The Queen and I

Before Christmas Rebecca English, the Daily Mail's royal editor, tweeted:

Queen Camilla is launching a podcast

The Queen's Reading Room Podcast is available weekly from January 8 and will feature HM The Queen and names such as Joanna Lumley and Sir Ian Rankin. It's aim? To promote the joy of reading.

This is an extremely tenuous link but it reminded me that eight years ago (January 2016) I took part in a balloon debate at what was then the new Foyles bookshop in London's Charing Cross Road.

I was one of seven speakers invited to champion the 'Best Book in the World'. Two didn't turn up but the five who did were given two and a half minutes each to pitch our chosen titles.

After a short Q&A, the audience then voted. They could vote for as many books/speakers as they liked, and the two with the fewest votes were eliminated.

To my surprise – because I was totally out of my comfort zone – I got through to the final round and although I didn't win I didn't embarrass myself (which I thought I might).

Full story: Why Mr Galliano's Circus is the best book in the world

PS. Is it just me, or does anyone else find it difficult to associate the words 'the Queen' with Camilla?

Nothing against King Charles' wife, who seems very nice with a good sense of humour, but whenever I see any reference to 'the Queen' I automatically think of Elizabeth II, which is technically how we are supposed to refer to the late queen now.

Nevertheless – and I know this makes me historically illiterate – there will only ever be one queen for me!

New year, new address

Forest has a new address:

The Quad, Cambridge
No.9 Journey Campus
Castle Park
Cambridge CB3 0AX

The location (a four-storey business centre ten minutes' walk from the city centre) is the same as before and the building hasn't changed. There is however going to be a new canopy over the main entrance, and a reception area where people can meet and have coffee, although there seems to be an issue with the installation of a coffee machine that still requires approval (!).

I suggested a similar space some years ago because, in the many years Forest has been based here, there has never been a proper communal area, unlike the Barley Mow Workspace in Chiswick where I worked as a freelance journalist in the late Eighties.

I moved in to what is now called the Barley Mow Centre in February 1987 and worked there for four years. I loved it, and met some great people – including graphic designers, IT experts, and translators – often over lunch in the excellent canteen that was run as a stand alone business.

Anyway, the rebranding of what was previously Sheraton House in Castle Park, Cambridge, is a good excuse to list some of the other addresses Forest has had over the years. I'll start with:

2 Grosvenor Gardens, London SW1
When I joined Forest in January 1999 we were in Palace Street, near Victoria Station and a stone's throw from Buckingham Palace. Before Palace Street, Forest had been at 2 Grosvenor Gardens, a Grade II listed building that was only a minute from Victoria Station. Someone who worked there as a temp described the Forest office as "very small and quite tatty" but that's not how the building looks today so it must have been restored since then.

Audley House, 13 Palace Street, London SW1
The move to Audley House, an 'elegant Edwardian building' opposite what is now The Other Palace Theatre, took place in 1998. Marjorie, my predecessor, arranged for the new office to be ‘opened’ by the president of the GMB union. Comedian Jo Brand was another visitor that year. Named ‘Smokers' Rights Champion of the Year’, she apparently popped in to collect her award in person. A former psychiatric nurse, Brand later quit smoking, although I’ve read interviews in which she said how much she enjoyed it - a familiar tale.

Built in 1903, both the building and our office on the ground floor were in pretty good nick so I’m guessing it had been refurbished before Forest moved in. Marjorie went a step further however and had several air filtration units installed in the ceiling that seemed to remove most if not all the tobacco smoke in the room. In those pre-smoking ban days there were four full-time and two part-time staff working for Forest, half of whom were smokers, and the effectiveness of the technology was genuinely impressive.

Unfortunately I also inherited a financially crippling ten-year lease and when the rent went up to £50,000 a year we simply couldn't afford to stay there any longer. In 2004, six years into the lease, we were forced to negotiate our way out, but it cost us an additional £40k in 'reparations'.

Sheraton House, Castle Park, Cambridge
After Audley House we moved our main office out of London to Cambridge and I vowed to never again lease an office. Instead we rented a serviced office (on an annual contract) a short walk from the city centre, and Sheraton House has been our principal address ever since. For several years though we kept a London base, a sort of hot-desking arrangement with a TV production company in central London that was initially based in Margaret Street, near Oxford Circus, but later moved to Wardour Street in Soho.

