Family Mao

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 “Felix was Family Mao” The youngest and most “unique” family in the club is Family Mao which began in the late 1990’s/early 2000’s with Felix Mao as the inaugural family head. An international student from Hong Kong, Felix got heavily involved with UBMSRFC and set about carving out a new family within its ranks. Family Mao, as it became, has always set itself apart from the older families, with Mao-Men having many of their own unique traditions, games and relics (something members past and present still carry on to this day). It was under Felix’s tutelage that the annual family pilgrimage to Birmingham’s Chinatown was inaugurated, with Felix picking the smallest back-street restaurant, and ordering food and beers for the whole table in Cantonese before all the family members had even sat down. It’s fair to say that Felix and all the boys from that era, through their efforts, created a family that is still one of the largest and strangest in the cloob. As well as being the youngest family, sadly Family Mao has a tragic story at its heart. After graduating, Felix Mao went back to the Far East, and took his own life soon afterwards. It’s a particularly poignant story given the recent suicide of Dr Tom ‘Sam Peepy’ Oakland in 2017, another Old Boy, and just goes to show the importance of Clubmen looking out for one another. His “family” were there for each other though, and one of the highlights of the recent 60th Club Anniversary Dinner was hearing from his club mates about Felix, the family, and the wonderful times they all had together in the Club. Felix’s memory lives on in the ‘Game of Mao’ we still play to this day. To Mao!

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Family Head: Chris ‘dementor’ Mitchell