#something something the joke about Peter Davison looking like he can hear the end of episode stings

[regicidal-defenestration]

I loved the line "I thought that was non-diegetic" I love the implication that the Doctor has been able to hear the soundtrack all this time but decided they didn't need to know about all that

[booksncoffee]

get lonely with me, one

the one with the beginning of everything

“Are you sure, mate?” Harrison asks him, corners of his eyes crinkling as he finds the mere idea of his best friend being in a rom-com amusing. “You’re not exactly ‘rom-com’ material. No offence.”

wattpad || story page || your thoughts

hiii everyone! before we dive into the first chapter of my very first tom holland fanfiction, i would just like to clarify that my knowledge in regards to the film industry is very limited so there might be some inaccuracies but i do try my best to be as realistic as possible. that said, if there are things that seem ridiculous to you, please remember that it is a fiction and please be kind to me. 

okay with that out of the way, i hope you’ll enjoy the first chapter!

When Tom tells Harrison that he wants to be in a romantic comedy, his best friend laughs at him as if that’s the most ridiculous thing he has ever heard. Tom is slightly offended because come on, the idea of him being in a romantic comedy is not that outlandish, is it? He’s been in a musical for God’s sake and compared to a rom-com, the former is way bizarre - at least that’s how he sees it.

Tom has been fortunate enough to star in several different genres of movies like actions, psychological thrillers, science fictions, historical drama and even animated films, but he’s yet to know how it feels like to star in a rom-com. Don’t get him wrong, he loves each and every movie he’s ever been in but if he gets to be in a rom-com, he thinks his life will be made. Well, it’ll be made all over again because he said the same thing when he got the role of Peter Parker.

He’s intrigued, to say the least, and besides, he wants to venture into other genres.

“Are you sure, mate?” Harrison asks him, corners of his eyes crinkling as he finds the mere idea of his best friend being in a rom-com amusing. “You’re not exactly ‘rom-com’ material. No offence.”

“Fuck off.” Tom gives his friend the finger and continues to scroll through his Instagram mindlessly, tapping twice on pictures of his friends and family. He’s trying to distract himself from checking his emails every five seconds but it proves to be a futile attempt because less than five minutes later, he finds himself exiting Instagram and opening the mail application instead. He pulls his screen downward, refreshing his inbox but nothing new comes in.

A few days ago he found out that the best-selling book, The (Mis)Fortune of Knowing You, is being adapted into a movie and they’re looking for someone to play the role of Leon James, the charming main character in the book who happens to be loved by the readers, and immediately he felt drawn to the character. So he did the one thing that he thought was the right thing to do: he contacted his agent and asked her if it’s possible to land him an audition.

And he hasn’t heard about from her ever since.

As he refreshes his inbox again because yes, he’s borderline obsessive about it by now, he remembers something.

“You know, Haz, there’s one character in the book that reminds me of you.”

Harrison quirks an eyebrow at him, prompting him to continue, which he learns a second later is the wrong move. He should’ve just ignored Tom.

“He’s a bit of a dick but he’s Leon’s good friend and I think you should audition for that part seeing as you’re a dick too, so you’d be perfect that part,” Tom says to his friend, who rolls his eyes at him. And because he can’t help it, he adds, “But maybe you need to tone it down a little.”

Harrison doesn’t warrant Tom’s statement with a reply, but he could see that there’s a hint of intrigue on his best friend’s face like he’s thinking about it too. While he’s joking at first, now Tom can’t shake the idea off of his mind. He thinks about how cool it will be to not only have his best friend on set but to be in front of the camera together.

“Maybe I should audition for Leon and you should be the dick best friend.”

“Sure,” Tom replies. That could work too. “I can finally channel Harrison Osterfield on screen.”

“Glad I could be your muse,” Harrison grins, to which Tom responds with a snort and an eye roll.

Tom opens his mouth to say something else like how much of a diva Harrison is when he sees a new email in his inbox. An email from his agent - the one he’s been waiting for. He sits up, holding a hand out, and shushes his best friend.

“What? I’m quiet,” Harrison says with a frown.

Tom shushes Harrison again, who shakes his head at him and diverts his gaze to the telly in front of them.

Holding his breath, Tom clicks on the email and skims through it. Then when he reaches towards the end of the email, for a moment he stills, expecting bad news. But instead of feeling as though his heart has sunk to the pit of his stomach, it feels as though his heart might jump out of his chest.