33 Margaret Street was a great location. Broadcasting House, where I did a lot of interviews for BBC Radio, was just around the corner, and the PR company that worked with us on our campaign against the smoking ban was also a very short walk away. The office we shared with the TV production company was a former penthouse flat on the top floor of a building that was later demolished and replaced by a new office block (pictured here).

After we were given notice that the ‘old’ Seventies building was to be knocked down, we moved to Wardour Street which was a ten minute walk from Margaret Street. It was also in Soho, which gave it added credibility.

Gradually, though, I spent less time in London so when the production company moved again, this time to Marylebone, I declined the offer to go with them. Instead, I started travelling to London only when necessary – for meetings and interviews, for example.

As it happens, the BBC was happy enough for us to do interviews from their Cambridge studio, and I discovered that ITV Anglia also had a small facility in Great Shelford, just outside the city, so we were able to use that as well.

Since Covid, of course, it has become the norm to do interviews via Zoom or some other digital platform so there's far less call to travel to studios in London or anywhere else.

In some ways I miss the formality and occasional excitement of the studio interview, but it's certainly cut down the many hours I used to spend travelling to and from studios in London and elsewhere, not to mention the inevitable waiting around, sometimes for no more than 20 seconds of air time on a national news bulletin.

But I digress.

We moved to Cambridge in February 2004, renting an office from Citibase who have offices in London and around the country.

A great many Citibase Cambridge staff have come and gone since then - too many to name them all - but I would like to give a shout out to long-serving business manager Ann, her equally long-serving assistant Georgie, not to mention Freya, Ellie, and Kristina, plus Sue and Nicky on reception.

All are long gone from Sheraton House but their help and good humour won’t be forgotten.

More recently I am indebted to Chiara without whom I would have struggled to complete the current, and somewhat Byzantine, contract process, but we’re still here and next month will mark the 20th (yes, 20th) anniversary of our move to Cambridge.

Derek Draper on political intelligence

Derek Draper, the former political advisor and Labour activist, has died aged 56.

It’s a sad outcome but not a surprise because, as the BBC reports:

Draper had been living with extreme complications from Covid since contracting the disease in March 2020.

The curious thing is that, aside from his long illness, Draper is best known for being the husband of Good Morning Britain presenter Kate Garraway.

The Telegraph, for example, reported his death like this – 'Kate Garraway’s husband Derek Draper dies aged 56'.

In the Nineties however Draper was a significant figure in his own right. A former aide to Peter Mandelson (who was arguably the architect of New Labour), he was a leading spin doctor and lobbyist.

In 1998, however, he was involved in a 'scandal' in which he was alleged to have claimed, “There are 17 people who count in this government, and to say I am intimate with all of them is the understatement of the century.”

I can't remember if it was before or after 'lobbygate' that I commissioned him to write a 1200-word article for a magazine I was editing.

Either way, I was slightly surprised that he agreed to do it, but it was a thoughtful, well-written piece and I thought you might like to read an abridged version. We called it:

Derek Draper's Guide to Political Intelligence

It was John Stuart Mill who first labelled the Conservative Party the "stupid party". He meant it as an insult but it is the least intellectual who seem to prosper best in politics. The much more wounding put down is to be told you're "too clever by half". One can be bright but not too bright ...

The Tories have always been more withering in their contempt for intelligence … Prior to the Thatcherite takeover [the] party prided itself on being an ideas free zone. Whilst the socialists worried themselves about Gramsci, Marx, Crosland or Laski, the Tories got on with governing the country.

Only with the accession of Thatcher did intellectuals turn the party into an ideological venture. Managing decline was no longer a policy option. But whilst Thatcher built an intellectual coterie during the 1970s, as soon as she gained power the brains were spurned and the old machine politicians took over …

Blair has similarly turned to trusted party men now he has the keys to No 10 … Welcome Jack “The Enforcer” Cunningham, a man who learnt his trade amongst the shop stewards of Newcastle GMB; Peter Mandelson, a strategist with a keen intelligence but not an intellectual; and John Prescott. Only Gordon Brown (with his PhD and desperation to get to grips with neo-endogenous growth theory) could remotely be described as intellectual ...

