Judo pioneer Chris Gallie has written a book about her incredible life as a competitor and one of the country’s first stunt women.
Sitting at Chris Gallie’s kitchen table in her Tavistock home, there are few clues to the trailblazing life she has had. Born towards the end of the Second World War she lived with her family in countryside near Slough where her parents ran a pub and her dad was a part-time blacksmith. As a teenager she became interested in judo, which didn’t become an Olympic sport until the ’60s and was certainly then an unusual choice for a girl.
Chris progressed really well in the sport and was soon good enough to need to travel to London to train. It was costing a lot to get there and she discovered there was good money to be made working as a stunt double. And so she embarked on a career which including working on The Avengers and The New Avengers, Space: 1999, Blake's 7 and The Goodies. Her movie stunt credits include James Bond film For Your Eyes Only, Superman, Superman II and several Pink Panther films.
Her childhood, sporting successes and stunt work are remembered in a fascinating book – Judo, The Avengers and Me – published under her stage name, Cyd Child.
Her first stunt job was doubling for Diana Rigg's Emma Peel in cult ’60s show The Avengers. She replaced a man as Diana's double and went on to appear in more than 30 episodes, later acting as a double for Linda Thorson's Tara King and Joanna Lumley’s Purdey in The New Avengers. The show was ahead of its time, says Chris, in the way it portrayed women.
“It was unusual. You didn’t see women wearing leather and throwing people about. Ray Austin, who was the stunt arranger, was looking for a double for Diana – they had a man standing in but he got injured.
“For most of the fights they would use stunt people from the beginning to the end and then do the close-ups with the actors. One day I was asked to throw someone in a fight. I thought ‘I can do this’ so I did it as hard and fast as I could do it.
“Then they yelled for everyone to stop. Apparently, I wasn’t supposed to throw him, he would throw himself – the poor man was still trying to get his breath back! I didn’t realise you were just supposed to show it, not actually do it.”
Chris also worked in films including several Pink Panthers and the Bond movie For Your Eyes Only where one stunt didn’t work out quite the way it was planned.
“It was a scene where Cassandra Harris was mown down by a dune buggy. I had rehearsed with the stunt man, Remy Julienne, but when it came to it, his younger brother drove. I had to roll over the bonnet. Each time in rehearsal the car got a little bit faster until we were camera ready.
“When it came to shoot he was driving much faster than we had practised and I was wearing the smallest bikini I had ever seen in my life. He was going much too fast and I took a headlamp off with my legs and smashed the windscreen with my face.”
Chris says she didn’t think about the dangers of the stunt work until she had children – two boys and a girl, now in their 30s and 40s. After more than 30 years in the Devon village of Chillaton, she and husband Pete moved to Tavistock.
Her book came about when a friend writing a book about women’s judo kept asking for her memories. “People have been saying for years ‘you should write a book’. So I decided to have a go. What’s the worst that can happen?”
The result, Judo, The Avengers and Me by Cyd Child, is published by Fantom with a foreword by Joanna Lumley at £16.99.
A life in judo
Chris enjoyed phenomenal success in judo. She reached 7th Dan level and is eight times British Champion, twice crowned European women's judo champion and a world number one.
The Budokwai member was also the first female to be allowed to train with the men's elite and the first British woman to achieve 5th Dan and 6th Dan.
She’s a former head ladies coach at the Budokwai, the oldest Japanese martial arts club in Europe. She shares her continuing passion for the sport at the Drake Judo Club in Plymouth where she is vice president.
