How My Dad Died.

Originally written in April 2007

I was asked in comments to write a story about my dad here.

The way my mind is working at the moment, I can only think of negative and horirble stories, doused in alcohol and soaked with sickness.

I have very few specifically positive stories of my dad. Plenty of lovely memories, but they are fleeting, small events like him making us Toasted Toppers or his insistence that Graham Chapman deserved a better looking boyfriend than David Sherlock.

Wedding Day

I’d never been to a wedding as a Grown Up. Nor a reception or any suchlike thing. The first wedding I remember was that of my aunt and uncle, Anne and Brian. Anne is a blonde model who appeared in speeding adverts, I’ve seen her in a bridal gown only once before, and that was on an advert on Ulster Television- “40 miles an hour!” with blood rolling apologetically down her dress. She used to come back from filming in England (“You’ve been to England?” we’d gawk at her) with those fat red dummy rocks in clutches for us. My uncle Brian is a big nosed, fresh-faced lovable man who has raised his three children to have quiet country burrs which is somewhat exotic to me when he brings them begrudgingly to their aunt’s house.

At the time I was nine years old and wasn’t taken to the wedding. My granny Molloy looked after me that day, in the only time she had ever been to our house. I remember her with her red slim face, which always looked like a warning triangle, taking my hand and us walking to the Dairy Farm, a supermarket near my house, where she bought me a pink keyboard. Then we went to the library where I proceeded to be kicked out as I was too fascinated with my first ever musical instrument. I managed to retain my dignity and my Asterix books, whereupon I rechristened myself Cacophonix.

That day I seemed to inherit a new family. At the wedding my mum met some of her family, The Mallons. Edna had a sharp tongue and fast humour, then there were her three daughters- Angela, Ceri and Michelle. Their ages corresponded roughly with the ages of me and my older sister. Michelle was the youngest so we were expected to get on. We were utterly different people so were never close.

So one wedding created a new family. The next was the day after my 18th birthday, the wedding of my uncle Michael to a quite well-to-do middle class girl called Fiona. Her family were much more respectable than our rough West Belfast one.

My uncle Michael looked like Damon Albarn. My sister Paula and I used to boast to our school friends about this. His fiancée was a social worker, tiny, buxom, blonde and beautiful. I first met her at a bedside vigil for my granda. I’d never met her before and remember feeling insulted rather than touched that she had come here while my grandad was so sick. In that respect, I’m quite traditional. For all my running-off-to-London, I believe in the family and find “outsiders” intrusive sometimes.

The wedding was in Bangor, and my dad was determined that we weren’t taking a feckin’ train that day. We got a taxi, god forbid, all of us piled into one black cab. He wanted us to be stylish, just as good as them, he said. But he was brimming over with happiness, as he always did when we were all together.

We found ourselves outside the church with a half an hour to spare and a bit peckish. “There’s a reception on later, Da,” says Michelle. Imagines of vol-au-vents, quiche, delicately decorated salmon en croute filled our minds.

But it would be hours before we had the chance to eat.

In our new clothes, we went to KFC and smeared ourselves with greasy chips and microwaved gravy. We sipped flat coke out of enormous buckets and liberally ate cold chicken.

We went at breakneck speed to the fancy Gothic church, stinking of fast food, gravy on our lips and the odour of old plastic seats sticking to our arses.

Twenty minutes later my other uncle Brendan (sarcastic, amusing vegetarian, much beloved of Paula, much resented by me for wrecking my carefully constructed house of cards) shows up, late and distressed and bangs on the window, Graduate style, to be let in. The priest shook his head and we all froze in horror and laughed as he strained to watch his baby brother getting married through a window, occasionally letting loose a fly of words that made the choirboys blush as he batted unruly twigs away from his face.

I wish

I could end the story there and that it would be Full O’ Larks. But of course with my dad in tow the day turned ugly.

He got drunk, completely pissed, and refused to be told otherwise. He was loud, embarrassing, abusive and disruptive. We ended up having to look after him, pleading, begging and crying.

I don’t think, until that point, his family believed us when we said his alcoholism was severe. But as the evening progressed and his behaviour got worse, I think it finally clicked that for all those years, we had not been exaggerating. Michelle, Paula and me were just exhausted, exhausted, humiliated and depressed, wanting to be a Proper Family out at their uncle’s wedding, instead of three ringmasters in the arena of my dad’s illness.

I have a lot of guilt concerning my dad. Not just that everything we did didn’t stop him from dying. But for childish things.