Being too clever by half is, of course, only a handicap in British politics. In France, Italy and Germany politicians regularly display their intellectual depth with turgid books on the foundations on their political philosophy ...

In Britain the ambitious politico settles for a newspaper picture of himself drinking local ale in the nearest saloon bar. Politicians like the Foreign Secretary Robin Cook, the Lord Chancellor Derry Irvine and even William Hague are widely viewed with suspicion for their clever-clever air.

The only way, as George Bush found during the 1988 US Presidential campaign, is to dumb down, lose the hauteur and go for the soundbite. For the cruel truth is that modern electorates like the impression of ordinary men doing extraordinary jobs; not extraordinary men who deign to perform ordinary jobs.

Ultimately it is instinct, common sense and, above all, luck which services the successful politician more usefully than any degree of grey matter. Tony Blair’s instinctive response on the morning after Princess Diana’s death earned him a deeper and more lasting support than any clever policy wheeze ever could.

Intellectuals have their function – but it is usually limited and far from the centre of power. Politics is, in a now hackneyed phrase, about hard choices. The intellectual usually sees too many alternatives, paradoxes and complications to act with the decision and brutality required.

The irony is that Derek Draper's own political intelligence failed him on several occasions, not least in 2009 when another 'scandal' (not of his making, as it happens) effectively forced him out of frontline politics.

But that, as they say, is another story.

Derek Draper: born August 1967, died January 2024

PS. Alongside Derek Draper's article on political intelligence, I also ran a feature by Madsen Pirie in which the co-founder of the Adam Smith Institute calculated a "political quotient" for each member of the then Labour Cabinet.

He did this by estimating and giving marks for the political and intellectual ability of each minister.

Tony Blair, for example, got 8 out of 10 for political ability, and 5 out of 10 for his intellectual prowess. In contrast, Gordon Brown got 6 for political ability and 6 for intellect.

To achieve a PQ rating we added these figures together and multiplied the result by five to give a mark out of 100. Simple!

It was just a bit of fun and the winner was ... Peter Mandelson with a PQ of 90.

Other scores included Jack Straw (75), David Blunkett (70), Tony Blair (65), Alastair Darling (65), Gordon Brown (60) and John Prescott (45).

Bottom of the class were Clare Short, Nick Brown and Chris Smith with PQs of 30. Oh dear.

Why it’s alright to keep our Christmas decorations up (until February 2)

When should the Christmas decorations come down? I ask because it’s a small bone of contention in my house.

The week after New Year is so depressing I like to keep the tree and decorations up for as long as possible, and for as long as I can remember the date by which they ‘have’ to come down - or risk bad luck - is January 6, or Twelfth Night.

My wife however disagrees and insists that Twelfth Night is January 5 (ie today). Well, it turns out we’re both right. It simply depends on when you start counting.

Some people think the twelve days of Christmas start with Christmas Day. Others believe they begin on Boxing Day.

To be honest, I’d never given it a moment’s thought but, thinking about it now, it does seem more logical for Christmas Day to be the first day of Christmas.

But that would mean changing the habit of a lifetime and at my age I simply refuse to take the tree and decorations down a day earlier than I have to.

In fact, why take them down today or tomorrow? According to Dr Michael Carter, English Heritage’s Senior Properties Historian:

… contrary to popular belief, the Christmas season actually continues right through to Candlemas on 2 February so there's no real reason why you should take your decorations down earlier.

Furthermore, he adds:

The tradition that it is bad luck to keep decorations up after Twelfth Night and the Epiphany is a modern invention …

What I don’t understand is why it’s become acceptable to put the Christmas decorations up earlier and earlier, but frowned upon to keep them up beyond January 5 or 6.

Personally I would be happy to leave them up until the end of the month at least. Instead I shall be one of millions of people dutifully taking down their trees and decorations, and feeling momentarily bereft.

(Last year, to fill the void left by our Christmas tree, I rushed off to John Lewis and spent £400 on a beautiful oak floor lamp, so that was some consolation.)

