Wibbley Wobbley was removed from South Dock Marina, Rotherhithe (Photo by Jody VandenBurg)
Last Sunday, I posted a blog about the fate of late comedian Malcolm Hardee’s former floating bar/venue the Wibbley Wobbley.
It got a response from Jody VandenBurg on Wednesday. He is making a long-in-production documentary on Malcolm: All The Way From Over There.
“Saw the news about the Wibbley Wobbley,” Jody wrote. “I was down there filming today, met a few interesting characters. Future is uncertain, but am not convinced it’s for the scrap heap just yet.
“The squatters and other people seem convinced it’s going to be scrapped but I met a guy who said he has bought it. He seemed very upset at what had been done to it, that the boat has a lot of history and he wants to preserve it. He said he intended to take it to dry dock in Sea Reach at Canvey Island if it can make it up there.
“He was emptying the boat of all the crap and putting it in a van to be taken to dump.” (Photograph by Jody VandenBurg)
“Anything he finds of any note in the boat, he said, would go to Rotherhithe Museum. He was emptying the boat of all the crap the squatters had left behind and putting it in a van to be taken to dump.
“The only thing is that his account of what happened when they evicted the squatters and the squatters’ version of what happened are completely different so I am not sure who to believe on that front… So that makes me wonder about the entire thing.”
The next day – Wednesday – I got another e-mail from Jody. It said:
“So they are moving the Wibbley Wobbley properly out of the dock on Friday at about 2.00pm. I am going to go down with a couple of cameras to film it.”
I was not able to go yesterday – I was on child-minding duties – but, last night, I got another message about the Wibbley Wobbley from Jody:
“Unfortunate news. They moved it on Wednesday without keeping me updated whilst I was organising the shoot for today and it got scrapped.”
There is a trailer online for Jody’s short documentary on Malcolm Hardee’s club The Tunnel.
SO IT GOES - John Fleming's blog 
Oh, NO! Another piece of floating history gone- even so, you can’t just scrap a boat overnight like you can with a car or something. Can the guy who was interested in it negociate with it’s present custodians to buy it back from them? It’d make a super houseboat or restaurant- keep me posted.