Gerry O’Loughlin at Vice Versa

Gerry O’Loughlin was one of the jokesters in the legendary Spivs and Drones. With a large moon-like face and deadpan expression, Jerry could be guaranteed to take the mickey. By trade he worked for the Union Steamship Company but when on his ship was in town he boarded with Mrs Ketterer, giving rise to much speculation but the eventual realisation that it was all strictly kosher.

I can remember him as an aging fellow but actually he started coming to Piha at the age of 24 in 1947, having served in the 2nd NZEF as a cook in the 2nd NZEF in Egypt and Italy.

He was a foundation member of the RSA and helped keep the place solvent, and was made a life member in 1992, although people said he’d been a devotee for life long before that. His costumes at the annual Vice Versa dances were usually prize winners – see him here as a bride – unless he got unseated by Merv Otto who also had a talent for cross-dressing.

He was one of the people who got the tennis courts by selling debentures and he created a competition for local children for the biggest eel caught in Piha Stream.

He took up Bowls in the 1950s, was president of the Club in the mid-1970s and kept on coming out to Piha to play even after he retired to a retirement village in Glen Eden. He died in 2000 aged 77.