My mum and dad had prolific and devastating fights almost every night. My dad would eventually stumble upstairs, screaming obsenties. And my sisters and I would huddle in their bedroom and talk about how if we pushed him downstairs, we wouldn’t have to put up with it anymore.

We had many comical scenerios as to how we’d get rid of my parents. And they were comical, we didn’t actually want them to die but craved silence.

My dad rang me up on my 16th birthday. It was one of the periods he wasn’t living at home and I had assumed he was calling to wish me a happy birthday. Instead, he told me he was going to kill himself.

Sometimes I wish he had done. There were times when I violently wished that something, anything would end his and our suffering. I knew always that alcoholism was a disease and an addiction but it’s scant comfort when you’re in the living room with your little brother and sister trying to block out the crockery breaking in the kitchen.

I wanted something quick and painless and it would be over.

I was outside work once. At the time, a friend of mine was suffering from serious depression and they had rang me earlier to tell me they were going to kill themselves. This was sometime during 2005. I took the phone outside and tried to talk them down but I was petrified and shaking.

When Vicky died, I prayed to whatever gods there were that I would never have to go through it again. The stark memory of sitting down on the chair being told she had hung herself, the starker memory of walking down the forest the same night, vision blurring with tears, standing on the roadside we had walked upon destroyed me.

I got off the phone to my friend and lay back against a wall with a cigarette.

Suddenly, the image of someone calling to tell me my dad had killed himself flew into my head and took my breath out. All those times I wished it had happened pulverised me and I felt like the worst person in the world. The reality, the already-grief of his dying laid me on a fold up chair in tears.

I had always believed he’d get better. I held that hope to my chest, to my heart, to every minute of the day. I believed that with our help and willpower, he would recover and live to say, “When I was an alcoholic”…

The Reality of it

When it happened, I didn’t know what to do.

My dad had been in hospital for two weeks or so. It started innocuously enough. I was on the phone to my brother when he made a joke about my dad looking like one of the Simpsons. I asked him what he meant and he said, “He’s bright yellow”.

That night was a Saturday and I was alone in my flat. And for some reason, I got my mum on the phone and said, “I think daddy has liver failure”.

She didn’t really take me seriously so I told her I was going to call NHS direct. I described my dad to the nuse on the phone. Jaundice. Alcoholism and, in the background, his slurred voice.

I rang my mum back and told her I was calling an ambulance. I rang them in London and asked them to transfer me to Belfast. Rang them up and sent them to the house.

I was on the phone when they came. I heard my daddy protesting that he had an appointment with the doctor in June (it was the end of April) and that he was fine. I told my mother to keep trying and spoke to the ambulance staff, telling them I think he’s very ill and please make sure he goes.

He didn’t. He refused the ambulance and my mum called someone else, I can’t remember who, I think it was psychiatrist services. He finally went.

A few weeks passed. Phone calls here and there. I didn’t go home as nothing sounded serious. He was filled with fluid and had acute liver failure. I assumed he would get a transplant.

I had a holiday to Belfast booked on the 18th of May to introduce Rob to my parents. It had been booked for a while. I had spoke to my daddy on the phone and he was looking forward to seeing me and Rob on the 18th. He sounded fine.

On the 16th of May, while I was in work, my sister Michelle sent me a text saying daddy was dying now, right now, and to get home.

I called her, then called my sister Paula who was in the airport on her way back to London. She didn’t want to make a fuss so I called the nurse to make sure Michelle wasn’t being hysterical.

The nurse told me to come home.

Paula turned round and went back to the hospital. I had no money whatsoever and couldn’t change my flights. Jo and my boss at work started printing out train and flight times. I appealed on Livejournal for someone to help me get home. A friend lent me the money, I booked my flight, kissed goodbye to Rob and flew home.

I met my friend Tracie at the airport. She had some ham sandwiches and a bar of chocolate for me. I was filled with dread. I couldn’t, would not think of my dad dying. We sped down the long, dark, 10pm roads. I laid my head against the passenger window and stared at the greyscale countryside.

I met my sisters in hospital. I was not prepared for what I saw.

My dad was so clearly and obviously dying. I burst into tears.

When my grandad died, my drunken, grieving father shouted that the next funeral we would be at would his own.

I had not believed him. And here it was, his dying.

He was so afraid of death and that’s mostly what was on my mind. Did he know? A nurse leant over his bed and told us it wouldn’t be long. I was horrified, what if my dad heard? Was he afraid?

