If you want to be an illustrator, I can’t think of a better piece of writing to read than this:

I don’t really know how to write about Nick. Nick was great. As a craftsman, as a thinker, as a person to work with. Hugh and I had breakfast with him and his lovely wife, Sri, once, in a Salt Beef bar in Canary Wharf, where we talked of Cheese (“We brought back about 17 pounds of cheese. The sniffer dogs at LAX were very intrigued”), Bob Dylan, Fife and California. When he got home to New York state he sent me 3 CDs of the strangest music I’ve ever heard, lost gems from the past, patiently collected over the years, all themed—songs about Travel, songs about Space and the last, and finest—the appositely named Awful. When he won the Gold Award in the AOI Annual for a piece he’d done for us on Identity Theft, the AOI asked for a biography and picture. Nick: “I have fedexed three photos over to you. In the interests of appearances, you may want to stress how important it is to get the photo back because it is the only remaining photo of me as a child after the terrible ancestral fire where everything was destroyed. All the best, nick”

This is what Nick posted.

And this is how it looked in the Annual.

It’s truly sad he’s not here.