A 100-year-old man revisited the Tooting club where he sheltered under a snooker table from World War Two bombing on Friday.
Leonard Jewel, who built aircraft in Battersea during WW2, refused to let old memories faze him as he enjoyed a cup of tea and taught onlookers a snooker trick-shot.
Mr Jewel explained how nobody first knew how to react when London was first bombed but the Conservative Club boys kept their cool.
KEEPING HIS COOL: Mr Jewel reminisces about ducking under the snooker tables during the bombing
“You couldn’t do much about it, you just had to hope the bombs wouldn’t hit you,” he told SW Londoner.
“Somebody came in and shouted there was an air raid on – it was the first time London was bombed.
“We heard them exploding in the distance, dived under the pool table and waited for the all-clear.”
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The Conservative Club wasn’t the only close call Mr Jewel had – he took cover in a friend’s air raid shelter at the bottom of the garden as a V2 bomb fell on a church in Balham just 400m away.
“When we came out of the shelter, we couldn’t see a thing, only dust, dirt and soot, it was sickening,” he said.
ON CUE: Mr Jewel shares a snooker trick-shot
Despite suffering from a rare bone disease in his younger years, and having the honour of being the first person in Britain to be given penicillin, he insisted his refusal to drink or smoke, committing to sport instead kept him young at heart.
