Foreword
The most remarkable thing about the first days after Alan died was the number of actors, poets, musicians, playwrights and directors who wanted to express their gratitude for all the help he’d given them.
I don’t think I know anyone in this business who has championed more aspiring artists nor unerringly perceived so many great ones before they became great. Quite a number said that, latterly, they had been too shy to thank him personally. They had found it hard to approach him.
Of all the contradictions in my blissfully contradictory friend, this is perhaps the greatest – this combination of profoundly nurturing and imperturbably distant.
He was not, of course, distant. He was alarmingly present at all times.
The inscrutabilty was partly a protective shield. If anyone did approach him with anything like gratitude or even just a question, they would be greeted with a depth of sweetness that no one who didn’t know him could even guess at. And he was not, of course, unflappable. I could flap him like nobody’s business and when I did he was fierce with me and it did me no end of good.
He was generous and challenging. Dangerous and comical. Sexy and androgynous. Virile and peculiar. Temperamental and languid. Fastidious and casual.
My list is endless. I am sure you can add to it.
There was something of the sage about him – and had he had more confidence and been at all corruptible, he could probably have started his own religion. His taste in all things from sausages to furnishings appeared to me to be impeccable. His generosity of spirit was unsurpassed and he had so much time for people that I used to wonder if he ever slept or ever got time for himself.
A word not traditionally associated with Alan is gleeful. But when he was genuinely amused he was absolutely the essence of glee. There would be a holding back as the moment built and then a sudden leaning forward and swinging round of the torso as a vast, impish grin flowered, sometimes accompanied by an inarticulate shout of laughter. It was almost as if he was surprised by himself. It was my life’s mission to provoke those moments.
I remember Imelda Staunton nearly killing him by telling him a story about my mother and an unfortunate incident with some hashish.
I’ve never seen him laugh more, before or since. It was a bit like watching someone tickling the Sphinx.
One Christmas Eve party I had a sprig of mistletoe hanging up at home. I was loitering under it and turned to find Alan bearing down on me. I lifted my chin up hopefully. He smiled and approached. I puckered. He leaned in under the mistletoe and a sudden change came over his face. His eyes started to glitter and his nostrils quiver. He lifted up a hand, reached in and pulled a longish hair out of my chin.
‘Ouch!’ I said
‘That’s an incipient beard, he said, handing me the hair and walking off.
That was the thing about Alan. You never knew if you were going to be kissed or unsettled. But you couldn’t wait to see what would come next.
The trouble with death is that there is no next. There is only what was and for that I am profoundly and heartbrokenly grateful.
The last thing we did together was change a plug on a standard lamp in his hospital room. The task went the same way as everything we have ever done together. I had a go – he told me to try something else – I tried and it didn’t work so he had a go. I got impatient and took it from him and tried again and it still wasn’t right. We both got slightly irritable. Then he patiently took it all apart again and got the right lead into the right hole. I screwed it in. We complained about how fiddly it was. Then we had a cup of tea. It took us at least half an hour. He said afterwards: Well, it’s a good thing I decided not to be an electrician. I am still heartbroken that Alan is gone, but these diaries bring back so much of what I remember of him – there is that sweetness I mentioned, his generosity, his championing of others, his fierce critical eye, his intelligence, his humour.
Alan was the ultimate ally. In life, art and politics. I trusted him absolutely.
He was, above all things, a rare and unique human being and we shall not see his like again.