So why do we do it? Why are we so keen to conform? It can’t be a genuine fear of bad luck, surely?

All I know is, come tomorrow afternoon, even the seasonal Emma Bridgwater pottery will have been packed away along with the lights, the baubles, and everything else that made the house so festive and cheerful for the past five weeks.

Welcome to January … the most miserable month of the year.

John Mallon - in memoriam

John Mallon’s funeral took place in Cork yesterday.

I couldn’t go, unfortunately, but a colleague went and I watched the requiem mass online.

An interesting part of the service was when John’s son and daughter presented “symbols of John’s life”. They included his laptop computer, a family photo, a replica football shirt, a book, and some mince pies.

His daughter Michelle explained that the laptop represented his “thirst for knowledge and his love of world affairs, history, and politics”.

The other items represented his love of family, sport, reading, and his “sweet tooth”.

I also learned a few things I didn’t know.

I knew John was a sales executive for Apple in the Nineties (before the iMac and the Apple Store changed everything).

I knew too that he was a videographer for several years.

What I didn’t know is that at various times he also ran a laundrette and sold jewellery - quite the entrepreneur!

What came through most, though, was his love of family which he put above everything, including material possessions or wealth.

Personally, I will miss his sense of humour, and his courage in standing up to the bully state.

A notable ally was award-winning blogger Richard O’Connor (aka ‘Grandad’) who helped John set up his own blog.

According to Richard:

John took to the scribbling lark like a duck to water. Over the years we kept up sporadic correspondence. He would occasionally phone me just for a chat when we would have a grand laugh at life. We shared a common jaundiced view on life in general.

Sadly, we never met, as he lived in Cork, and I didn’t. On several occasions we had some near misses as I travelled to west Cork or he travelled to Dublin but for various reasons that meet never happened.

I’ll miss his gentle Cork accent and his unrepeatable comments on our politicians.

But the final word goes to my colleague Jacqui Delbaere:

I had the joy and privilege of working with John over a number of years in his capacity as Forest Ireland spokesman. I set up radio and TV interviews for his media tours. John was always lovely to work with, up for the ‘craic’, and I will miss our banter and camaraderie. God bless.’

See also: ‘John Mallon RIP’

Below: Jacqui, John, and me on the terrace of the House of Commons in 2011. It may look like it, but we weren’t holding John hostage, honest!

John Mallon RIP

Some very sad news.

I am extremely sorry to report that John Mallon, spokesman for Forest Ireland since its launch in 2010, died on Thursday following a long battle with illness.

I saw John in November when I flew to Cork, where he lived, and we had lunch in the Panorama restaurant at the Montenotte Hotel which stands on a hill overlooking the harbour.

We were joined by three mutual friends. John was in good form and held court in his usual (well informed!) fashion.

To say John was affable is an understatement, which is why people couldn’t help but like him. But he also had a stubborn streak, and it was the combination of the two that made him such a dogged and engaging campaigner.

Over the years he became a frequent interviewee on Newstalk, Ireland’s leading independent radio station. He also appeared on RTE and Today FM.

He was a familiar voice too on many local radio stations and each year (before Covid struck), he would embark on a two-week media tour - starting (and finishing) in Cork, with stops in Limerick, Tipperary, Galway, Kilkenny, and Waterford, to name a few.

Once or twice a year he would also venture up to Dublin for a Forest event or some other work-related reason.

Each October, for example, he would stay overnight at Buswells Hotel opposite the Irish Parliament and make himself available to the broadcasters who were covering the annual Budget announcement.

On more than one occasion he persuaded RTE to invite him on their live programme, broadcast from Buswells, so he could comment on the latest tobacco tax hike.

It was noticeable, though, that wherever he was - be it Dublin, Galway, or London - John couldn’t wait to return home to Cork.

But let’s rewind.

When Forest Ireland was founded in 2010 there was only one person in the frame to be our spokesman.

Before and after the introduction of the public smoking ban in Ireland, in March 2004, the name John Mallon would appear on the letters pages of several national newspapers.

