An old friend died yesterday. We were contemporaries in the Irish Guards and at Durham, so go back a long way.
While I served a life sentence (39 years) of drudgery in the City, Nigel founded a right wing think tank and trained to be a Jesuit priest. The latter plan went off the rails when they gave him a bicycle to get to the pub and didn’t allow him to walk barefoot – he left saying they were too soft. He re-invented himself as a security adviser in Africa, not a safe job. He knew the Thatchers, mother and son, advised Simon Mann not to mount a coup in Equatorial Guinea and was poisoned while on a job in the Congo. “How did they do it, Nigel? Something in the food?”
“Good God no. They put it in my whiskey – luckily they only gave the standard dose and I managed to get back to South Africa where they had an antidote.”
He should have lived out his days at the Beefsteak regaling members with his trenchant opinions while living in the Charterhouse. Instead he was beset by demons, was determined to die and did so peacefully in hospital in South Africa yesterday.
The Last Rose of Summer was written by Thomas Moore in 1805 when he was staying at Jenkinstown, the estate in Co Kilkenny my grandfather inherited.
‘Tis the last rose of summer,
Left blooming alone;
All her lovely companions
Are faded and gone;
No flower of her kindred,
No rosebud is nigh,
To reflect back her blushes,
Or give sigh for sigh.
I’ll not leave thee, thou lone one!
To pine on the stem;
Since the lovely are sleeping,
Go, sleep thou with them.
Thus kindly I scatter,
Thy leaves o’er the bed,
Where thy mates of the garden
Lie scentless and dead.
So soon may I follow,
When friendships decay,
And from Love’s shining circle
The gems drop away.
When true hearts lie withered,
And fond ones are flown,
Oh! who would inhabit
This bleak world alone.”
Thank you Christopher. A very moving tribute to Nigel who was of such greater worth than he ever thought himself to be.
Nigel was a wonderful mimic and specialised in taking off Edward Heath. On one occasion while waiting for Heath to arrive at the Durham Union Nigel had a packed chamber in stitches with his vowel-mangling ‘Morning Cloud’ and heaving shoulders. The former Prime Minister entered the chamber while Nigel was in full flow leaving both looking confused and Nigel immensely red-faced. He went on to become a popular President of the Union, his election owing something to his bravura performance that day.
Nigel was a largish man and rather improbably owned a mustard-coloured Mini Cooper at university. He called it his ‘vomitorium’ and would park it outside the Union bar overnight. This proved unwise as those leaving the bar often felt the call of nature and the petrol cap of the vomitorium was ideally placed for the purpose. It was some weeks before Nigel worked out why the vomitorium used to bunny-hop down the North Bailey and never needed refuelling.
What fun we had. May he rest in peace.