Ten Amazing Facts You Never Knew About GNF

He grows cacti from seed. The oldest ones in Laboratory C2 were sprouted in 1980. He threw away three quarters of his collection (in poor condition) in 2007. He also grows Japanese Maples – but not in C2. Whether this is the old C2, or the new C2, is irrelevant. GNF did not have to remember a new laboratory number when he moved in 2007.

He has never eaten meat - neither have any of his children. His wife hasn't eaten meat since 1964. His parents were also vegetarians. Thus his grand-daughter Leila (born in 2007) is a fourth generation vegetarian.

He drinks tea and coffee by the pint - one of each per day. His favourite coffee is Continental. His favourite tea is Lapsang Souchong.

His father and two brothers were all Mr G. Frykman. He was the only Mr Frykman in England until his brother moved from Wales to Wakefield. His wife is still the only Mrs Frykman in England.

He recorded five LPs (four with Magdalen College, Oxford and one with St John’s College, Cambridge) while at university. They are of church music. LPs are historic predecessors to CDs (for those too young to remember), and were themselves successors to 78 rpm shellac discs (of which GNF has a couple of thousand).

He built his own long-case ("grandfather") clock in 1983. He has now inherited two more (his grandfathers’ grandfather clocks, actually), and bought a fourth on eBay (a Swedish Mora Clock from Hamburg, Germany) in 2005. He has three Ansonia mantle clocks as well – two of them being Sharp Gothic VP varieties, and the third a very rare Ansonia Magenta.

He played lead guitar in a band called "Electric Toilet" - for one night only - in 1980. Electric toilets are now common in Sweden. They weren't in 1980. The name of the Abingdon School Staff Punk Rock Group was chosen because it seemed so ridiculous.

He played goalkeeper for Cutteslowe County Primary School football team, Oxford, in the 1964-5 season. The team played two matches, and lost both. He took up playing football (Warwick School staff five-a-side) again 41 years later.

He had visited all the cathedrals in England, mostly by bicycle, by the age of 20. He also walked the Pennine Way at the age of 21, cycled across Sweden and back aged 46 and up the Western Isles of Scotland (a.k.a. Inner and Outer Hebrides) aged 47.

He was interviewed on "Woman's Hour" in 1970. He has also been a licensed Class A Radio Amateur since 1987. He kept bees (like his father did before him) from 1981 to 1995.

He is the 36th-great-grandson of King Alfred the Great. He has 11 first cousins – nine Swedish and two English.

Only two pupils in 30 years have guessed at what the "N" stands for in GNF. One spelled it wrong, though.

In 1971 he sight-read Mozart's Requiem in a concert in Oxford, standing next to a drunk woman tenor. She died shortly afterwards.

There are many more than ten facts above.