As a schoolboy aged 13 in 1944, Allan Jay fell almost by accident into the sport that came to define his life: “In the summer term at Cheltenham College, pupils had to choose which extra-curricular activity they preferred out of (1) cricket — which I never liked, (2) gardening — which was out of the question, and (3) shooting. Like too many others, I chose shooting. The worst shots — and I was one of them — had to choose one of the first two, or fencing, which had just been added to the list. If it had been tiddlywinks, I was in it.”
Jay went on to dominate the sport in Britain in the 1950s and 1960s alongside his contemporaries Bill Hoskyns and Gillian