Sally Allen: 'My life with colourful Torbay entrepreneur Vaughan Hatton'

News that the former go-track at Churston - once owned by inventor and entrepreneur Vaughan Hatton - is up for sale has brought memories flooding back for Sally Allen.

Mr Hatton was a prominent and colourful character in Torbay’s business world in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. He died two years ago aged 87.

The track and other properties are now being marketed and sold by leading commercial agents Bettesworths on behalf of the executors of the late Mr Hatton’s estate.

Businesswoman and regular Torbay Weekly columnist Sally worked for Mr Hatton, promoting the Churston business. They dated and became close friends for years.

Sally, chair of the Torbay Civic Society, has recalled her moments with Mr Hatton - a life of private jets, flash cars, a James Bond stuntman for Sean Connery and Roger Moore called Rocky and a bumper boat business in Barbados named Octopussy!

Sally writes:

Seeing in the paper last week that Vaughan Hatton’s Go-Kart Track and Hatton House were up for sale has brought the memories flooding back; some good and some not so good.

One thing is for sure I learned a great deal from him. I was around 20 years old when I first met him. I was working in the Torbay Hotel as an assistant manager (dogsbody) and Vaughan used to come in every day for his lunch in the Buttery Bar.

I have always been a petrol-head and so we had a lot in common. Not long afterwards he asked if I would like to drive his beach buggy around town with a trailer advertising his Go-Kart Track. Obviously, that seemed like a far more preferable job to working in the hotel, so I said yes immediately.

My first job was to learn how to reverse a trailer, and any of you out there who knew Vaughan, will no doubt remember his incredibly volatile temper. It could be brutal. However, I have always learned all my best lessons the hard way and so paid attention and after a few outbursts of his famous temper, I got his seal of approval. Amazingly being able to reverse a trailer was to become a vital skill for me later on in life, not that I knew it then.

Most days driving the buggy and trailer were great fun, except obviously when it was pouring with rain.

The buggy had no roof, but Vaughan insisted that I still went out in the ghastly weather, just in case some tourists saw the advertising! One day it was so torrential, I said I wouldn’t go that day, not something I should have said, because a moment later the telephone (and they were quite large in those days) came hurtling across the room at me. So, I went out and did my job.

Our relationship developed from there. I think Vaughan dated nearly every woman in Torbay, I certainly don’t know many that he didn’t. We did go out for a while, but I always found Vaughan a much better friend than boyfriend, and indeed we were close lifelong friends until he died.

His brain fascinated me and he taught me so much. We would go flying in his plane and he painstakingly taught me how to prepare for a flight with navigational plotting. The only downside was that once we had been flying, he would always ask me to help him wash the plane – not something I ever agreed with or did.

He was constantly going up and down the wings with his handkerchief removing any flies that might have landed on the plane. He was a perfectionist, which is probably why he was such a clever engineer.

We used to go around to all his Go-Kart racetracks across the UK including Battersea Park.

This is where he launched his Bumper Boats and then sold them to the Middle East and various other countries. He had come across a very basic design for one in Florida and immediately saw the huge potential, so set about refining the design. Again, he had created a winner, and I am sure you will all remember the boats in a pool in Paignton.

About 10 years later and now living in London, I went to Barbados on holiday and whilst sat on the beach it appeared to me that there was a gap in the marketplace, as most people had to be quite fit to enjoy the water sports on offer. So, light bulb moment I thought. I could put Vaughan’s bumper boats on the sea.

Obviously, they would be great fun and safe for kids and older people to enjoy the Caribbean. So, I talked to Vaughan and he agreed it was a great idea but suggested that first I take a short mechanics course down near Gatwick to learn how to strip and rebuild the engines. Which I duly did.

In short, I sold everything I had at the time and bought 24 of his boats plus a ski boat and had them all shipped to Barbados. In retrospect I was ill-equipped to do this but again it was one of my steep learning curves.

At the time I was going out with a man called Rocky Taylor, who was the stunt double for Sean Connery and Roger Moore in the Bond films and at the time, he was working on Octopussy with Roger Moore.

After having gone on set with him a couple of times, I thought what a great name for my business – so a water-sports business called Octopussy was born in Barbados. Rocky came out to see me during filming and being one of the great stunt men, asked if he could help me move my boats around.

I used to take 10 or 12 of them by a trailer I had had specially built to the other side of the island for events.

The roads in Barbados in those days were not like now, then they were virtually tarmacked tracks with loads of potholes.

One day Rocky said he would reverse my trailer into my driveway to save me the bother. He had by this point seen me do it numerous times before. This did not go well as he demolished my concrete gate posts.

Rocky’s ego took a bit of a beating, and he told me; ‘you don’t need a man, you’ve got the balls there is only one thing you are missing!’ I felt emboldened. None of which would have been possible without the skill set that Vaughan had drummed into me.

As I said I have so much to thank Vaughan for. Learning about planes, cars (particularly Ferraris), engines and reversing trailers and he was also the most brilliant marketeer.

When his father Hedley left him £1,000 in his will, Vaughan decided to invest it into creating a patent for theft proof coat-hangers. So, he made yet more millions with his super colourful coat-hangers which he sold to all the cruise ships and many hotels around the world.

He was without doubt exceptional and a wonderful friend and it was heart-breaking to see him when he was so ill towards the end of his life with the dreaded Parkinson’s Disease.

When he was first diagnosed, he was heartbroken that he had to give up his pilot’s licence. I remember the day he told me vividly, it was so very sad, as flying was his real true love in life.

As his illness became worse, every spoken word became difficult for him and yet every time I went to see him, he was in his red braces and smiling, and you could see his incredible brain was still sparkling inside.

He would just sit and listen as I tried to entertain him with stories from the past, always nodding and smiling and trying to speak but unable to get the words out, when once there had been a booming voice.

Parkinson’s is an incredibly cruel disease. I don’t think that Vaughan could ever be forgotten by anyone who knew him. He was a dear friend, a trailblazer and a one-off and I still miss him.

Bettesworths are inviting offers for the 2.1-acre freehold site on Dartmouth Road. Offers are being taken by informal tender, a sealed-bid process, with a deadline of noon on Friday, November 13.

The listing describes a 230-metre tarmac circuit, a pit area and parking, with the rest of the land grass.

Mr Hatton lived at the distinctive Butterfly House, Elbury Hall, on Churston Golf Course. The agents describe it as a well-known local landmark, and one of several designed locally by the Torquay architect Mervyn Seal in the early 1960s.

Nearby Hatton House, described as a substantial commercial workshop and office property, is also being marketed for sale by Bettesworths on behalf of the executors.