He wrote about various subjects but the one he returned to again and again was the negative impact of the smoking ban, and it’s a tribute to his determination and strongly held beliefs about individual freedom that he didn’t abandon the issue - as many did - after the ban was introduced.

It wasn’t until 2010, however, that we finally met in person. Thereafter, until Covid broke the pattern, we would meet two or three times a year.

This would include an annual meeting in Cork, usually before Christmas, that would start with a formal debrief in a nondescript hotel room, continue in a local restaurant, and finish in a noisy pub.

Meetings in Dublin usually revolved around Forest events. For a while, as a networking exercise, we hosted a series of small, private dinners to which we invited guest speakers such as Claire Fox (now Baroness Fox), Chris Snowdon, and Ella Whelan.

Other guests would include journalists and like-minded campaigners.

In 2017 and 2018 John also co-hosted our Farewell to Freedom Dinner & Awards, which were a huge success.

On the three occasions I remember him coming to London it was for a Save Our Pubs & Clubs reception on the terrace of the House of Commons (2011), the Forest Freedom Dinner at Boisdale of Canary Wharf (2016), and our 40th Anniversary Gala Dinner (2019).

At the second of those events we presented John with a ‘Voices of Freedom’ award which I introduced as follows:

Our next award winner first came to our attention in 2003, before the introduction of the smoking ban in Ireland. After the ban was introduced in 2004 we noticed he continued to write letters to the newspapers, pointing out the negative impact of the ban, and for several years he appeared to be the sole voice of reason in Ireland on this thorny subject.

In 2010, when we launched Forest Ireland, he was the obvious choice to represent smokers in Ireland. He has done that job now for six years, impressing everyone he meets with his charm and common sense. In an extremely hostile climate – the media in Ireland are far more hostile to smoking and the concept of smokers’ rights than their counterparts in the UK – he appears regularly on radio and, occasionally, TV.

At times it’s been a lonely and thankless task but I’m delighted to say he’s here tonight … Ladies and gentleman, in recognition of grace under fire, we present our international award to ... John Mallon.

Apart from keeping the flame of freedom alive in Ireland for 20 years, John’s greatest moment was arguably appearing before a parliamentary committee in February 2013.

We were a bit nervous about the outcome but John charmed the committee to such an extent that after the meeting several members approached him for a convivial chat.

I’ve witnessed and given oral evidence to a few parliamentary committees in my time and, believe me, that rarely happens to anyone on ‘our’ side.

In recent years John has suffered increasingly from poor health but he remained remarkably stoic and resilient.

He gave his last radio interview just two weeks ago, informing me that his voice was ‘weak’ but refusing to pass up the request.

Our physical meetings may have been limited, but we corresponded frequently (4,183 emails since 2013), and I shall miss him enormously.

My commiserations to John’s wife Phil, his two children (Michelle and Des), and the rest of his family.

But I would like to finish by quoting from the last and typically generous email I received from John. Sent on Christmas Eve, he wrote:

It has been a misfortunate year for me but that does not mean I cannot wish others well.

So my best wishes over the Christmas Holiday to you and your family and I hope 2024 brings you good luck and good fortune.

Thank you, John. I feel privileged to have known you.

PS. The funeral will be streamed via this link (churchservices.tv/mayfield) on Wednesday, January 3, at 11.00am GMT.

Update: There's a nice tribute to John by Grandad on his blog, Head Rambles – 'click here'.

John Mallon: born March 25, 1956, died December 28, 2023. Below: at the River Lee Hotel in Cork, November 2022

Dr Madsen Pirie OBE

Congratulations to Dr Madsen Pirie, president of the Adam Smith Institute.

Madsen has been awarded an OBE (for services to public policy) in the New Year Honours List announced last night.

I won’t repeat the story of my debt to Madsen (you can read about it here) but if it wasn’t for him and Eamonn Butler, with whom he co-founded the ASI in 1977, my ‘career’ might have taken a very different path.

(In fact, he helped me get not one but two jobs, the latter of which lasted 14 years.)

Given the ASI’s influence on public policy - especially during the Margaret Thatcher years - I’m just surprised it has taken so long for their work to be recognised in this way.