“Mate,” Tom says as he reaches out for Harrison, accidentally hitting him on the stomach before he clutches his friend’s shirt and tugs at it. “Mate.”

Harrison turns to him, frowning. “What?”

“Mate.”

“What.”

Tom reads the email once more to make sure that he did not misread it because that would be horrifyingly embarrassing and when he’s certain that he got everything right the first time he read it, he hands his phone to Harrison.

Harrison takes Tom’s phone from his hand and reads the email out loud while Tom listens to him intently. Hearing it is way, way better than reading it and Tom feels like he might lose his shit. He remembers the day he found out he would be the new Spiderman, remembers how thrilled he was because holy shit he’s the new Spiderman - the character that almost everyone loves.

And this moment right now feels exactly like that. It’s unreal.

When his agent contacted the writer and the producer of the upcoming rom-com, Kim Davison, she was told that Kim was already planning on sending the script to Tom. It turns out that Kim thought Tom would be perfect for the role of Leon James and the role is his if he wants it. But of course, he still has to send his audition tape just for the sake of it.

“This is amazing,” Harrison says when he’s finished reading the email and hands the phone back to Tom. He pats his friend’s shoulder, squeezing it before letting go, and adds, “Congratulations, mate.”

“Thanks, Haz,” Tom replies, still trying to wrap his head around everything.

He’s lucky, he’s very much aware of that, because opportunities like these don’t come often. It’s not every day that the writer who is also the producer of the movie wants you to be in the movie. More often than not, Tom has to go through auditions that usually last for months and even then he’s still not guaranteed a role.

This is a sign, he thinks, but a sign of what he’s not sure yet.

“But hey.” Harrison nudges Tom’s knee with his, snapping him out of his thoughts, and then continues, “Don’t spill it to the Internet just yet.”

---

taglist: @infinitiae​, @httpsmoony​ 

[doctorwhonews]

The Enemy Of The World - Special Edition (DVD)

