Nosher Powell obituary | Movies

Nosher Powell obituary

The abiding memory that millions around the world will have of Nosher Powell, who has died aged 84, is of him fighting in vain to save his aeroplane after it had been attacked by a seagull in Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines (1965). Gert Fröbe may have been the German officer in charge of the plane but it was Powell who, as the stuntman and double, ended up in the water.

Powell's first appearance as a stuntman was in Laurence Olivier's Henry V (1944). He also had small roles in David Lean's Oliver Twist (1948) and Cosh Boy (1953), with Joan Collins. In 1952 he was a boxer in Emergency Call, in which he fought the former world champion Freddie Mills. Powell had a decent if not outstanding boxing career himself, reaching No 3 in the British heavyweight rankings.

George Frederick Bernard Powell was born in Camberwell, south London, where his father had a cart and two Suffolk Punch horses, broke and sold trotting horses and boxed in the preliminary bouts at the Ring, Blackfriars, to pay the rent. His mother gave him the nickname Nosher – for his prodigious appetite – before he could even stand, and as a child he acted as lookout for his father's illegal gambling joint.

Evacuated first to Sussex and then to Devon during the second world war, he sparred with Joe Louis when the then world heavyweight champion was touring American army camps giving exhibition bouts. Later he sparred with Sugar Ray Robinson and Muhammad Ali as well as the hard-hitting Nino Valdez, whom he would ply with exotic fruit in the vain hope the Cuban would go easy on him.

His first job was as a porter in Covent Garden and his national service was in the Royal Army Medical Corps, serving in Egypt. He had successful boxing bouts for the British Army and eventually became a sergeant. On his discharge, instead of returning to Covent Garden he turned professional, signing for six months with the small-time promoter Joe Jones at £5 a fight. In 1950 he won £500 in a novice heavyweight competition at Harringay Arena, north London, and from then on he worked mostly for the top promoter Jack Solomons.

In one six-round bout at the Wembley Town Hall in 1951, he was knocked down four times, and his opponent Ted Morgan nine, before Powell won on points. Later he would often close the bill for a Solomons promotion at either Earls Court or Harringay in a none too skilful but always entertaining contest to send the crowd home happy. He retired from the ring after outpointing Menzies Johnson at Wembley in 1960.

Following that contest he was approached in the dressing room by Jack Isow to act as doorman and take over the cloakroom concession at his restaurant in Brewer Street, Soho. It was there that he upset the Kray twins, barring them for not being properly dressed. He was visited the next day by their elder brother, Charlie, who appeared to accept his explanation. Afraid of no one, Powell nevertheless admitted that for the next few weeks, after the restaurant shut for the night, he had walked down the middle of the street and avoided multi-storey car parks. On another occasion he expelled Orson Welles for breaking wind but without the same potential comeback. A most genial companion with a good line in stories, Powell also worked as the bodyguard to the billionaire and philanthropist Sir Paul Getty and a plethora of visiting Hollywood stars including Bing Crosby, Bob Hope and Ava Gardner.

In 1987 he starred as the home secretary, also named Nosher Powell, in the anarchic comedy Eat the Rich. He and his younger brother Dennis ("Dinny") performed stunts in many of the James Bond films, and Nosher taught Jean-Claude Van Damme how to box for the film Legionnaire (1998). When not appearing as a stuntman, a good deal of his time was spent playing Sir Frederick of Gaywood, along with Dinny as Viscount Oval and Nosher's son Greg as Sir Gregory of Dulwich, in jousting tournaments he organised around the country.

In 1951, Powell married Pauline Wellman, with whom he had shared a pram as a baby, and together they ran a pub near the Wimbledon greyhound stadium. Over the years he was bound to encounter some of the major London criminal families. Mostly he was able to deal with them satisfactorily, but he became deaf in one ear after a man called him on the telephone and then fired a gun down the line. In 1972 he was a guest of honour in the series This Is Your Life. He published his autobiography, Nosher, in 2001.

He is survived by his sons, Greg and Gary, both of whom became stuntmen and of whom he was immensely proud although he would good-naturedly complain they were paid far more for doing far less than he had done.

George Frederick Bernard "Nosher" Powell, stuntman and boxer, born 15 August 1928; died 20 April 2013

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