Birth: April-June 1962 NW Surrey, UK
Father: Alfred Kenneth Fordrey 1931-2018
Mother: Joyce Evelyn Clutterbuck [Fullick] 1929-1998
Marriage: December 1987 Wandsworth, Greater London, UK
Wife: Laura Blackwell [Shaw] 1963-a1987
Death: After 2014
Unknown
Birth of Ian R Fordrey, mother's maiden name Clutterbuck, in FreeBMD in April-June 1962 in Surrey NW (5G 642).
Entry in the Register of Marriages for Ian R Fordrey and Laura Blackwell in December 1987 in Wandsworth (15 535).
Entry in Ancestry UK, Electoral Registers, 2003-2010 for Ian R Fordrey address 14 Tonsley Hill SW18 1BB, London.
Entry in Ancestry UK, Electoral Registers, 2011-2018 for Ian Robert Fordrey born 1960-1962 address 9 Wandsworth Bridge Road SW6 2TA, City of London, London in 2018.
Two entries in 192.com for Ian R Fordrey in the Electoral Roll 2006, 2015 living in London SW 18, other occupant Laura Blackwell, and another in the Electoral Roll 2011 living in London SE17, other occupant Caloline F King, and another for Ian Robert Fordrey in the Electoral Roll 2018 living in London SW6.
There is a very long article in the Daily Mail 8 June 2014 The man with 99 lives: He’s narrowly escaped three plane crashes and two IRA bombs. So is ‘Captain Catastrophe’ the luckiest man in Britain?
Ian Fordrey, 52, sailed on the Herald of Free Enterprise - just before it sank
He visited a building in Docklands hours before IRA blew it up killing two
His flying instructor and another pupil died soon after he left the plane
He's going to Sharm El Sheikh in July. Be afraid, be very afraid
Back in 1987, Ian Fordrey was travelling to Belgium by ferry with colleagues. Enjoying a drink in the bar, 6ft 4in Ian was telling a story when he raised his hands in the air. His fingers grazed a ceiling tile which disintegrated at his touch. ‘I remember saying, “Blimey, this isn’t very well built. The place is falling apart”,’ says 52-year-old Ian, a driving instructor from southwest London. But he thought nothing more of it until a month later. ‘I was at home and a news flash came on the television. A ferry had capsized, killing 193 passengers and crew. It was the ferry I’d been on: The Herald Of Free Enterprise. ‘I got a cold shiver,’ he says. ‘I didn’t know what to think, except that this was getting spooky.’ Spooky indeed. For while it’s the sort of anecdote that most would dismiss as mere coincidence, it was by no means Ian’s first close call and it certainly wasn’t his last. The Herald of Free Enterprise sank killing killing 193 passengers and crew. Captain Catastrophe had sailed on it shortly before it sank. Dubbed ‘Captain Catastrophe’ by his friends, Ian is the kind of man who drives through a town only to have it go up in flames the moment he leaves. He’s someone who picks a restaurant for lunch and watches it explode before his eyes. He’s dodged three train crashes, three plane crashes, two IRA bombs and four major fires. ‘I don’t know if I’m the luckiest man, or the unluckiest,’ says Ian. ‘Disaster has followed me all my life. Every time something happens, I think “Blimey, not again”. It’s relentless. It’s getting to the point where people say Hail Mary and do Signs of the Cross every time I walk into the pub,’ he jokes. His lucky unlucky streak started as a child. On a school trip to Aviemore in Scotland, aged 11, Ian and his schoolmates arrived at their destination only to find they’d been left dozens of phone messages from worried parents. The train directly after theirs had crashed. A year later, on a school trip to Switzerland the same thing happened — the train behind them crashed in the tunnel. ‘If I’d have known how things were going to play out, I’d have gone straight to church and doused myself in holy water,’ he says. Since then Ian seems to have been on a mission to prove that, far from having the proverbial nine lives, he has 99. In 1992, Mr Fordrey had lunch with his ex-wife and a friend at the Sussex Tavern, in London¿s Covent Garden. The following lunchtime the IRA blew it up, killing one person and injuring five others. Three years later, in 1995, Ian was having flying lessons at Biggin Hill. The day after his lesson he opened the paper to see his instructor and another pupil had been killed — in the same plane he’d flown in. There had been complete engine failure, just one hour after he’d climbed out of the aircraft. This isn’t the only close call Ian has had in the skies. Travelling to South Africa the plane he was flying in narrowly missed landing on top of another plane, which had received erroneous information from air control; while above Denmark he flew so close to another aircraft that it skimmed the plane’s wing. The year after his close call at Biggin Hill, he