I first met Ted in France, in the late 1980s. He was competing at the Quiksilver Pro surf contest in Lacanau, on the wild Atlantic coast of France, north of Bordeaux, and I was a surfing correspondent. The last time I saw him, nearly ten years later, was in Hawaii, where he was still in search of the perfect wave and, in his phrase, “the perfect woman” – and where he died too young, on the North Shore of Oahu, aged 40.But how did he die exactly? I wrote his obituary for The Independent, but it was another 20 years before I could cut through the typically Hawaiian mix of myth, omertà, and mystification, and get close to the truth. To solve the mystery of his death I needed to reconstruct his life. To do that I had to retrace Ted’s steps around the world.

See the article here.

Excalibur

There were clearly defined periods in Ted’s life. Each had a name, a brand. The Lightning Bolt era gave way to Sabre; Sabre gave way to Excalibur. Which gave way to Lola.
In a way, Excalibur had always been there.
Everyone remembers the legend of Excalibur – the magic sword that Merlin places in the stone (or anvil), and which can only be removed by the true King. All the young wannabes, the pretenders, troop up and confidently grasp the hilt but are unable to take possession of the sword, no matter how hard they try. Only young Arthur, quite unexpectedly, but effortlessly, can grasp the sword and make it his own. Thus he is the One, divinely appointed and sole heir to Uther Pendragon. “Whoso pulleth Out this Sword of this Stone and Anvil, is Rightwise King Born of all England” (Thomas Malory). Some say that the sword in the stone and Excalibur are two different swords, some say they are one and the same, but either way, Excalibur is a magic sword. That sword is like a crown, bejewelled and engraved with mystic messages. If you own it, you rule. A weapon of immense power, but also an instrument of peace. Even the scabbard in which the sword rests is itself magical and can heal the wounded. In the end, as Arthur lays dying, and is spirited away downriver on a transcendent barge, he commands one of his attendants to cast the sword into the water, where a mysterious hand – belonging to the Lady in the Lake – rises up to receive it and from whom, one fine day, it is destined to be reclaimed by a descendant of Arthur, who will recreate the Round Table and the wonderful land of Camelot. Recovered from the water. From the hand of the Lady of the Lake. A second coming. On a par with the Holy Grail.
Excalibur. Everyone knows it, no one believes it, except for poets, novelists, and Walt Disney.
And Ted.

Read the full excerpt here.

In an extract from his book, Andy Martin recounts the story of our errant knight falling in love with night-club dancer Lola  – the trouble was she belonged to someone else

We were sitting at one of those benches in front of the Coffee Gallery in Haleiwa. We were supposed to be talking about surfing. It was what I was getting paid for, being a “surfing correspondent” at the time. I was not a girlfriend correspondent or anything like it. But Ted reckoned the key to becoming the Perfect Surfer was to have a Perfect Surfer Girl right alongside you. “Show me the perfect guy and I will show you the perfect woman,” I said, slamming down my glass of iced latte.

Being Ted, he didn’t see that as an irony-laced rhetorical challenge, he thought I really wanted to know what a perfect guy would look like. “I guess he would be something like a combination of Kelly Slater and Winston Churchill,” he said. Slater had not only won the first US Excalibur contest in 1986 but had risen, in the 1990s, to become the hottest young surfer in the world. Churchill was synonymous (in Ted’s mind) with Ted himself.

Read the full excerpt here.

The English viscount turned his back on green pastures for a surfboard and Hawaiian waves. But his untimely death at 40 shocked his family. In the first of a two-part exclusive, Andy Martin, friend and fellow surfer, sets off to see if he can find out what had happened to the golden boy of North Shore

I met Ted for the first time in the summer of 1989 on the southwest coast of France. I was a surfing correspondent and he was a would-be world surfing champion. Lacanau, colonised by Quiksilver, populated by marquees and stages and pennants and music, had the feel of some medieval jousting tournament. Ted – Edward George William Omar Deerhurst, Viscount – riding a board with the distinctive Excalibur design, his trusty sword carving through the surf, long blond locks glinting in the sun like a radiant helmet, fitted right in there. He was like a knight errant on a quest for the elusive holy grail.A former amateur who had represented Great Britain in South Africa, he was in search of points to climb up the ASP (Association of Surfing Professionals) ladder. It had been a bit of a struggle hitherto, over a number of years, but he was hopeful that this summer would be the breakthrough for him. He struck a brave, optimistic note. Mingled with a degree of melancholy yearning.But there was one other British surfer who was competing in the French Triple Crown. His name was Martin Potter, aka “Pottz”. He was semi-invincible. Pottz won at Biarritz, scooped the Triple Crown, and was in pole position to take the world title, thus becoming my passport to the giant waves of Hawaii. But I was rooting for the underdog, the longshot, the loner, the unsung hero. Ted.

Read the full excerpt here.