He was yellow and ancient and couldn’t breathe- he couldn’t see or talk and he was so clearly dying. I started crying as soon as I saw him, held his hand and tried to tell him I was here but I don’t know if he knows I was. I thought at least he would be able to talk, there was so much to say. He looked so different and my sister assured me he had only become this bad within the past 24 hours. Before that, he was able to talk and I hate myself for not going home 24 hours earlier.

We stayed the whole night in the room, holding his hand, talking to each other, going to the smoking room and watching his monitors. I’d bought him the issue of Kettering- I had thought he would be conscious enough for me to read him to him, he had wanted to read my Neil Innes interview, because he was a fan and he was proud. He’d gone round telling everyone I was interviewing him. I had been so hopeful he would be conscious. I desperately wanted to speak to him. Wanted to hear him say my name.

Michelle left to sleep and Paula left to smoke and I tried to tell him that I love him, he made no sign he’d heard, just groaned and fiddled with his breathing mask.

He kept trying to take his mask off, and we kept putting it back on. A few times he’d clutch his head, like he had a headache, like something so normal, a headache. He tried to sit himself up a few times. He tried to sleep.

He must have known we were there. He kept holding Paula’s hand while I stood on the other side and stroked his hair. It made him sleep. In his sleep, he said our names. All our names, his five children.

He said. And he did say, although my sister denies it, “I don’t want to die”. It could have been a trick of the ears but I am sure he said it. And my heart cracked in two.

He was obviously in a lot of discomfort but the doctor said he wasn’t in pain. He kept pulling out his wires and tubes- he was so scared of ending up like my granda that Paula told me he’d been pulling them out since the beginning. He always believed he’d be going home and on some level, so did I. I thought this would be a lesson, he would stop drinking and get better. I thought he was brilliant because recently he’d been sober more, and he was going into rehab this month.

Hours passed of him taking off his mask, falling asleep, waking up. The morning came, we hardly knew. About eight am or so we called our mum and asked her to come take our place for an hour while we ate something. We didn’t want to leave, we agonised over it but we needed something to eat. We expected to be there days, we were getting ready for it.

Before we left, Paula stroked his arm and said she’d see him soon. I kissed his forehead and told him we’d be gone an hour but we’d be back.

At about 8am, our mum came and we went home to get some food.

A half an hour later, the nurse phoned and told us to come back. We tried to wake our little brother up but he wouldn’t wake up. After some exhausted, frustrated screaming at him, he got up and smashed the china set my dad had bought for my mum.

We got to the hospital. Liam went to the toilet and we went up to the ward. Tacked on the curtain was, “NO VISITORS”. And my dad had died there, without us at about 9am on 17th May, a day before Rob and I’s visit. Aged forty seven, a month before his 48th birthday.

We howled. I had to go and find Liam and tell him. He was in the corridor and I didn’t know what to do or say. I just had to tell him that his dad died. How do you tell a fifteen year old that?

I remember standing by my brother and sisters and crying, I remember hugging my uncles, his brothers, and his mother, who had lost her sister two weeks ago and her husband seven months ago. It is not fair, I remember thinking that over and over.

A nurse came in and said, “Did he have a wedding ring on?” Nothing else- “NO” and then, “Did he have any gold teeth?” “NO” get out of my sight and she did and I hated her so much.

They took him away and kept hassling us saying they needed to do it now. We said wait because his brother isn’t here yet, my uncle Michael was on his way. Before they took him away we said our separate goodbyes and had our time with him. No-one will ever know what we all said, and I am glad.

They took him and we organised the wake at my grandmother’s. It was best to be there, it was his real home.

I slept after that and the next day Rob got here. We spent the next days at my grandmother’s. He met everyone in my family, except my dad. I wrote the obituary with my little sister and it appeared in the paper with many others, and flowers arrived and two big wreaths, “DAD” and “BROTHER”. I got away with much as a lot of my extended family and friends didn’t realise I was his daughter, so there weren’t many, “I’m sorry”s or tearful hugs. That hurt me slightly because I wanted some hugs but I had Rob, my sisters and uncles and brother and that’s all I needed, all we needed.

The coffin was in the room and they did a good job, he looked like my dad. I couldn’t understand why he was there, none of us could.

The priests came and went and on Friday night, Paula, Brendan my uncle and I stayed with him on his final night. We talked about a lot of things, not really my dad, and didn’t sleep. Everytime the automatic air freshener went off, we jumped.

The funeral was on Saturday and at first I didn’t think I could do it. My sister held my hand as we listened to the priest before they took him away. I couldn’t stop crying. I said goodbye again, I said I’m sorry.

