Meet The Team
Ted Walsh
Ted is the lead driver of our ‘refurbished’ big tin boat. He has been involved with boat racing and record breaking at all levels through to his current F1 quest to get a two-way world record average speed over 150mph, hopefully in the process gaining his Platinum star from the K7 Club. He is currently stuck at 149 mph or so, the elusive two-way average being just that. Ted also enjoyed the odd cleaning and scrubbing session as the BBP worked towards the day when he finally got to press ‘start’ and head off across some water in the old girl, the third man to ever do so.
Ted relies on Karen as his life support system and Robin-2013 to keep him somewhere near reality.
Stew Campbell
From Peebles in the Scottish Borders, Stew joined the RAF in 2003 and having proved reasonably handy over the years at keeping aeroplanes in the sky- he was the Tucano display pilot for 2008 and served operationally as one of those Tornado flying Dambuster types- he was selected to be the 150th Red Arrows pilot, flying with the team between 2014-2016. With The Bluebird Project operating a former Red Arrows Orpheus engine and receiving engineering assistance from the team, Stew- whose family have always had a strong interest in their famous namesake- immediately put himself forward and we were delighted to bring him onboard to work with Ted as Bluebird’s second driver, something he did very capably on Bute.
‘Sir’ Malcolm Pittwood
The project’s head of bureaucracy, our cool, calm and collected chief of operations successfully drove the bid to have Coniston’s byelaws amended to allow K7 to run above the speed limit and that’s just one of his major successes. While not a workshop regular, Malcolm’s contribution behind the scenes is huge and vital; his running of all things shoreside on Bute, including briefings and debriefings for every run, was absolutely exemplary, and we are very grateful to have him on board.
Paul Hannaford
Along with Novie, Paul earned a place on the team by dogged persistence in the face of adversity; they turned up on the beach one cold Saturday morning, trying to appear inconspicuous in their anoraks- they might as well have brought a banner and flashing lights! We demanded to know whether they were press only to find to our consternation that they were in fact "Speed Record Club Members" and thus were in fact potentially far more dangerous. Having discovered that they had travelled vast distances to freeze their bits off on the beach, and having seen them do it week in, week out, we took pity on them and adopted them as our independent observers when it came time to start recovering bits of wreckage. It's doubtful that we would have coped if it hadn't been for their help on the night when Beanie got hurt and without their CD ROM-like knowledge of all things Campbell, we would have been stumped for answers on more than one occasion.
With the boat safely out of the water, Paul worked behind the scenes with ‘Sir’ Malcolm Pittwood as part of our Operations Team and was a sterling PR man on Bute.
Neil Sheppard
Historian and successful Campbell author, Neil has worked quietly behind the scenes for many years supplying the project with invaluable historical information and especially in granting access to his unsurpassed collection of photographs. Sometimes we can only be as good as our reference materials and much of the historical accuracy in the rebuilt boat would simply not have been possible but for Neil’s kind generosity; Neil also came and mucked in on Bute as part of the crew.