John Williams spent 20 years as secretary of the English Bridge Union (1978-1998), and he is now Vice-President. Before that, John was Managing Director of the Derby Playhouse for 16 years, at a time when life was particularly hard for provincial theatres in Britain. I expect both jobs had more than their fair share of challenges, and I'm sure John's calm gentle, fatherly approach stood him in good stead.

John describes how he started playing Bridge at Bristol University, in 1957:

From his past, John presents a disaster of rare elegance and purity:

I was South, playing with an irregular partner in a Derbyshire teams of 8 interclub match, about 25 years ago. East, bolstered by his maximum count which he felt offset the fact that his points weren't all in his main suit, opened a weak 2ª. I passed and West, who had evidently played with this particular partner before, contented himself with a raise to 4ª. My partner doubled, possibly influenced by his promising trump holding. We had no agreement about the difference between double and 4NT in this sequence, and I thought it prudent at the vulnerability to remove the double to 5§ .West found a chair to stand on before doubling, and cashed two top trumps before switching to ©K . East overtook, perforce, and switched to ¨K. The carnage which followed can be imagined. This is the only occasion when I can ever recall going for -1700: embarrassing when this resulted from 9 down , nonvulnerable at the old duplicate scoring! Incidentally, a few years later and now in Oxfordshire, I lost a Hubert Phillips match when Brian Claridge doubled an opening bid of 4ª on a vaguely similar trump-heavy hand, after which I went for -800 in 5© doubled. The moral on such hands, certainly for anyone partnering me it would seem, is take your plus score quietly before the idiot across the table has a chance to decline it.

I also asked John for a "Triumph" hand:

I think tales of technical wizardry involving squeezes and suchlike are actually a bit boring for the reader. The triumphs I remember with particular satisfaction all arise from the match situation and result, rather than any feat of cardplay. Of these, the most dramatic was certainly the Four Stars A Final at the Brighton Swiss Teams weekend a few years ago. Brian Claridge and I were playing with the Turkish national team, Kubac and Karadeniz playing throughout as a pair and Brian and I making a threesome with their best player, Nafiz Zorlu. We actually played only one match together in the final. In the last match I played with Nafiz against Peter Crouch and Andrew Robson (the other two Turks faced Raymond Brock and John Pottage at the other table). We needed a big win and favourable results elsewhere to take the trophy. After 4 of the 8 boards nothing much had happened but on the next , Crouch psyched a jump shift on a Yarborough. Robson, who had a big hand, leapt straight to RKCB. Crouch could have saved something by passing but saw it through with 5§, showing 0 or 3 Aces, after which Robson leapt to a grand. I looked at my 2 Aces and doubled, beating Nafiz - who held the Ace of trumps - to the punch. The resulting 1700 penalty (this time 6 down vulnerable) was the prelude to the complete collapse of our opponents. The good news was that we got our 20-0 and other results combined to see us home. The bad news was that a subsequent appeal arising from another match (which was the subject of hot debate at the time) put the team which received the favourable ruling 1 VP ahead of us.