spinoff

The Spinoff crew lost one of their dearest friends last year, to a particularly nasty cancer (compounded, it has to be said, by the intermittent incompetence of his doctors). We knew, as did he, well beforehand, since he took a long time going; but many days since then it has seemed as if he is only just around the corner.

Take last week. Going through old emails (well, there is nothing else to do on a rainy Wednesday apart from work and seriously, who wants to do that?), a Spinoffian found an email from our friend, written at about the time we all came together. Kind, aware, achingly funny, it was Paul’s voice, echoing through all our heads once more.

This weekend, the present writer was at work (yes, some of us work weekends), and listening to a Pete & Dud sketch, when our friend’s voice echoed round the room. A brilliant mimic, Paul’s take on Pete & Dud (as well as Derek & Clive) sketches was as good as having them there. None of us can hear the word ‘lobster’ again without a certain sense of nervousness about what’s coming next, frankly.

And today, when I was commuting into work, and my sleep-befuddled brain took me onto the wrong train, what did I hear? Paul’s voice, high and clear in the back of my head, saying “You nit, Eccles – what did you do that for?”.

Pete & Dud, the Goon Show, any Monty Python sketch you care to name, most modern novels and a good portion of plays written after Shakespeare, as well as his own writing and his own comic creations, Paul was a goldmine of words and stories. And he thought – he looked at the world around him with a surprisingly clear vision, mediated by nothing but an intuitive understanding of how people relate to each other, and how the world really is, rather than how we would wish it to be.

His own work reflected his attitude to life – generous and funny (the only time I have seen an actor corpse on stage was in one of Paul’s plays), but aware and challenging. Never prepared to let people get away with weakness, he was always prepared to let them be good – if only they’d try.

We buried him, typically, to ‘Always look on the bright side of life”. But for those of us lucky enough to work with him, there did not seem to be much of a bright side in Paul’s death. Until we discovered that he’s not gone. He’s in the back of all our heads, all the time. We use his name for any number of things. We’re still laughing at his jokes; and still using his lessons to help us live our lives, and do our jobs.

He is, in many ways, one of the founding spirits of Spinoff. He’d be writing for it now, bombarding us with copy, telephone messages in silly voices, thoughtful and considered comment and criticism. We like to think that, even without him, he’d think we’re doing alright. After all, it’s his voice that frequently gets to the page.