Metcalfe, 'Dickie' (Christopher Le Strange)

[Marcus Mussa]

Does anybody know if Christopher Le Strange Metcalfe was the same person as "Dickie" Metcalfe? The former apparently drove a Lotus 23 in the 70's and the latter a Lola Mk1 in the 60's.

[Alan Morgan]

Indeed he was, Marcus. A real gentleman, who enjoyed his racing until very late in life!

[Marcus Mussa]

I actually met him (or should I say them). It was in 1966 at Goodwood, I think it was the very last meeting there before it was revived. I was staying nearby with a friend of my mother’s, and she said that I must go and say hello to this friend of her’s, Dickie Metcalfe. Which I did. He was running a lovely black Mk1 Lola and I think he won his race. Most of my mother’s friends, including I think this one, were ex-“War Office” colleagues, so it was interesting to read fairly recently that Dickie Metcalfe was in fact an MI5 double agent during the war (codename “Balloon”). This means of course that the opposition thought he was working for them, but in fact he was working for “us” (this is all now in the public domain and can be read in the now published “secret” diaries of Guy Liddell, who was head of the department where Metcalfe was “controlled”). So he was not only a gentleman, but a very gallant (and un-sung) hero in his way.

A number of drivers seem to have been in the war time Security Service, amongst others Jock Horsfall. I wonder if anybody knows of any others? I have a hunch about one, whom I also met in rather similar circumstances.

And where is that Lola now?

[Jeremy Hall]

He must have liked black cars , because his Lotus 23-it was a 23C,I remember it had a peculiar body, was black.I raced against him in the late seventies at an Eight Clubs meeting at Silverstone. The body work of the car meant that the HSCC would not accept the car so it only came out at clubbies.
The 'Dickie' part come from Richard 'Dickie' Metcalfe the wartime and post war radio comedian and it was typical that people with the same surname got the associated nickname.

[Alan Morgan]

I, too, met "Dickie" Metcalfe at Silverstone in 1979. We were next to him in the paddock. I was racing in F4, and he had his rebodied Lotus 23. He was charm itself. The double agent news is quite a surprise!

[Marcus Mussa]

Alan, a mutual friend of ours who is in the BRDC, knew he had been in MI5 but did not know the details either. They were all (well almost all) such a secretive lot and it was only when I read about him in those Diaries that I realized why I had been sent along to say hello 40 years before! Now I wish I had got to know him better. If you google on him there seems to be a family connection with Liddell, which is maybe how "Dickie" was recruited in the first place. Lucky the "opposition" did not have google at the time!