Foreword
By STANLEY BAXTER
I ARRIVED in Glasgow still trailing my right leg. Sciatica stemming from back trouble had begun on a coast to coast tour of America. An American chiropractor, a distinguished Harley Street consultant and two osteopaths all had a go at putting it right. Now I was two weeks away from opening night and hardly able to walk, never mind dance and clown around with Ronnie Corbett, as my role in 'Cinderella' demanded. When moaning about it to Herbert Lumsden, the theatre manager (I don't suffer in silence), Herbert said, 'Oh, you ought to go to a fellow we've got in Glasgow. Max Bygraves had back trouble and this fellow put him right in no time.'
'Oh Herbert,' I said 'I've done EVERYTHING. It's no use.'
'Well at least give him a try'.
'What's his name?'
'Walker-Naddell.'
'Sounds like pure quack. Double barrelled name . . my voice trailed off as another knife seared down the nerve in the right leg. Oh! God!! Alright! One more try. Where does he practice?'
'Sandyford Place'
After a short wait I was ushered into a cosy old-fashioned consulting room, where I was greeted in a gruff, though friendly, voice by a sturdy muscular man of medium height. I told him the medical history and was astonished – almost angered – to hear him say, avuncularly, and with a confidence I regarded as verging on the insane, 'Oh we'll have you dancing by the end of the week!' I growled a trifle ruefully, 'Will you indeed?' and ticked off the list of miracle workers whose hand I had suffered to no avail. Warming to my theme I added, 'One of your Harley Street colleagues even had me on a rack being stretched by two Amazons. I rounded off my tirade by saying, 'Frankly I'm a might cynical about these and even your orthopaedic colleges.' 'You're cynical?'
We'll shake on that sentiment,' he rejoined, proferring a hand with the largest thumb protruding from it that I had ever seen. 'I'm a fully qualified orthopaedic surgeon myself but I seldom operate nowadays for this condition. It's done with the hands and the exercises I give you.'
A very brief session followed during which the famous thumb found the offending disc and detached it. I was manipulated briefly and given one simple exercise to do twice a day. There were two more visits before Walker-Naddell took me off his books but, as I stepped out into Sandyford Place that day, I knew already I'd found my saviour. And he was right about the dancing. I was 'charlestoning' with nary a twinge before the end of rehearsals.
Any time since that memorable occasion that I've twisted an ankle or sprained a back I've rushed back to Walker-Naddell and he's never let me down. The last time I visited him he was telling me that an Arab Sheik had developed back trouble in London and a source not a thousand miles from the foreign Office had got in touch with him, urging him to hasten south to treat the Middle Eastern V.I.P. 'So you had to go to London?' I said. "Not I! I told them to send him up to Glasgow and get him into a local hotel.'
In the pause that followed I looked out at a darkening Sauchiehall Street with thoughtful bemusement. he broke the silence with, 'You musn't indulge these multi-millionaires y'know!'