Latest Review: The Enemy Of The World Starring Patrick Troughton as Doctor Who With Frazer Hines as Jamie and Deborah Watling as Victoria Written by David Whitaker Directed by Barry Letts Released by BBC Worldwide March 2018 It's out, and it's about time. Some five years after its initial release, The Enemy of the World is once again released this month, this time bursting with the features we've come to expect from a BBC Doctor Who DVD and that were notably absent from 2013. Indeed, even the DVD blurb acknowledges this: "Originally rush released shortly after its recovery, there was little time to complete the extensive Special Features typical of archive Doctor Who releases". Well, quite! So what do we get in what many would say is the "proper" release? Commentary: check. Production notes: check. Photo Gallery: check. An exhaustive making-of: check! The two-disc release also includes an interview with the man behind the rediscovery of this story, Phil Morris, a brief item on the restoration work undertaken in 2013, a tribute to the late Deborah Watling, the Jon Pertwee introduction to the then only existing episode 3 from The Troughton Years, and the original trailer from 1967 that followed The Ice Warriors. You even get a reversible cover so it can happily sit alongside the rest of your DVD collection if you prefer to maintain that consistent look and feel. However, one thing that certainly isn't consistent is the disc's opening menu! If you've been watching a number of DVDs recently like I have, the absence of the 'traditional' Davison opening accompanying the TARDIS 'arrival' into the main menu is quite a jarring shock, with the sequence being dispensed with in favour of a brief snippet of the Troughton titles leading straight to the menu. I guess I'll get used to it - at least the familiar "roundels" menu has survived! For the episodes themselves, the DVD boasts of further remastering with modern techniques by Peter Crocker and MArk Ayres - how much of an improvement in picture quality to the previous release I'm not so sure about, but the story looks and sounds very clean, and possibly as pristine as it'll ever be (and a definite improvement to the 480 line i-Tunes cash-in back in 2013...). I won't dwell over the story itself - after all if you're reading a review then you're probably familiar with the plot(!) - but it is one of those stories that features the change of direction halfway through that transforms the story into something else rather unexpected that I always like in drama. With only episode three as a visual guide for literally decades I hadn't appreciated this change of direction, and it is still a delight to savour now - it's probably no coincidence that the director, Barry Letts, becomes producer of an era full of such twists and turns. The complete serial also allows us to enjoy the characters in all their glory, and more to the point being able to watch the performance of Patrick Troughton in his dual role as hero and villain. I must admit that it still feels like a novelty being able to watch and appreciate the full story, and leaves me eager for more (something that animations can only partially sate!). But seeing Troughton smoking a cigar in episode five as though in competion with Roger Delgado in The Mind of Evil still feels out of place, even though it is of course Salamander puffing away, not the Doctor. How the perception of that enemy of the world's health has changed! The accompanying production notes provide the usual behind-the-scenes essentials, dates, figures, the development of the story from script to screen, changes to planned dialogue, action, etc., plus of course detail of the cast and crew and related observations. Insights include how several inserts made their way into later stories, how the slick action sequences in episode one were more fraught in production with both a hovercraft mishap and the helicopter very nearly following suit. During episode two it is revealed that there is a mysterious scene included featuring the Doctor and Kent that doesn't appear in the production schedules. And in episode five it is revealed how some of the more excessive blood and violence in the script were restrained in production. Though the production of the story can of course now be digested through reading Volume 11 of The Complete History, here the notes are more practical in illustrating what's currently appearing on screen - for example, In episode four, a practical example of the way in which those recording the programme worried less about the edges of the frame owing to on-screen visibility of the time is illustrated. The commentary for the story is initially taken up with a lively discussion between Frazer Hines and Mary Peach, joined by Gordon Faith for the next couple of episodes. All change for episode four with Milton Johns and Sylvia James taking up observational duty, before returning to the original duo for the finale. Discussions across the episodes included acting with helicopters, working with Patrick Troughton, actor-come-director Barry Letts, and the delightful Debbie Watling (of course!), acting in the confines of small studios and limited sets, plus Sylvia's explanation of how the crew approached the creation of 2018[1], some 50 years ahead of time. The commentary was moderated by Simon Harries, who had big shoes to step into following the mighty moderator extraordinaire Toby Hadoke; however he was more than capable of keeping the conversations going and keeping Frazer in check!   The main feature on the second disc is Treasures Lost And Found. Unlike the more usual more straightforward fact-based making-ofs, here Toby Hadoke takes us on a "treasure hunt" for new information on the story in his indomitable style, uncovering "clues" along the way in a similar vein to Looking for Peter on The Sensorites - so it isn't surprising that his accomplice on this mission is researcher Richard Bignell[2]! Along the way Toby (possibly) drank his way through innumerable relaxing teas conversing informally with Mary Peach, Sylvia James, David Troughton, Frazer Hines and Sarah Lisemore, plus several inserts on the making of the story from a 2008 interview with Barry Letts and also a 2011 interview with Deborah Watling. The informal approach to the documentary meant that Toby took time to chat to his interviewees about more than just their Enemy-specific memories. Mary's extensive career was discussed, including what occured when she met Marilyn Munroe, and David reflected on life with the Doctor and his father's views of acting in theatre - which also highlighted the perceived nepotism of the time with his cameo as a guard in the story, not to mention Frazer's brother Ian, Barry Letts' nephew Andrew Staines and finally production assistant come influential producer Martin Lisemore's wife Sarah, whose interview at the end of the programme turns into its most poignant moment as the treasure is finally revealed. I did have a couple of niggly issues with the presentation, though: the archive interview of Barry Letts was interspersed with shots of Toby and Richard watching the footage on a laptop, which I found both disjointing and a distraction to hearing what Barry had to say. The other was the "pop-up" message gimmick, which reminded me more of Top Gear style antics (something perhaps not lost on Toby? grin). These were only minor quibbles though, overall the feature is highly entertaining, ably guided by Toby throughout. With this release being a celebration of its return in the anniversary year, it isn't surprising to find its recovery being featured in the extras. In Recovering The Past, Phil Morris takes us through the journey he undertook in his quest to find missing television, and in particular the trail through Nigeria to his eventual find of both Enemy and The Web of Fear in Jos. The passion he has for his job is obvious from the interview, as is his optimism for future finds He also left us with a tantalising hint of what might be in store in the future... Restoring Doctor Who is an accompanying piece which documented some of the process in restoring the story from its original off-the-shelf condition to what we can watch today. Remembering Deborah Watling is a tribute to the actress whose bubbly presence is sadly missed. Featuring Louise Jameson, Colin Baker, Sylvia James, Anneke Wills, and Frazer Hines, Debbie's life and career is followed through the memories of her sister Nicky and brother Giles, with everybody involved reminiscing on her wicked sense of humour, practical jokes, and of course her healthy scream! The package is rounded off with the brief introduction to the then single remaining episode by Jon Pertwee from The Troughton Years, a trailer for the story from 1967, and the usual photo gallery, plus PDF materials.   ---   So is the special edition worth buying? It does of course rather depend on whether you are interested in the extra features. If you're only interested in the story then, with this version released, if you haven't already purchased it you might well see the original 2013 version drop further in price in the coming months. If you're only after a commentary then an alternative, unoffiicial release from Fantom Films[3] may be a cheaper option (though there isn't much difference in cost between that and this entire DVD online at present!). However, if you haven't bought Enemy before then I would certainly recommend this as the version to get. It's just a shame it wasn't presented this way in the first place!   Hmm, with all the extensive recovery articles on this release, what's left for the special edition of The Web of Fear ... ?!!   [1] The production discussion places the setting of the story as 2017, but a newspaper clipping seen in episode five shows "last year's date" of 26th August 2017, indicating it is actually set in 2018 after all. [2] I might well be the only person who will laugh out loud at Richard's ringtone! [3] A notable absence on the DVD commentary is of course the wonderful Debbie Watling, who had left us by the time this package was put together. All is not lost, however, as she can be heard on the alternative commentary from Fantom Films (and you can also get your Toby fix as Master of Ceremonies too!). The CD is still available from Amazon etc. http://reviews.doctorwhonews.net/2018/03/the_enemy_of_the_world_special_edition_dvd.html?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=tumblr