was working for a motorcycle courier company delivering a package to a company in London’s Docklands before going home. The scene after an IRA bomb explosion at South Quay in Docklands. Captain Catastrophe missed that bomb by about 20 minutes. By the time he got home an IRA bomb had destroyed the very same building he delivered the parcel to, killing two and causing £100 million worth of damage. ‘I missed that bomb by about 20 minutes — the same thing happened with the Vauxhall helicopter crash (in January last year a helicopter collided with the jib of a construction crane, killing the pilot and one pedestrian). I’d been right there ten minutes earlier. It makes you think,’ he says with masterful understatement. But what on earth does it make him think? The litany of disasters which have dogged Ian read like a Hollywood film script. How does he get his head around the fact that death follows him everywhere? ‘Sometimes I feel as if somebody’s trying to get me — I might have been Attila the Hun in another life,’ he jokes. ‘I don’t know if it’s bad karma that so much stuff happens around me, or good karma that’s keeping me alive. ‘If I was of a more paranoid nature I’d lock myself up in a little shed and promise not to come out until the second coming. I’m not religious at all, but maybe I should be…’. He says he relies on black humour to get him through, but that he feels a level of responsibility for the accidents which follow in his wake. ‘Every time I’m close to another disaster I honestly think: “If I’d stayed at home would this have happened?” he says. ‘I wish it was funny and slapstick but there’s real tragedy and I feel bad and think about it a lot, but what can you do?’. Indeed, if he’d stayed at home, perhaps the Megaro restaurant in Elounda, Crete, would still be standing. Ian and his then-wife were visiting the town in 2006 and were looking for a spot of lunch when they happened upon the Megaro. They looked at the menu and Ian wanted to go in but his wife insisted they walk further into town to eat. They were just 200 yards down the road when she told him to turn around. The restaurant was in flames. There’d been a gas explosion in the kitchen. The chef lost his arm. ‘I just said: “For crying out loud…” and my wife said: “Oh, for God’s sake.” We were both so used to it at that stage.’ ‘Almost all the bad things happen when I’m on holiday,’ he says. ‘So anyone who travels with me has raised eyebrows and a sense of “bring it on”.
But, actually, people travel with me because they know they’ll be safe. Nothing actually happens to me or the people with me, we all miss disaster.’ Take the time in 2010 when Ian and his ex-wife flew to San Francisco for a holiday. They drove from the airport to the centre of town, where they went to a bar for lunch. Everybody was looking up at the telly and watching ‘an orange glow’. ‘The little town by the airport, the one we’d driven through an hour earlier, was on fire. The gas mains had ruptured, killed 50 people,’ says Ian. A couple of years later, on another trip to Crete, Ian found somebody in his seat. ‘I’d paid for extra leg room but there was an old man in my seat. I left him there and took the seat next to him instead. ‘Next thing I know his wife, sitting the other side of him, is screaming. The old boy was slumped over and completely grey. The air hostess called out for doctor and one came and dragged him down the aisle where they resuscitated him. Now every time I book a flight I think of what might happen.’ But that doesn’t stop him. ‘I live for my holidays,’ he says. ‘I’m never going to be someone that just sits around.’ And does he worry for the future? That his 99 lives might be up soon? ‘I’m an eternal optimist, despite all the carnage around me. I do live life to the full and I live life for now, that’s the kind of person I’ve always been. I’m not scared of dying but I don’t want to,’ he says. Yet there are some areas of his life which seem immune from this strange disastrous streak. He has never been involved in a car crash, for example. Which is just as well, as he now works as a driving instructor. Does he tell his pupils what they’re letting themselves in for? ‘It’s not my opening gambit,’ he laughs. ‘But sometimes it comes out and their mouth drops open and they go quite pale. I think it makes them pass their test more quickly — they want to get out, sharpish!’ And what about any more travel? Has he got holidays booked? ‘I’m going to Sharm El Sheikh in July,’ he says. You’ve been warned.
Ian Robert Fordrey was the son of Joyce Evelyn Clutterbuck, wife of Arthur Edward Fullick, my fourth cousin once removed.
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