My fifteen year old little brother had to carry his dad’s coffin.

On the way up to the church we noticed one of the men carrying the coffin had something written on his bald head and neck in green marker. He didn’t know he had it.

After the funeral, we went to the PD, a Republican bar my dad and our family went to often, and had a buffet and a drink. Since then, I’ve felt very little. I’d been sleeping in his bed and going through photographs, taking some and not taking others in the knowledge he’d kill me. But he isn’t here now and I can’t really understand how. As time wears on, the truth of it, the real truth of it, is beginning to dawn.

I don’t know what to do now. There’s years ahead without my dad but I still feel as though he’ll be back. I never want to remember him as that man I saw in the coffin. I hate Catholic services. I’m worried about the future for my mum and the kids. I’m worried about my granny. I don’t know what to do without my dad. He’s the one who understood us and helped us. He paid my rent once and bought our Christmas presents. He taught us how to read and ride our bikes and taught us how to write and taught us our history. He got me into comedy and music. I have all his David Bowie vinyls now, as promised.

The last time I saw him was Christmas 2005 and he had stayed sober, it was lovely. There is a photo of him in the bedroom, arms outstretched and smiling and you’d think he didn’t have a trouble in his heart until you notice his wrist, a huge gaping wound. He was not a happy man and that kills us. We tried. We love him so much.

My sisters joked we should put lots of IOUs in his coffin with him because he helped us with money when he got ourselves into scrapes. I wanted to put his comb in there with him. Paula could barely look at him but when she did it was to fix his hair. He would be mad at us if he’d known we didn’t shave his head for him.

The Motherland

Hello.  I’ve returned from the Motherland.  How I wish it were the Fatherland.

Belfast was great.  It was lovely to have us (my siblings, anyway) all together for Orlaigh’s sixteenth, which I still refuse to believe has come to pass.  I spent not as much time as I would have liked to with my siblings since I also wanted to briefly catch up with my three remaining friends there.  On Friday, I nabbed free food at Paula’s work and spent the rest of the day watching rubbish TV with her (which always makes me happy) and playing with her black Tonkinese cat, imaginatively called “Cat”.  Given that my cats are called “Boy Cat” and “Girl Cat” (and Hobbes, who lives with Rob), you can see the poverty of original thought that exists in my family.

My little brother, Liam, was there before donning his rags (not so much “glad”, he’s a crusty punk with a pungent yet not unsettling aroma) and heading out.  I have never met someone who is so confident in his appearance as my little brother is.  He is, naturally, gorgeous, as are all my siblings.  He knows it, though, but it’s disarmingly charming rather than irritating.  He kept me up until five in the morning to show me photos of himself.  An actual quote from him was, “Stay out of that mirror, that mirror is all ME!” It was tongue in cheek, but only just. If I have Body Dysmorphic Disorder, my brother has some sort of inverse.

On Saturday I extracted myself from sleepiness in order to be a tourist in a warzone. I took my camera and my friend Stephen onto the Falls Road, my stomping ground when I was growing up, as I went to school there. The Falls Road is a working class, ostensibly left-wing Republican area, full of interesting political murals and daubings. My own politics- unsurprisingly, lie upon the far left, and I do correct those who refer to me as British, as I’m from Nationalist West Belfast and was raised with Republican ideology and the Irish language.

It felt quite strange taking photos of things that I used to see every day and think nothing of, but I always regret not doing so.  Here is an example; it’s one of the murals just past my school.

That mural depicts the Easter Rising (which is what Éirí Amach na Cásca translates to), and that building there is the GPO in Dublin, which was the site of the uprising against the British Army. It was unsuccessful, obviously, or else the “Troubles” would not have been.

For those interested in politics, murals, art, myself, Belfast and etc, I have uploaded a whole set of photographs that I took of murals, my old school grounds and my friend here at Flickr.  I am too tired at the moment but when I’m more awake I will write descriptions so you know what you’re looking at. For the extra nosey, I’ve uploaded two more sets- one of my sister’s birthday and one of photos of my old haunts in Belfast, featuring me holding some scones.  (I have been feeling especially hideous lately, but am putting these up for memory’s sake.  Please don’t poke the soft bits with sticks).

“I’ll wish, and the thunder clouds will vanish”

You don’t have to read this, I’m mostly talking to myself here. It’s about my dad, and missing people, and feeling very sad because of it.

My Friend, Brendan Hollywood.