Meanwhile, still no gong for Deborah Arnott, CEO of ASH, or her counterpart in Scotland, Sheila Duffy. The mystery continues …

See: Still no honours for titans of tobacco control

Gone but not forgotten

Further to my previous post, I am reminded of three more people whose deaths I missed when they happened.

They are artist Tony Lawrence (2022), Oscar-winning screenwriter Sir Ronald Harwood (2020), and popular psychology author Tony Buzan (2019).

I'll start with Ronald Harwood because he's the only one most of you will have heard of. Born in Cape Town in 1934, he died in September 2020, aged 85, and I've no idea how I missed the news because it was widely reported.

Perhaps it was because it was during Covid, but the fact is I didn't find out for several months and the reason it's on my mind now is because I'm currently reading 'Speak Well of Me: The Authorised Biography of Ronald Harwood' by W Sydney Robinson, published in 2017.

According to The Times, 'The writer who emerges from Robinson’s biography is profoundly serious — but the man is often fun.'

That was my experience too and if you want to know more I recommend that you read the transcript of this fascinating Screenwriters' Lecture: Sir Ronald Harwood CBE from September 2010.

There are several laugh out loud moments, plus one or two comments about smoking including, at the end, the anguished cry: "I’m dying for a cigarette”.

Knighted in 2010, Harwood first came to our attention in 2004 when reports emerged of a dramatic stand-off in Canada. Recalling the incident in his obituary, the Guardian wrote:

... he was a ferociously committed smoker, cancelling a trip to Winnipeg to direct his famous play in 2004 because of “Canada’s draconian anti-smoking laws”.

Following that incident he accepted an invitation to join us at a small private dinner at Boisdale of Bishopsgate - an occasion also attended by David Hockney who arrived midway through dinner having flown into Heathrow that evening and come straight to the restaurant.

In September 2004 he was one of 13 people (others included Hockney, Stephen Fry, and Bob Geldof) who signed a letter, written by Joe Jackson and published in The Times, opposing a public smoking ban.

The following year Harwood was a guest when we hosted a Christmas lunch for a dozen friends of Forest at Rules, the Covent Garden restaurant founded in 1798, and the oldest restaurant in London.

That was in December 2005, almost two years before the smoking ban, but what I didn’t know when I booked a table is that Rules was a non-smoking restaurant even then - doh!

Thereafter we kept in touch, but very infrequently. I think the death of his wife Natasha in 2013 had a profound impact on him.

‘Speak Well of Me' was published on May 31, 2017, World No Smoking Day. I pointed this out to him in an email but I believe he had quit smoking by then so the irony may have been lost on him. Either way, I didn’t hear from him again.

Tony Buzan, who died aged 76 in April 2019, was a larger than life character who claimed to have invented a concept known as 'mind mapping' in 1970. A million selling author, he was also said to be the 'father of speed reading'.

Whether these claims are true I don’t know because Buzan was essentially a salesman, and a hugely successful one. I met him several times and I have never known anyone radiate such positivity or confidence.

The first time we met, in the early Nineties, I interviewed him in his office in Marlow, overlooking a marina.

I enjoyed his company and he liked me too, I think, but I am by nature a cynic, so there was never a meeting of minds.

We did however join forces for what, in hindsight, might be the most unlikely event ever but it seemed like a good idea at the time.

It took place in November 1995. I had recently interviewed Polly Brown, the lead singer with Pickettywitch, a band that enjoyed some success in the Sixties, and I had the bright idea of combining her talents with those of Buzan.

An interesting venue often helps sell tickets so I booked the Commonwealth Theatre at the Commonwealth Institute in Kensington.

‘Music and the Mind’ began with a one-hour presentation by Buzan that involved tapes, CDs and a light show.

The evening then entered its second phase:

Together, Tony and Polly will discuss the effect of music on intelligence, how important music is to our daily lives, and how the composition of music can broaden and expand the mind.

Central to part two was a set featuring 'the unique sound of the Polly Brown Blues Band'.

It sounds insane, pretentious even, but somehow it worked. We even got a full house.

I liked Tony enormously – his enthusiasm was infectious – so I was very sorry to discover, some time after the fact, that he had died. I was surprised too because when I knew him he appeared indestructible, a force of nature whose energy and healthy lifestyle should have guaranteed him another decade or two at least.

