Fiona Campbell claimed the Mario McClarnon cup

Anna swam in the Serpentine as a little girl, being taught to swim by dad Mario during the school holidays.  She went on to race with us in the late 1990s and early 2000s.  She also trained for a successful Channel crossing, joining the elite "24 HOUR CLUB".

On Monday 2 September 2002, at 8.43 pm Anna set off from Dover for her Channel attempt.  She landed in France 24 hours and 8 minutes later, at 8.51 pm, Tuesday 3 September.  When asked if the swim took so long for reasons such as weather and tides, Anna replied “no, I’m just slow.  It costs a lot to swim the English Channel and I wanted my money’s worth.  What’s more, I was enjoying the view.”

Mario worked in the Clapham Junction signal box, at a time when signals were switched by manual leavers -  heavy, physical work requiring repeated strength all day.  After a shift in the signal box he would run barefoot and bare-chested from Clapham Junction to Hyde Park and back, summer and winter.  In 1981 he ran the first London Marathon, complete with kilt and bagpipes, barefoot and bare-chested, stopping occasionally along the way to pipe the crowd and collect money for charity. An accompanying friend carried two buckets for the many coins tossed in for the good causes, getting heavier and heavier as the 26 miles, and Mario's playing, progressed.  His accomplice said, "by the finish it seemed my arms had grown by two or three inches".

Daughter Anna noted that Mario ran from Vauxhall to the start at Blackheath, completed the marathon, then ran back to Vauxhall (all barefoot).

Mario was an ultra-marathon runner "before such things were invented!"

For many decades Mario would pipe us onto the board for the Christmas Day race, often ready changed in his swimming trunks.  In 1963 Mario was ready to pipe the swimmers onto the board on the morning of the 100th race.  Unfortunately, the race was cancelled at the last minute due to ice so Mario played a reel whilst members took their quick plunge.

Mario was occassionally mistaken for Jimmy Savile, being an unintended look-alike and more than once was stopped in the street and asked for an autograph.  These were always signed "Mario McClarnon", to the puzzlement (and sometimes indignation) of the autograph hunter!

At the time this was seen as an amusing compliment. Mario died long before Savile's real life was exposed.

Mario was a man of great generosity of spirit often collecting for charity in his kilt playing the bagpipes. A famous story is his arrest outside Selfridges. He had been piping away and ordered by a WPC (in the days that one had WPCs ) to move on. She had come back, found him still playing and arrested him. Hauled before the magistrate's court the beak dismissed the case saying how much he enjoyed listening to Mario when he frequently passed him and that how, in an article in "The Times", he had read that all his busking money collected was not retained by Mario but donated to charity.  The case hit the national press.

Tragically, Mario was knocked down by a teenager on a motor scooter when crossing a road in Victoria.  He survived but spent the last 18 months of his life in Stoke Manderville hospital paralyzed from the neck down.  He died in 2007.