Nigel Shaw: President
Favourite Player: Roger Federer, one of the game's most gifted and elegant players whom I've had the pleasure of watching on several occasions, lastly at Wimbledon in 2018, courtesy of the LTA
Favourite Shot: Backhand slice, an unorthodox adaptation of my favourite table-tennis shot!
One (or two) things not many people know about me: After being obliged to take early retirement in Feb 2001 from Western European Union in Brussels, I was honoured to receive an MBE from the Queen in November 2001 - not for services to tennis! - but for my many years' work as Chairman of our Staff Association in both London and Brussels. Having worked for most of my career as a translator and later reviser ( French and German), I decided, in retirement, to pursue a third language, Italian, which I had dabbled with many years earlier. I therefore enrolled for a weekly course in spoken Italian at Oxford University and am now reasonably fluent.
I started playing tennis when I was 11 or 12 at my Dad's local club in Chislehurst, Kent. But, at grammar school, I had to choose between tennis and cricket and chose cricket, going on to captain the First Eleven in my last two years at school. For most of my adult life, I have played both tennis and table tennis but, since we founded the club way back in 1982/3, I have enjoyed playing more tennis at KBS TC, taking over from Phillip Candy as chairman in 2001, before " persuading" Duncan 10 years later to accept the mantle of Chair. He, and his dedicated committee colleagues, have worked tirelessly over the last four years to get the club to its present and exciting stage of expansion and I would like to pay a special tribute to Duncan and his team for making this possible. Having had a number of "surgical setbacks" over the last two years - and another new hip last September- I am looking forward, as much as the rest of the club members, to getting back on court asap with my friends old and new.