[ogremelodies]

...my sins laid out on a dead man’s scales. Redactions for effect.

\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\was driving on Monday morning when his phone rang. He could not pick up, but when he saw who had called – someone who was friends with him and \\\\\\\\\\\– he guessed what was coming. He called back and learned that \\\\\\\\\, just \\\\\years old, had been picked up from his home by an ambulance on Sunday night. On the way to hospital he went into cardiac arrest. He died shortly afterwards. It transpired that he was also suffering from cirrhosis of the liver.

\\\\\\\\\\\\\ a comedian who had been mentored by \\\\\\\\\\ over the past decade and become very close to him, had been worried about his friend for months. “In this last year, I’d been telling him he needed to sort his life out. It came to a head in Edinburgh this summer. He showed up and – there’s no easy way to say it – he looked like a dead man walking. I went to see his first performance, and he shouldn’t have been on stage. After the first week, I told him he needed to cancel the run and go home and see a doctor. It was like he was waiting for someone to give him permission. I called him three days later, but he still hadn’t gone to the doctor.” Even so, as \\\\\\\\\\\\ notes, “to a lot of people who hadn’t seen him for a while, his death came as a shock”.

It needs to be remembered that ///////// was not the man one saw on TV. The persona that made him famous in the early 1990s on /////////– the melancholic, wry, puppyish indie boy – was part of who he was, but only part. He was also arrogant, selfish, demanding and sometimes cruel. I know this because for several years during the 2000s, I was close friends with him. Then, a decade or so ago, he stopped speaking to me, because he felt I had not responded to his needs with sufficient vigour. In the past few years, we began speaking again – I went to see his shows, we texted, we saw each other a couple of times – but my being cut off was nothing unusual. “There was a long period where we were the closest people in the world,” says one comedian who knew him in his first flush of fame. “We’d go out five times a week, call each other three times a day. But everyone fell out with Sean because he always wanted them to be there for his purposes.”

It’s also worth noting that it is hard to get people to talk publicly about Hughes, precisely because so many people had bad experiences with him, especially women. Those who knew him talk of how he seemed to be looking for reasons to cut off people he loved: Donnelly recalls Hughes falling out with one of his oldest friends a few years back, and how he told Hughes that the other person had done nothing wrong, but this made no impression. It was as if he was afraid of intimacy, and this meant women would experience the absolute worst of him. No one I speak to will go into specifics – it seems not to be something people want to revisit – but dark mutterings among women who had relationships with him floated around like an ugly cloud, becoming visible again after his death.

When I got to know Hughes, at the start of the last decade, he was at the peak of his fame. For 11 series, from 1996 to 2002, he was a team captain on Never Mind the Buzzcocks, the TV comedy pop quiz. He had gone from NME famous, known to a constituency of indie guys and teenage girls, to BBC famous, known to everyone. Famous enough that when he went to a pub in which he wasn’t a regular, he would insist on sitting at a corner table with his back to the room, because if he was recognised he would be pestered.

