'The Great Ewart Carbon Paper Scam' - by Richard Riding

Back in the 1960s the administration of Chelsea-based Ewart & Company (Studio) Ltd was entrusted to one Christopher Bainbridge. Chris was a very affable, well-turned-out and well-spoken chap who would not have looked out of place working in a bank. It was his job to ensure the smooth running of a hyperactive TV studio where a demand for anything from an elephant to a double-decker bus had to be met often within hours rather than days. He had a small office within the confines of what can only be described as a madhouse. With sometimes two TV commercials being produced in one day the activity in the small ground-floor studio was frenetic, with sets, props and ‘artists’ t0oing and froing without rest almost all day. Set building for the following day’s shooting would often continue all through the night and as the set-builders left at dawn Keith and his film editors would already be sitting at the Steinbeck in the darkened Editing Room viewing the rushes of the previous day. Meanwhile all around there would be a cacophony of noise as props were manhandled down an all too narrow adjoining passageway into the studio. Often Chris would be hovering with clipboard checking that everything required for that day’s shooting had arrived or was at least on its way. Woe betides if anything was missing or was late, it would be Chris who received the flak. I cannot remember whether or not Chris had a stutter before he joined Ewarts or whether it resulted from the daily dread of working for Ewart & Company. Certainly it was at its worst when, with arms flailing like a flesh windmill Keith would lapse into one of his regular outbursts. It was a real experience to watch flecks of saliva collecting at the corners of his lips before turning into a vitriolic froth.

One day a smooth-talking rep from a stationery company visited Chris. Some sort of deal was struck with the new supplier and the well-pleased rep departed on his way to his next victim while Chris returned to his daily routine.

A week later a van delivered some large heavy cardboard boxes, addressed to ‘Christine Brainbridge of Ewitts’. These were eventually lugged upstairs by a couple of Bert Beach’s trained apes and when opened revealed hundreds upon hundreds of sheets of carbon paper. “Oh well”, said a somewhat dismayed and puzzled Chris, “I don’t remember ordering quite as much as this, but at least it will keep us going for a year or two”.

A week later there was another delivery of six boxes, and another half-dozen arrived the next week, and so on. In the meantime Chris had contacted the supplier to tell them that there had obviously been a mistake and he asked them to come and collect the 18 of the 24 boxes of carbon paper delivered to date. They referred Chris to the contract he had signed, which referred in black and white to a regular bulk order for carbon paper. But Chris had presumably misread the quantity ordered, which was enough to supply the administrative needs of the Indian Civil Service for the rest of the 20th Century!

During the ensuing weeks a further 32 boxes of carbon paper arrived. Chris, unable to bring himself to tell Keith the problem, had been stashing the boxes away in cupboards and under tables in all the first floor rooms at Glebe Place. Boxes were hidden in the kitchen, in wardrobes in the flat on the top floor, in the props cupboards and before long boxes of carbon paper occupied every spare area of storage space in the building. Also, every room at Bainbridge Towers was filled with boxes and the Thames was in danger of being blocked by the steady flow of boxes being lobbed off by Chris on his way home each night via Battersea Bridge. The situation can best be likened to Walt Disney’s interpretation of The Sorcerer’s Apprentice in his wonderful film Fantasia!


Chris was now desperate, the only place left in which to hide the steady flow of boxes was the studio itself. And so when shooting was not in progress Chris a lugged boxes downstairs and secreted them around the studio. By this stage it was only a matter of time before Keith would discover one of the boxes. Every time a delivery van pulled up outside the studio Chris dreaded another load being deposited at the front door – his stutter steadily worsened and then a new problem loomed on the horizon.

Keith had a German relative by the name of Uncle Walter who made periodic visits to the studio from his Austrian hideaway to check the books. There were unkind suggestions that Uncle Walter was Hitler’s brother. Despite being a millionaire he lived solely on cream cheese, crackers and natural yoghurt, though occasionally he would treat himself to half a rich tea biscuit. He would stay for perhaps a fortnight during which time the clerical staff waited in fear of their lives whilst the great bear of a man probed ever deeper in his quest for some kind of accounting anomaly. Uncle Walter only ever smiled when he saw a baby crying or if he succeeded in finding something amiss with his nephew’s accounts.

The week leading up to Uncle Walter’s visit left Chris a nervous wreck. He had lost weight, had become pallid and suffered three double hernias through lugging boxes from pillar to post. He had even developed a stutter when thinking silently to himself. With the arrival of the great bear from Austria imminent the time had come to confess.

By this time Keith was finding it difficult to work in the studio – cardboard boxes had halved the floor area and the gantry sagged under the weight of several thousand sheets of carbon paper. Somehow he still had not noticed the encroaching walls of boxes. The studio loo too was stacked high with boxes and the little patch of ground at the back of the studio had so many boxes piled on it the neighbours on both sides were complaining that the pile was depriving them of light.

Finally Chris summed up the courage to confess. On entering Keith’s office his heart sank for there was Uncle Walter berating the telephonist for requesting a new biro while the old one had sufficient ink still for a couple more sentences! Chris bit the bullet. Sounding like a sten gun with the trigger jammed in the on position he confessed to the whole unhappy saga. Uncle Walter closed his eyes with glee whilst Keith went into paroxysms of venom. His face went scarlet and within seconds flecks of foam issued like a demented fire extinguisher. Chris ducked at every expletive and his whole life flashed before him as Keith let vent his fury. Uncle Walter meanwhile was manipulating his calculator like a one-armed paper-hanger. As Keith’s fury subsided Uncle Walter gleefully informed Chris that he owed the company £1,230 6s 8d. He was about to explain a repayment scheme when he was interrupted by the return of the telephonist asking Chris to go to the front office to sign for another consignment of carbon paper…