How the Weasenham Whinger sent a letter of complaint to his own wife!

How the Weasenham Whinger – whose nitpicking led to his entire parish council resigning – once sent a letter of complaint to his own wife!

David Fairchild has been called a lot of names lately, many of them rather unkind. Among them are a ‘cantankerous old git’, an ‘old sod’, an ‘interfering busybody’ and, lately, thanks to a lengthy, acrimonious and very public battle with his local parish council, ‘the Weasenham Whinger’.

‘People either like me or they loathe me, like Marmite, but there’s nothing I can do about that. I can’t make people like me,’ he says, ramrod-straight and immaculate in sharply pressed pink shirt and slacks. ‘During my time in the military it was far worse — they called me all sorts of things. I do have a habit of rubbing people up the wrong way.’

‘He just can’t help it!’ chips in his wife Christine from the other side of their sunny conservatory in the sleepy village of Weasenham in Norfolk.

She’s right. Even if he wanted to — which he doesn’t — David, 71, a former Army accountant, is like a terrier when it comes to balance sheets and due process.

So when he sees shoddy, slapdash or generally incompetent work, he leaps into action and, this week, he has found himself thrust into the headlines after an extraordinary win against the council.

David Fairchild, 71, has been called a lot of names lately, including ‘cantankerous old git’, an ‘old sod’, an ‘interfering busybody’ and, lately, ‘the Weasenham Whinger’

‘If I think something is wrong, I am not shy in coming forward,’ he says.

‘I have a need for clarity on finances. I get a real hump about it. I have to act. And it usually starts with a letter.’

As a result of this zeal for the truth, David has fallen out with a few people over the years. These include a brigadier (‘I had him cashiered and sent home from Northern Ireland for fiddling his expenses’), colleagues, a fellow church warden and committee members (‘but only the sloppy ones’), as well as a few neighbours.

Last year, the entire Weasenham Parish Council resigned en masse — all six councillors, plus the clerk — citing health reasons, after being on the sharp end of David’s myriad and very detailed complaints of poor practice, articulated in many letters.

Thirty-one complaints, to be accurate, about everything from invoices for new fencing being addressed to an individual councillor instead of the council, to the spiralling cost of a sports pavilion. And don’t get him started on the £150 bill for printing ink.

He also railed against decisions being made by round-robin emails rather than in public meetings, claims for grass-cutting and mileage submitted without supporting documentation, and took issue with the use of funds paid each year by the developer of a solar farm.

‘When it’s ongoing and it is public money, I can’t leave it. I just can’t,’ he says. ‘They were riding roughshod over due process!’

As well as complaining directly and in impressive detail, he also voiced his concerns through his own community newsletter, Parish Notes, which he has been producing and delivering to every household in the village for the past decade.

David has found himself thrust into the headlines after an extraordinary win against the council (Pictured: David with his wife Christine)

Now the whole furore has hit the headlines.

Because, after a £15,000 investigation it was announced this week that auditors had upheld 27 of David’s 31 carefully collated grievances, including one for a set of new mugs costing £75.

Hang on, £75 for some mugs?

David patiently explains that there were 30 mugs in total, printed with Weasenham Parish Council, front and rear. But the issue for him was less about the cost, than due process. ‘It included £6.50 for postage and packing and £15 for VAT.

‘And what did the clerk do? Claim £6.50 for VAT! It’s absolutely incompetent!’ he says looking staggered that anyone could make such a basic mistake.

Because let’s be clear, we’re not talking corruption here. Just ineptitude, and perhaps a rather cavalier flouting of the order in which things should be done. To some, it might sound a teeny bit like a storm in one of the council’s new mugs, but David’s quest for competence has divided opinion.

Some villagers call him Victor Meldrew, ‘vexatious’, an ‘interfering nightmare’, and say he should have just let it go, not least because of the £15,000 auditors’ bill that the local council, and therefore local residents, have to pay.

But David is bullish: ‘If the council had been doing their job correctly then none of this would have happened. But it’s worth it because it’s flagging up a systemic problem, all over the country.’

Some villagers call him Victor Meldrew, ‘vexatious’, an ‘interfering nightmare’, and say he should have just let it go, not least because of the £15,000 auditors’ bill

Indeed, many are thrilled that, finally, someone has gone into battle with the cliquey council.

‘Good for him!’ says Colin, a former builder. ‘They don’t like the truth, so they’ve sent him to Coventry. Pathetic.’

David also has a wider, national fan base who wish he’d be parachuted into the meeting rooms of their wasteful councils.

‘Send in Fairchild!’ writes Mary Brown from Birmingham. ‘They won’t know what’s hit them.’

‘Let him loose on our corrupt councils,’ says a chap called Steve. Others think he should be let loose in Downing Street.

David has always been a stickler for rules and fearless in his protection of them. ‘I love order, I really love it,’ he says. ‘And luckily I have quite a thick skin.’ Everything about him is disciplined. His appearance. His mind. His sock and underwear drawer — ‘of course there’s a correct way of folding socks and pants!’ he cries. His and Christine’s home — not a speck of dust anywhere. And his incredibly neat garden — planted symmetrically and weed-free.

‘They’re not allowed to grow here!’ explains Christine. ‘They wouldn’t dare! That’s David’s domain.’

Meanwhile, in his tiny study, everything is meticulously arranged — including copies of the many hundreds, ‘probably thousands’, of letters that he’s fired off over the years — all neatly catalogued, dated, categorised and filed. ‘I love writing letters!’ he says.