He was torn between desiring fame and wealth, and contempt for the way he had achieved it. He lived for the last 15 or so years in a huge and beautiful house in Crouch End in north London, paid for with the Buzzcocks money, but the thing that caught your eye as you walked in was a large print of Jane Bown’s portrait of Samuel Beckett: money and art, together. “Sean once said to me: ‘What I do is above comedy,’” says someone who worked with him on Never Mind the Buzzcocks. “I tried to explain that there’s nothing above comedy. He fell for this dark, lyrical poet stuff. All my friends are comics, and so many of them have been ruined by quiz shows.”

We were honest with each other and listened to one another’s insecurities continually. He was very open with me

At times on Buzzcocks, you could see his disdain for what he was doing, even if it also made you laugh. Other, more telling incidents didn’t make it to screen: the time he was punched in the face before a show by Jah Wobble, who had been furious about the way Hughes had conducted an interview with him on London’s BBC local radio station GLR. Or him demanding to be set up to deliver a gag, then refusing to tell it. “I’m not going to do it,” he said, gesturing to his teammates – musicians rather than professional comedians – “because these fucking useless wankers aren’t joining in.” He wasn’t joking.

“Never Mind the Buzzcocks may have been the end for him. It was a great thing to do, but it wasn’t a great thing for him to do,” says one comedian friend. “It was the biggest thing he ever did, and Sean was unhappy about that.”

“I think he wanted to be an artist,” says his friend Stephen Jones, who records as Babybird (who also had the experience of being dropped by Hughes, and then reconciled). “Buzzcocks was just a paid job, but the seriousness was there in his books.” There had been a couple of collections of poetry and comic prose in the early 90s, and Hughes then tried his hand at being a novelist with The Detainees (1998) and It’s What He Would Have Wanted (2000). Both the acclaim and sales of his literary heroes eluded him, however.

He did the show, I think, because he loved music, even if it ended up disappointing him. But if Buzzcocks was the pay cheque, the radio show was where he indulged his delight in music and musicians. He was a loyal supporter of his favourite bands – Yo La Tengo, American Music Club, the Wedding Presentamong them – and a girlfriend of his once told me that musicians always saw the best side of him. Perhaps it was because it was one thing he was sure he wasn’t better at than them.

“Sometimes I had to steer him away from talking so much about the band, because it was a bit like doing an interview, such was his fascination with it,” says David Gedge of the Wedding Present. “We would bare our souls to each other all the time. That was the nature of our relationship and I will sincerely miss that. We were honest with each other and listened to one another’s insecurities continually. He was very open with me; he’d quite often arrive at wherever we were meeting and launch into something incredibly personal. I once asked him how he was, and he said: ‘Well, my dad just died.’”

Hughes left Buzzcocks in 2002, and retreated from comedy, but he still pursued fame and wealth, albeit with less success. As well as the novels, he appeared as Peter Davison’s sidekick in four series of the gentle crime show The Last Detective, starred in the long-running West End play Art, and voiced the character of Finbar the Shark in the infants’ TV animation Rubbadubbers. I asked him why he took that role, given his desire to be treated seriously and his seeming lack of interest in kids. “Do you know how much money Neil Morrissey made out of Bob the Builder?” he replied.

“More than most, he was obsessed with money,” remembers one old friend. “I can barely remember him buying a drink. And that was when I was his best friend, and he had his own TV show. That’s the paradox: a man who was so jealous about money and also wanted to be an artist.”

Perhaps he realised that being a comedian was what he was best at. He returned to standup in 2006, building up to the show about the death of his father – Life Becomes Noises – that seemed to mark a decisive return as a solo stage performer.

“Maybe he got back to doing it on his own terms,” says the comedian Adam Hills, who became close to him in recent years. Hills mentions a remark Steve Martin once made about being a superstar comedian, that if you do new material the audience don’t laugh because they want to hear the old stuff, but if you do the old stuff the audience don’t laugh because they already know it. Coming back, no longer a superstar, meant that Hughes could perform the comedy he wanted. “It felt to me in his last few years that he was doing it because he liked it.”