I was asked to write something about my friend Brendan for Cook’d and Bomb’d, a prominent comedy forum on which he was a poster, and the stamping ground where we met, over two years ago. It was a kind of textual variation of, “Our eyes met across the room…” From his introductory post there, I knew he was amazing and that we would be friends. Now I walk past cafés and smile, remembering us in the window. It’s only been three weeks. Only one week since his funeral. It feels like a thousand years ago. Like it happened in a different world, to a different person.

I had to tell the forum of his death. It shocked people- he was incredibly well-liked, for his wit, his eloquence, his humanity and his intelligence.

I have never seen such a reaction on a forum. The internet is cursed and blessed for its facelessness and anonymity. We can walk as tall as supermodels if we desire; can be men or women, can be geniuses or fools. From anywhere, to anywhere. It is hard to miss people online; threads of communication can be abruptly stopped, for so many reasons, an identity, wiped, to be started again. And Brendan was utterly himself and he will be genuinely missed there.

Brendan was an extraordinary writer. He never wasted a word, he was gloriously gifted. His book, “I Am A Modern Monster”, about the life of Alex Tower, is a fantastic piece of work. You can read the first chapter here and you can download the whole book here. Please, if you know any literary types who may be interested in publishing it, pass it on. It truly is a work of splendour and it deserves to be read. Download it and you’ll see.

So, I wrote something about Brendan. It was difficult. His death has brought back a lot of memories about my dad’s death. Two people with similar problems that I loved and I couldn’t save, in the end. I close my eyes and see my dad’s deathbed and my dad, and I try to think of something else. At least London’s streets did not have our footsteps upon them; but they have mine and Brendan’s. Our routes, our cold arses shivering on plastic seats in an empty train station, I remember them all.

Above all else, I want him to be remembered. The pain of remembering is not like the pain of being forgotten. He will be remembered. Not just by me, and those that loved him, those that he loved, like his family, even those who only knew him by his words on a forum. I want him to be remembered by you, and everybody who reads this. Like I do with my dad, who I write about all the time, to keep him here, to let people know, he was here, this incredibly important person to me and to others, cannot be lost. Will not be lost.

I am posting it here you can understand who he was, to me at least. A tribute to my friend. I don’t think anything I say, do or write can do justice to the wonderful person that he was, and how much he is loved by me and so many others. But I tried.

Brendan Hollywood.

Neil has asked me to write a bit about Brendan. I’ve sat here for a good hour trying to put into words what kind of person he was. I can’t tell you who he was to the others that loved him; to you, to his family, to his other friends, to his lovers and companions over the years, because I can’t speak for anybody else. I can only tell you who he was to me.

If he’d been writing this himself, it would have been done and dusted fifty five minutes ago. Although there would probably be as many cigarette butts withering in the ashtray. The last time I saw him, we were wheeling a massive table up the Blackstock Road. It was about five minutes from my house but we took turns smoking the whole way there. We wheezed and puffed our way up three flights of stairs. Our hands- mine, short and stubby, his, long, slim and stained yellow at the fingertips- were shaking in the winter windchill as it blew our laughter into the afternoon traffic. Physical labour wasn’t something he was fond of- he could be incredibly lazy- but I needed his help, and he would never refuse someone in need. It’s weird to be sitting at the desk now, looking to my door, the last time I saw him, the last time I put my arms around him. He seemed out of sorts that day and hugging him goodbye after he drank the coffee I made him (I don’t drink coffee, but I always kept a jar in my flat for him when he came round, since he was absolutely hooked on it), I thought, I’ll see him again soon. I didn’t, I never saw him again, although we spoke many times. I was supposed to see him shortly before his death, and I missed him because I was asleep. He had always been there for me; and I regret deeply that in that last week, I wasn’t there for him.

If Brendan was writing this, every sentence would be filled with something self-deprecating. He could be a harsh critic of himself. In snatches of clarity, he could sometimes see himself how we saw him; how violently funny he was, how intelligent, how full of potential and talent. Every single post he made here sparkles with his customary wit. He was an extraordinary writer, but his confidence failed him often. He had already written two books, the latter, “I Am A Modern Monster”, constantly edited, sent to various people, seeking approval and reassurance that he was worth it, that he was a great writer. We could tell him til we were blue in the face; and one thing this forum offered him, amongst so many others, was the confirmation of his talent. He was instantly likeable. His friends I’ve met, and his family, all uniformly love and adore him, and believed in him, his talent, and his gifts. He glittered.

