The Captain and The Birdwatchers at Bude Golf Club in 1925.

History of the Company

The early years

Bude DIY was founded in 1924 when Captain Sir Archibald Bunker VC of the Kings Own 1st East Ham Cowards left his native London and retired with his young wife Lady Linda (pictured with a Royal person) to the sleepy hamlet of Marhamchurch in Cornwall. It was here that he met Ron Quasimodo (a local bell ringer) and together they opened a small ironmongery and carpentry shop specialising in replacement toilet seats. They named their shop B&Q (Bunker & Quasimodo). Business was not good however because Captain Bunker left Quasimodo to run the shop while he spent his time playing golf and indulging his passion for visiting small islands with a group of "ne'er do wells" known as the Birdwatchers.
In 1926 Quasimodo became besotted with a gypsy girl named Esmeralda.
"She gave me water." he told the Captain.
"Did she buy any wood?" The Captain replied.
Quasimodo was disgruntled with running the shop while the Captain played golf, so he ran away to Paris with the gypsy girl where he was appointed head bellringer at Notre Dame.
Captain Bunker was not upset by this defection as Quasimodo was a terrible golfer and never paid for a round of drinks.

Colonel Bunker is 2nd left

The War Years

The B&Q business went slowly downhill as Captain Bunker was spending more and more time playing golf and the demand for replacement toilet seats declined. With the outbreak of war in 1939 the shop was closed and Captain Bunker went off to do his bit in the war office with Churchill. He was quickly promoted to Colonel as a reward for inventing and manufacturing exploding bird boxes, which were dropped behind the enemy lines creating mayhem amongst the German Vogelsehen Korps.

Modern Times

On his return from active service, Colonel Bunker found that Lady Bunker had produced a son. A bright eyed little youth The Honorable Frederick Archibald Reginald Thomas Bunker (known as Bill).
Colonel Bunker reopened the B&Q shop and put a succession of local layabouts in to manage the business for him. This enabled him to continue to indulge his passions for golf and birdwatching. Needless to say the business suffered and when the post war boom in replacement toilet seats declined the business collapsed altogether.
One day when young Bill was 14 years old the Colonel came home from the golf course and shouted
"Where's me dinner woman?"
"Do it yourself!" came the reply.
At this young Bill said "That's it father! Let me run the shop as a Do It Yourself shop".
This was how "Bude DIY" was born.
Young Bill proved to be a genius at finding other people to do things for him. His advice to staff, customers and passers-by to "Do It Yourself!" saw the business expand over the years to become a major international group. Bill was now able to follow in the footsteps of the Colonel, playing golf and visiting strange and remote islands with his friends in the reformed "Birdwatchers Club."