Instead he is reported to have died of a heart attack aged 76.

Finally, and more recently, I also missed the death of another person I once interviewed and liked – contemporary figurative artist Tony Lawrence who died in November last year. He was just 71.

Tony wasn't a household name so it's not surprising that news of his death didn't extend far beyond the New Forest where he lived.

In fact, the only reason I know is because, when we stayed overnight in the New Forest in the summer, I looked him up on Google and read the news on his website.

Having interviewed him at his home in the early Nineties, we kept in touch for several years and spoke quite often on the phone.

On one occasion he invited me to join him in the City of London to check out the location he had in mind for one of his exhibitions. It was a brand new office block that was totally empty except for the plain white walls and bright lighting.

He preferred it, though, to the more traditional art gallery.

(If I remember, his distinctive paintings were often exhibited privately, not in galleries but in what he called exhibition spaces.)

In 1997 he donated to one of my events an original watercolour that depicted the sky above the Isle of Wight which he could see from his home in Hampshire.

It was one of a series of similar paintings and proceeds from the prize draw, which took place at a gala dinner at the House of Commons, went to the Wessex Children's Hospice, which I believe was Tony's nominated charity.

The thing is, when I think of Tony Buzan and Tony Lawrence, neither of whom I had seen for 25 years, I remember them as much younger people, so the discovery that they had died was far more of a shock.

Also, when I knew them, they shared an almost childlike love of life and their boyish enthusiasm was infectious.

So what have I learned from all this?

One, read the obituary columns, religiously, every day.

Two, try not to lose contact with people you know and like, even if it's only sending them a Christmas card each year.

One day you may discover, as I have, that they have died and it will be too late to drop them a note suggesting you meet for lunch or dinner, or even a drink.

As it happens, last year I sent a Christmas card to an old friend I hadn’t seen for the best part of ten years and did exactly that.

We met up, with a mutual friend, and I discovered he was recovering from a heart operation – which didn't come as a surprise given his lifestyle!

I'm pleased to say we are seeing each other again in the new year and I hope it will become an annual ‘thing’.

I also intend to visit an old university friend who last week underwent open heart surgery. I haven't seen him for some time either and there’s no knowing how long any of us will last (myself included!) so the lesson I take from this is, don’t put off what you can do today otherwise it may be too late.

See: Tony Buzan obituary (The Times) and Obituary: Tony Buzan, educational consultant who created the Mind Map learning technique (The Herald)

Also: Obituary: Tony Lawrence – renowned artist whose works are sought around the world (Advertiser and Times)

PS. I’m rather chuffed that Tony Lawrence’s website includes a passage from an article I wrote in 1992. It reads:

Centrepiece of the exhibition is A Practical Guide to Aesthetics, an extraordinary 60-foot mural that comprises twelve separate paintings, all interlinked, that took two years to plan and four years to paint. It’s so big that the Broadgate show offers Lawrence his first opportunity to see it as visualised – in one piece, stretching the entire length of a single wall. It’s designed, he says, to liberate him from past work – one step back, two steps forward. ‘I wanted to clear out all the cobwebs so I looked at everything to do with me and my art and pulled together images that were important to me’.

One particularly fascinating section contains almost 70 portraits of friends, people he knows or people who have influenced him. Not only does it include Francis Bacon, Andy Warhol, Jackson Pollock and David Hockney, it also features such diverse characters as Lenin, Desperate Dan, Mickey Mouse, Cleo Laine (a family friend), a Picasso pastiche, two self-portraits plus a portrait of the artist by his son George – not to mention portraits of his wife and five children.

Although he favours a cerebral approach to his work, he’s unconcerned if people don’t read anything into his paintings. ‘The cerebral element is only important to me because there has to be a reason for me to do it, but I wouldn’t dictate to others what they should read out of a painting. There are different levels of appreciating art and all of them are equally valid. It would be very arrogant of me to expect someone to sit down in front of one of my paintings and have to think about what the artist intended. In painting there’s the person who does them and the person who looks at them and I think the person who looks at them is of equal importance because what brings a painting alive is someone looking at it.’

Click here.