My friendship with Brendan actually started here. He was this funny bloke called john self. I was, then, Banana Woofwoof (“you can’t greet me with “Woof!” anymore- you have to say, “Hello! Here is my raincoat!” now…”) I thought he was fantastic, from the first introduction post that he made. It was clear from the offset that this was someone incredibly special. He sent me various PMs thanking him for being so friendly to him. I then convinced him to come to a meet I organised- which was, by most accounts, a failure. But I met him. I have never so immediately clicked with somebody. He was obviously incredibly nervous so I thought I’d say, “Shut up, newbie”, to him which for some reason made him laugh and we warmed to each other totally. We dispensed with the usual polite pleasantries and spent most of our time huddled together giggling. He made me laugh so much. There was a man at the bar- “the chinless wonder”, as we called him, we had created a whole life for. We renamed the area, “Smug Rapist’s Alley”- don’t ask.

From there, the complicated, wonderful Brendan Hollywood became a part of my life.

We saw each other often- he would rob the Silverlink of their paltry fares from his home to mine. We sat in many cafés, chainsmoking, then eventually going outside to smoke. We visited each others’ flats. He was the only friend I ever had who travelled across London at 5am just because I needed him. We met in familiar areas- Finchley Road, Finsbury Park, Crouch End, to sit in empty afternoon pubs, cokes in hand, talking about our days, our lives. He’d roll endless cigarettes, talk quickly, listen, laugh that uninhibited, wonderful laugh that he had, always dressed smartly, with ever-changing haircuts and ties. When we weren’t together in person, we spoke on all ends of the internet, on here, on MSN, on other websites we both frequented, on the phone, by text, smoke signals, Morse Code. I have chat logs, texts, e-mails, messages that at the moment I still can’t really bring myself to read through. We rarely ran out of things to talk about. Brendan, no matter what mood he was in, was always interesting.

Brendan had been through it. He had an alcohol problem that had landed him in rehab and hospital and had dogged him throughout his life. He also suffered from depression that he struggled with until his death. He could be, as well as hilarious and open, sad and withdrawn. Our friendship, when he was drinking, was fraught. I lost my father to alcoholism and I couldn’t bear to lose Brendan, too. In the end, it got to the point where I told him that I wouldn’t see him when he was drinking. I would talk to him, of course, and be there for him to talk to, but I could not see him when he was drunk. It was a bit of a rubbish incentive that worked up until a point. He would send long messages saying how he wanted my love of him to be “present tense”- “if it had been in the present tense, would have been a beautiful, wonderful, utterly-reciprocated delight. Sounds pathetic, doesn’t it? Anyway, I want that back; I want that present tense back”.

It was always present tense, though- I loved Brendan almost as soon as the first time we shyly met up, and did throughout our friendship, and will, forever.

I had been through it, too, suffering from manic depression, as I do, and landing myself in hospital. We actually bonded over that experience. He was a fantastic friend to me, and we were close. Brendan was one person who was understanding, someone who was patient, someone who listened to me, helped me, cared for me, loved me and most importantly, someone who made me laugh when the world seemed unfriendly and grey. No-one could get me out of a bad mood like Brendan. There was a time he came to visit and I was flipping out over something unimportant. The first thing he said as he walked through the door made me crack up laughing, and my anger was forgotten. With everything he had been through, he had time for other people, and he was someone to swap, “Fun in the mental hospital” stories with, although other people sometimes looked at us weirdly when we would laugh our heads off at tales of our outrageous behaviour, stories that are painful until shared with someone who had been there, too. I could tell Brendan anything. He was there for me through what were two of the most difficult years of my life. We confided in each other, sharing secrets, stories and cigarettes. We had fun, singing along to our favourites (Bowie, Morrissey, both whom he idolised), pulling ever more ridiculous faces while singing to make each other laugh. Sometimes, as you know, recording the awful results.

Brendan discussed his problems with alcohol and depression both in real life and here with a disarming candour that no doubt many people had found incredibly helpful. He was aware of his problems and he was strong, much stronger than he gave himself credit for. When he slipped, he would pick himself up again and again. His outlook on life, although sometimes tempered by depression, was almost unwaveringly hopeful. He talked about the things he loved passionately. The passion was contagious. His love was strong: for his family, for his friends, for writing, for comedy and music, for art, for untempered silliness and laughter.

So, I think I’ve gone on enough. To my extraordinary, complex, wonderful, hilarious, intelligent, witty, loving, fun, fantastic, courageous, giving, passionate, immensely talented chancer of a friend, I will give you the advice you gave me for the day I made my ascent: whatever you do, don’t kick god.

You are so loved. And you will be missed more than I can put into words.