Sadly we recently lost film star and champion wrestler Pat Roach. Known worldwide for playing "Bomber" in the top rating TV series Auf Wiedersehen Pet, the former champion wrestler lost his battle against throat cancer a couple of weeks ago aged 67. Pat made his name as a champion wrestler after winning the British and European heavyweight titles. He was a top wrestler, well known in the German tournaments, and was all over Europe and was frequently on the top of the bill at London's Royal Albert Hall. He even wrestled in New Zealand and I will cover that later on.
As an actor he played much loved "Bomber" with a gang of bricklayers on a building site in Dusseldorf and their adventures around nightclubs. The second series of Auf Wiedersehen Pet was set in Spain on the Costa Del Sol and commanded 15 million viewers worldwide. Then in 2002 the gang were involved in a scam to rebuild a transporter bridge in Arizona, and by this time Pat was already suffering from cancer. They were already working on a fourth series, but Pat was too ill to attend the filming.
Pat also filmed in the James Bond movie "Never say Never Again" and various other movies including "Raiders of the Lost Ark" and "Clockwork Orange"
As a wrestler he once travelled to India to meet the great Indian champion wrestler Dara Singh and this was in front of over 100,000 people. This was not uncommon, as Indian fans turned out in huge numbers when their film star idol Dara Singh was on the bill.
In 1969 we had the pleasure of seeing Pat Roach in New Zealand. I was in England at the time and did manage to see Pat wrestle on several occasions in the U.K. He was immensely popular and later when he was filming most of the time he liked to have a few wrestling bouts between films.
When he came to New Zealand he was into yoga in a big way, and one of his gimmicks was to stick safety pins in his face. I have a picture of him with at least five safety pins hanging off his face.
The following piece is from a Christchurch paper the night he beat our own champion John DaSilva. Thump for painful Thump a "latter day Roman crowd" had its fair share of excitement and gore at the Civic Theatre wrestling last night, where at the close of the main wrestling bout it refused to listen to ringside remarks of Pat Roach of England after he beat John DaSilva.
When someone snatched away the microphone, Roach, "the yogo enthusiast who laughs at pain" was of the same opinion as was Queen Victoria – he was not amused. The crowd was all for the New Zealander.
Roach took a lot of punishment from DaSilva who made quite a habit of hoisting Roach bodily over his head with his feet, and dropping him with a sickening thud – several times out of the ring. At one stage Roach seemed exhausted from continual thumping from his opponent. Before the next round he did some yoga exercises (maybe yoga is a wrestlers best friend) and came back in to the fight with fresh bounce. He got his own back by throwing DaSilva from the ring.
We will miss this colourful character of the screen and the wrestling ring.
