That's Me in the Middle

Donald Lamont Jack was born in Radcliffe, England,on December 6, 1924. He attended Bury Grammar School in Lancashire, and later Marr College, Troon (from which he was briefly evicted after writing an injudicious letter to the editor).

From 1943 to 1947 he served in the Royal Air Force as an AC, or aircraftsman, working in radio communications. During his military service Jack was stationed in a variety of locales, though he concentrated on places beginning with the letter ‘B’: Belgium, Berlin, and Bahrain. After de-mobbing, he participated in amateur dramatics with The Ellis Players, and worked for several years in Britain, but he had by then grown weary of ‘B’-countries and decided to move on to the ‘C’s. Thus, in 1951, Jack emigrated to Canada.

In 1962 he published his first novel, Three Cheers for Me, about fictional Canadian First World War air-ace Bartholomew Wolfe Bandy. Three Cheers for Me won the Leacock Medal for Humour in 1963, but additional volumes did not appear until a decade later when a revised version of the book was published, along with a second volume, That’s Me in the Middle, which won Jack a second Leacock Medal in 1974. He received a third award in 1980 for Me Bandy, You Cissie.

Jack returned to live in England in 1986, where he continued to work on additional volumes in the Bandy series. He died on June 2, 2003. His final novel, Stalin vs. Me, was first published posthumously in 2005.