on Me” while disguised as the Viking). Originally we thought that the Jester was Cooper because the clues fit so well with this rock legend. Jester rollicked in his first appearance with a scorching cover of the Alice Cooper anthem “School’s Out.” A promo touting his first appearance promised that he would “flush” out the competition. You need a lot of luck in racing, but Martin does his best to minimise it.In the sneak peek special, we saw the Jester with a bouquet that had an unlucky 13 red roses. He was by Pipe’s side as the operation expanded, becoming one of the most successful in Britain – and loved his boss’s determination to seek out what became known in sporting circles as the pursuit of “marginal gains.” In 1997 he recalled: “Martin and I used to go round Henry Cecil’s yard posing as buyers and stuffing our pockets with his oats and hay so we could analyse it.

In time be became the champion trainer’s trusted and valued sidekick – described in a 1996 profile of Pipe as his “assistant, chauffeur and resident court jester”. “He beat me 21-0,” Pipe recalled, “but I discovered his love for racing.”Ī putative riding career ended after two days on the gallops and a broken wrist, but for many years Barnes spent his summer playing holiday-camp table tennis and his winters working for Pipe at his Somerset HQ. With his departure, table tennis itself faded back into relative obscurity.īarnes’s move into horse racing came about when Martin Pipe, who fancied himself as a table tennis player, set up a match with Barnes – who, according to one telling of the story, used a saucepan rather than a bat. He said a mock prayer as he stood on the board, then took the plunge.īut the following year Barnes turned his back on the competitive game for good and turned professional, becoming a travelling exhibition player, touring the holiday camps – the milieu that had sparked his own sporting epiphany. After the final point he strode to the pool, with journalists and much of the 1,000-strong crowd in pursuit. In what was seen as the biggest showdown in British table tennis history, Neale had no answer to the returning maestro’s blizzard of winners. What Neale failed to appreciate was that Barnes had been practising in secret, adding even more spin to his armoury of shots. But in 1974 he made a comeback for the national championships at Crystal Palace, where he was pitted against his great rival, and replacement No 1, Denis Neale – who ramped up the stakes by declaring that if he lost to Barnes he would walk over to the nearby Olympic-size swimming pool and jump fully clothed off the 10 m board. In the early 1970s, following another run-in with officialdom, he announced his retirement.

A few weeks before his 17th birthday he was England’s No 1. He began winning junior competitions – he returned to Clacton to win the News of the World trophy – and at 16 became the youngest ever winner of the England Closed Championship, retaining his title over the next two years. He became serious about table tennis at the age of 12 when he went with his youth club to Butlin’s at Clacton he spent the entire week at the table, coached by the England international Harry Venner. He attended coaching sessions at Essex CCC – where, he recalled, the experience of facing the fast bowlers turned him to table tennis as a safer alternative moreover, he admitted, he was never much of a team player. He was something of a sporting prodigy, first picking up a bat aged 10 at school he was an all-rounder, picked for the cricket, swimming and athletics teams. He was never called George, however, and was reportedly named after the star of The Charlie Chester Show on the radio. George Barnes was born on Januat Forest Gate in east London.

Chester the court jester