Ronald Ron Norman Fawcett (1955-)
Genius on tap
You’d have thought that Ron Fawcett, a diffident, amiable moustachioed Yorkshireman, might have made an unlikely pioneer of corporate sponsorship in climbing. Not for him the brash posturing and look-at-me shouting of the continentals. Neither was the glossy magazine cover his métier; Ron invariably ended up looking like a gawky adolescent in pictures, an ill-advised helmet perched haphazardly atop his curly mop, or bright red hiking socks bulging from huge Hanwag Wellingtons. Instead, the man with bunches of bananas for fingers did his talking on the rockface, and we British loved him for it. All this unaffected amateurism – he was really one of us!