Jon was my best friend. We met in our first term at Oxford and he was
easily the coolest kid I'd ever encountered. I was enormously impressed that he'd
had to decide whether to come to Oxford in the first place or stay with his
beloved band, the London Boys. He had enormous charisma, and the best
record collection you could ever wish to listen to. We did discos
together, inter-railed round Europe together, studied together (which
mainly consisted of me trying to copy his elegant and well constructed essays),
went on demonstrations together, and played a lot of pool. He was always
at the very epicentre of the in crowd and he always made sure I was
included in whatever was going on. I half expected someone so cool and so
clever to have an unpleasant edge, but the opposite was true. He was kind,
supportive and generous. He also had a beautiful relationship with his
lovely family and my thoughts will always be with them.
Our lives developed in parallel and we stayed close throughout. I saw him
a week before he died and we discussed everything from our wonderful
children, to going to Arsenal together, to the relative merits of Donny
Hathaway and Marvin Gaye. I knew little of his brilliant career, such was
his modesty - to me he was just my brilliant friend with whom I went to see
Booker T and the MG's. I miss him terribly, but I am grateful to have had
such a wonderful person play a significant role in my life - and my life is
all the richer for it. Jon was my guide, my support, my sounding board, my
conscience and above all my dear, dear friend. He lives on in our
memories, and he is particularly vivid in mine.