Last year, the entire Weasenham Parish Council resigned en masse after being on the sharp end of David’s myriad and very detailed complaints of poor practice

They are addressed to everyone from the Bishop to former Prime Minister David Cameron.

An awful lot to his local MP, Lord knows how many to the beleaguered parish council and a smattering to the local paper.

‘A while ago, you only had to sneeze and I’d be writing a letter,’ he says. ‘I’d often fire off two or three a day!’

‘It keeps him occupied,’ says Christine. ‘He needs to get it out of his system.’

Though even she was a bit shocked when, earlier in their marriage, he sent her one.

‘A letter of complaint — to me! He likened me to my mother and that’s the worst thing he could ever have done,’ she says. ‘I married him to get away from her!’

They met in 1967. He was 16, she was 18 — ‘he was my junior!’ — and, before he joined the Army, they were both working at The Trustee Savings Bank in Norwich.

‘I should sue them,’ Christine jokes, for saddling her with David.

David and Christine met in 1967 when he was 16 and she was 18, before he joined the Army

They married in 1971 and had two children: a son, who is severely handicapped, a daughter, and now seven grandchildren.

After a lot of dotting around, three tours of Northern Ireland and 22 years, David left the Army to become a practice manager for a GP surgery and, in 1990, they moved to Weasenham.

‘Oh it was lovely!’ says Christine. ‘There were two pubs, two churches, a nice shop, a post office, a village school that our daughter went to. It was a lovely community.’

Which David threw himself into.

He was a church warden at All Saints Church, where he secured a £100,000 grant to fix a badly leaking roof and had a ‘bit of a run in’ with another church warden and a lay preacher.

He also joined the parish council, in turns, as both clerk and councillor.

‘When we first arrived, it was very cliquey,’ he says. ‘The posh prats were ruling everything and thought they were above the rules, but the villagers who had been here for centuries didn’t seem to come into the reckoning. They didn’t stand up to the posh idiots.’

But David did.

David left the Army to become a practice manager for a GP surgery and, in 1990, they moved to Weasenham

The Parish Council didn’t know what had hit them.

‘They were using the back room of the pub for the parish council meeting. That is not permissible and I told them,’ he says.

‘When I was parish clerk, I had a fairly high turnover of councillors. They wanted to do things that were not correct and I was not having that. So they legged it!’

Eventually, David legged it, too, resigning from the council in 2019, citing ‘differences’.

Since then, as part of what he calls his ‘civic duty’, he has spent hundreds of hours scouring the Weasenham ledgers for inconsistencies and incompetence.

Today, the village feels a bit flat with its two closed churches and just a playing field and tired-looking community building.

There doesn’t even seem to be anything planned for the Coronation, though all the infighting can’t have helped community spirit.

When I ask if there have been any nice village events lately, David launches a tirade about a £675 hog roast, last May. ‘It was not in the budget, it was not authorised and about 20 people attended, including the Parish Council.’

Today, the village feels a bit flat with its two closed churches and just a playing field and tired-looking community building

It must be hard travelling through life in the wake of a man as punctilious and precise as David. ‘We’re best friends and I’m proud of how he tackles things. But I don’t like attention — I’m quite introvert,’ says Christine.

‘I don’t like people knowing who I am. But everyone knows who we are now and they’re not always friendly.’

They also follow a very rigid daily routine.

Up at 06:00 hours, breakfast at 06:30, out with Prinz, their 11-year-old working Cocker Spaniel, by 07:10 at the latest. Back at 08:00 when everyone — including Prinz — is bathed. Then newspapers, brunch, two more walks, lunch. Everything has a strict time. Where everything else is regimented and ordered, with handsome Prinz anything goes.

He sleeps in their bed, between them. He sits on David’s lap, licking his ear. He’s hand-fed chunks of prime meat at the breakfast table with a fork and, when he dies, David wants their ashes to be interred together.

‘He rules the roost,’ jokes David. ‘He could break any rule on the council and I wouldn’t care.’

In fairness, it’s a relief to see some softness. Some give. Some joy among the sharply pressed trousers and relentless quest for due process. ‘I am definitely mellowing,’ he says with a twinkle. ‘Sometimes it takes me two or three weeks to get round to doing a letter. In the old days, it was two or three minutes.’

The auditors’ decision this week has definitely helped improve his mood, too. Though he insists that, while he feels vindicated, he is not victorious.

Prinz, their 11-year-old working Cocker Spaniel, is hand-fed chunks of prime meat at the breakfast table with a fork and, when he dies, David wants their ashes to be interred together

‘It will only be a victory if something comes out of it,’ he says. ‘I just want the rules to change so that parish councils have to operate correctly.’

The elections for a new parish council will take place on May 4 and there’s a worry that there will be a shortage of candidates brave enough to deal with David forever peering over their shoulders.

‘If they’re not up to the job, just as well,’ he says. ‘I only complain if something’s wrong.’

It’s all brilliantly impressive of course but, I wonder, is he perhaps just a teeny bit obsessed?

‘No! Just correct,’ he says firmly. ‘Because something is either right or wrong.’

After an hour or so with David, I find myself liking him much more than I expected and admiring his dogged quest for clarity.

But at the same time, I am extremely grateful that I have never worked with, lived with, been related to, or been on a committee with him.

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