It seems he changed as a person, too. There is a stark divide between the memories of those who were friends with him at the peak of his fame and those who came to know him in recent years. They sound as if they are describing different people. Hannah Morris, an Australian actor who appeared with Hughes in his improv panel stageshow Blank Book says: “I knew of his reputation, but I never saw that man at all. He was very kind and very generous – and very gentle, actually. Maybe that was something that had changed.”

And how was his attitude to Morris, not as an actor but a woman? “I hung on to the idea of having a woman’s voice in Blank Book. Being on stage with three men, I tried to include a woman’s voice, and he valued that. He said that to me. He said he liked hearing that.” Donnelly agrees that his attitude towards women changed, that his anger and cruelty had dissipated, perhaps because “in the last five years I would say he had no interest in sex any more”.

Hills first met Hughes 20 years ago, as his support on an Australian tour, but their friendship developed in recent times. Like Morris, he never experienced the man who could be so vindictive. “What I felt in the last couple of years was how genuinely concerned he was about how I was doing and how much he cared.”

Donnelly, too, was helped and nurtured by Sean: they became friends when he was asked to support him on a tour of Switzerland, which he remembers as being “like a holiday”. He would see flashes of the old Sean, “but I’d always try to be the voice of reason. We bonded over lots of stuff; we’d go and mooch around Tate Modern. He taught me more about art than anyone I’ve ever known. He’d talk about art like he talked about about football.”

The last time I saw Sean, he was not drinking. It was peculiar, spending an evening alone in a pub with him, just a mineral water in front of him. My main memories are of large groups of people and large amounts of alcohol: one peculiar night getting very drunk with “some friends” who turned out to be most of the cast of EastEnders; the night a group of us were doing a pub quiz and Gem Archer, newly installed in Oasis, walked in – everyone turned around to stare, and Hughes observed, loudly: “He’s in here all the fucking time but until now he’s just been that cunt from Heavy Stereo.” As was often the way with Sean, it was a joke, but it felt as though it was delivered with teeth.

In the last year, since his mum died, the drinking spiralled. It was horrible. We'd speak at 10am and he’d be pissed

But then he returned to drinking, telling the Irish Times: “Apparently I’m tedious when sober. People were uncomfortable when I wasn’t drinking. It made them question their own habits.”

“That was bollocks,” Donnelly says. “When he wasn’t drinking he was the most stable I ever saw him, but he flat-out told me he was bored. He didn’t have much in the diary – he only did short tours – and he just told me he was bored. So first he started smoking again, absolutely chaining it. And then the drinking started again … When he first gave up, he just stopped overnight. So I always thought it wasn’t an addiction in that full-on sense. But in the last year, since his mum died, it spiralled. It was horrible. I’d speak to him at 10am and he’d be pissed.”

Yet Hughes was able to compartmentalise his life so thoroughly that other friends had no idea what was happening. “It didn’t seem to me that he was drinking a lot,” Hills says. “It’s been very disconcerting the last couple of days, because the Sean I knew had been in good health and good spirits.”

I always wondered if he had been lonely. “I think he was a lonely person,” Donnelly says. “And he found it hard to hold down relationships. He would call friends claiming he needed to check something, but really he wanted someone to talk to.”

Mark Lamarr is the comedian with whom Sean’s name is perhaps most closely associated, thanks to his hosting of Never Mind the Buzzcocks. “I guess you could have called us both womanisers,” he says. “We were both young, rich and famous. We both had lots of girlfriends. One day he rang me, and it was the only time I remember him reaching out with sadness. He said: ‘I really worry you and I are going to end up being lonely old men. I said: ‘I’m not worried, because I like being alone.’ The big sadness is that he didn’t even get to be old. He just got to be lonely.”

It’s hard to write about Hughes, not just because he had been my friend, but also because my memories – like many other people’s – are not all positive. I can laugh about the time at a Cure aftershow party when he tried to convince people he was the estranged nephew of far-right Austrian politician Jörg Haider, but I can also recall his unerring eye for other people’s weakness and insecurity, and his willingness to deploy it. I can smile at the memory of going with him to watch Crystal Palace, and him shouting at the Charlton player Luke Young, in his best Obi-Wan Kenobi voice, “Run, Luke, run!” every time Young was in earshot, but then I think of women I know who had encounters with him and how horrified they were by his behaviour.

I shall go to his funeral on Monday, and I will still be asking myself: who was my old friend? And why did his life turn out this way?

• This article was amended on 19 October. An earlier version said Luke Young was a Crystal Palace player. This has been corrected to say he played for Charlton.