OUR Worcester Legends series profiles so-called ‘ordinary people’ who make our city such a great place to live due to their passion, dedication and kindness.

We’re telling their stories every Tuesday in the newspaper and on our website.

WORCESTER Rowing Club veteran Rex Delicate, who has coached scores of rowers over the years, was thrown a big party by other members last week to celebrate his 80th birthday.

Fellow club member Jon Pearsall nominated Mr Delicate as a Worcester Legend.

Mr Delicate, from Droitwich, said that in around 1984 his next-door neighbour encouraged him to join Worcester Rowing Club with him because they would teach anyone to row for free.

“I was over 40 when I started – I was too short and too fat, but loved the sport,” said Mr Delicate. “I joined, initially as an oarsman and I was the worst trainee my coach had ever seen, and after six or seven weeks he threw me out of the boat.”

But Mr Delicate said he “kept coming” and would head out in a single rower and “thrash up to the waterworks and thrash back”.

“Then, after three weeks he told me to get back in the training boat and that time it worked,” he said.

“Now, every Saturday I go out and row, and have somehow communicated my enthusiasms to others, and have taught them to row.”

Mr Delicate’s original coach died at the age of 88 and was still out rowing on the lake up to three months before.

“That’s for me,” said Mr Delicate. “I will go on for as long I can. There’s loads of old whatsits, some of them came to the club when they were 14 and have been coming ever since.”

He said some of his happiest times are meeting up with his old double sculls partner Val Elliott whenever she’s back from Germany, having moved there a few years ago.

“After 20 years of rowing with someone, you know exactly what they are going to do,” he said.

At school, Mr Delicate said he had been so poor at sports that his PE master would always send him on a long-distance run by himself.

“I did this for two years and got fed up of doing it badly, so I checked out some books from the library and learnt to do it reasonably well,” he explained.

Then, after finishing school he was forced to do national service, and, as predicted, he said he was “hopeless”.

“But the last thing we did was a three-mile run and I came in second, but then the sergeant accused me of cheating. His lance corporal, who had stayed with me the whole way, told him otherwise. He said: ‘He doesn’t go very fast but he never stops.’

“That’s the same for me and rowing, I think,” said Mr Delicate.