Richard O'Brien feature: Playing fetch on the heath - Riff Raff Statue > Victoria Street > Hamilton

Question: What do you call a boomerang that won't come back?

Answer: a stick.

It was 1965 when I discovered the literal truth of this old joke. I was eight months into my one-year working holiday and living in London at the top of Putney Hill, just around the corner from the public house which features in H G Wells' War Of The Worlds.

There were seven or eight of us sharing a two-bedroom apartment, the majority of whom were Australian, plus two itinerant South Africans and myself.

One day, I spotted an advert in a showbiz newspaper calling for people who could ride horses to audition for a small agency intent on supplying able bodies to the film industry.

One of my Aussie flatmates also declared an interest.

He was a 36-year-old, blond, six-foot-two Queenslander, who wore the first bleached denim jeans and shirts London had seen and was given to regaling us with tales of his love life and prowess as a prototype Crocodile Dundee figure in the Northern Territory.

Apparently he once rode into a pub, scooped up somebody's glass of the amber nectar and rode out through the other door. He was a glamorous individual and I was happy to be in his company.

And so, one wet, grey, dismal afternoon we found ourselves three or four miles out of London in a paddock abutting the Western Avenue near Ruislip Airfield. It was here that we were asked to ride bare-back on a very fat mare, around the perimeter of this scruffy field.

The trick to riding bare-back is to grip your mount with your knees: strong legs win.

I found it tough but not impossible. My companion, however, revealed to the assembled group that he had no aptitude for equestrian pursuits whatsoever.

They, of course, were indifferent. I, on the other hand, felt rather saddened by this revealing turn of events, as it became obvious that our hero was little more than a purveyor of bovine ordure.

Shortly after this, the agency phoned to ask him if he knew how to throw a boomerang, as Peter O'Toole was about to make a motion picture with Audrey Hepburn entitled How To Steal A Million, and at some point during this "caper movie" O'Toole had to manipulate one of these aerodynamic wonders of Australia's indigenous people.

Our fallen idol, being unable to relinquish the romantic role he had written for himself, confessed that he could, then took himself off to town to buy a couple to practise with, returning later that evening with a couple of tourist souvenir affairs painted in garish hues with slogans reading "Australia The Land of Promise" and "Didgeridoo it Down Under".

Accompanying these lovingly hand-crafted artefacts was a book of boomerang facts which revealed that it took great skill to master and control the flight of these stone-age missiles; no surprises there.

One also learned about the various ways they were employed, sent winging their way over a flock of birds for instance, in imitation of a flying predator in order to bring the birds within reach of human ones, and so on.

On the morning of the day he was to meet with the protagonists in this affair, he laid claim to an upset stomach and asked if I would go in his stead.

Noontime found me on the London Underground heading for Hampstead, with two souvenir boomerangs and the little bumper book of boomerang knowledge.

I arrived at Jack Straw's Castle, which is a yellow, weather-boarded pub at the top of Hampstead Heath, and shortly after found myself sitting at a table with William Wyler, the famous director, and Peter O'Toole, the roaring boyo himself.

A strange feeling, as it had only been a short while before that I had watched him riding camels and blowing up trains in David Lean's epic Lawrence of Arabia at Hamilton's Regent Cinema.

And so, I began to explain to these industry heavyweights the finer points of boomerang control, as detailed in the book, and finished with the fact that the two in my possession were obviously little more than mementos for tourists.

I explained that a genuine boomerang has a shaft longer at the held or throwing-end, and "elbow" angle of roughly 135 degrees, and a slight twist to the top portion: consequently I would be unable to demonstrate.

I relaxed, my job was done. I'd arrived, given them the salient facts, and now I could depart without embarrassment or shame.

A Frenchman who was, it turned out, one of the producers, leant into the table

"I `ave a boomerang in my car which is exactly as you `ave described," he said.

I professed interest and attempted to look cheerful, and we all trooped out to the carpark where our Gallic pal produced a laminated, state-of-the-art, 100 per cent bona fide boomerang, which matched my described parameters precisely.

We toddled over to the blasted heath and I threw this accursed bit of bent wood away from me, and we all watched it fall to the bottom of the steep hill about 15m away.

Who was going to fetch, you wonder? Who else?

Oh, they all had a throw but only I was privileged enough to go and collect it. Well, I was young, I was fit, I was red in the face and dripping with sweat.

A E5 note was pushed into my pocket by a hand unknown, and they went back to the pub and I went back to the Underground.

Later, when I was asked by my fellow flatmates what I had been up to that day, I replied nonchalantly "oh, I was up on Hampstead Heath with Peter O'Toole . . . we were mucking about with a boomerang".

Former Hamiltonian Richard O'Brien wrote the Rocky Horror Show.

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