A gentleman I’ve known, liked, admired and approved of was killed by a motorcycle this week.

I knew him as Mr Andy Roberts of Oxford and London, of the band Linus, and of many artistic scenes spanning music and print, genres and countries, appreciation and creation. A beautiful, kind and talented man is now senselessly, needlessly, pointlessly dead. Many people I know are upset, and I’m rather upset too. In the sphere of public media, I think it’s better to breed support than breed grief, and I want to do whatever I can to help those closer to him. Not least writing this diary, which is the one thing many say I am good at or good for.

Me: ‘I’m terrified of saying anything Inappropriate.’
The Reader: ‘Why break the habit of a lifetime?’

Cliches are so very hard to avoid when writing about somebody who has just died. Andy Roberts was an anti-cliché. And then of course, I find myself writing ‘in so many ways.’

There goes any attempt to be entirely sombre. Someone told me the other day that my public diary was ‘so delightfully funny’, which was all very flattering. But then she quoted an entry I had thought entirely sober and sedate, bordering on despair. I pictured her reading my future suicide note in fits of helpless laughter.

Regular readers will know that when I walk innocently around London, it’s quite usual for strangers to openly point and laugh at me. More now than ever before. On an Old Street tube platform last Friday night, three tall black gentlemen in Hawaiin shirts and shorts stopped their conversation as I passed, paused, then broke into fits of mirth. One of them shook his head and said, ‘Only in London. Only in London.’

What’s important to me is that the speaker was smiling as he said this, and it was a smile without cruelty or malice. Although it is never my intention to be a walking, waking source of public hilarity, I am pleased that I can spread a little accidental happiness as I go by. The same applies to my diary. If I were told today that I was actually the tragicomic figment of a bored German science-fiction fan’s unbalanced imagination, my life would finally make sense.

It’s probably better for me to stay accidentally rather than deliberately funny, too. There’s been many occasions where I’ve made what I thought was a highly amusing joke, only for people to not laugh, or worse, take it the wrong way, even finding the joke offensive. We do, after all, live in a culture of supreme carefulness, huddled around words like crystal. Words like ‘inappropriate’ and ‘offensive’ now bandied about with the kind of frequency the word ‘rations’ must have had in the 1940s. ‘Inappropriate’ is off the ration book.

My own sick and twisted taste in humour means that my primary reaction to all the Live 8 philanthropy was to consider having a wristband made with the slogan ‘Make Coldplay History.’ Once again, I apologise to Coldplay and their mothers. Though I do wonder if the mothers of the non-Chris Martin members could recognise their sons, were they not standing next to the singer at the time. (And again, I apologise.)

Mr Roberts had a distinctive and beautiful face, and only ever liked music that was interesting. He could never have been in Coldplay. No greater tribute. (That’s the last time, I promise. Sorry.)

So, stifling another cliche, if the sad clown hat fits – and for me, who I am kidding – wear it. I’d much rather be the ringmaster, a stately trapeze artist, a sexy acrobat, or at the very least Third Zebra, but so be it. I know I am disfigured with a certain innate clumsiness of both body and mind. I can only hope that this clumsiness more often pleases than upsets.

I say something solemn, turn to leave, then fall over. That’s fine. I just want people to smile when I fall over.

***************

And when it comes to my abiding memories, Mr Roberts really did have a great smile. A gentle, kind, wry, welcoming, intelligent smile. I could never imagine him with a smirk or a sneer or a malign rictus. In fact, the latter sounds far more like the name of a band he would have raved about, than an expression his countenance would entertain. I can imagine him buying the first Malign Rictus EP when it came out in 1992. On, oh I don’t know, Dworkin Records 10″ dogtooth vinyl or something like that.

I couldn’t possibly presume to have been anything more than an occasional and peripheral part of his life, but I have to confess feeling a certain admiration – or do I really mean envy? – for what I did know of him. Like me, he dipped his feet into many pools of experience: band culture, book culture, feminism scenes, radical theory scenes, DIY music scenes, fanzine scenes, comic scenes, and the UK small press comic scene that my father Bib is a fan of. Mr R managed to befriend my father and myself separately, before rapturously realizing the connection. This happened on an occasion when Edwards Senior and Junior were both in attendance at some DIY small press do. ‘Guess who Dickon’s Dad is!’ he told others excitedly. Or to some it might have been ‘Guess who Bib’s son is!”

Added to that were his equally inspiring commitments to adult education, proper jobs, and proper relationships. But unlike the dabbling dilettante, fence-sitting likes of myself, Mr R ensured he got his feet wet. When it came to the things and people he found involving, he got involved. And, incredible to me, he managed to have the energy and know-how to keep all such sides of his life in balance, alternative and mainstream; sensible adult worker, inquiring student gabbling to me at gigs about philosophy, and playful cat-like fanboy. For me, he was The Talented Mr Roberts: not just a talented guitarist and artist, but talented in knowing how to get and keep friends, how to be kind without keeping score, and how to live. I certainly envied him that.

I also admired his sincere and lasting dedication to feminist band culture and alternative queer culture, particularly for a straight male. According to one such lady’s lady, Mr Roberts seemed to know more lesbians than the average actual lesbian. He would often use words like ‘cool’ and refer to some spoken word performance artist by saying ‘she rocks’. Whereas these are phrases I would have to employ a stunt double to use myself, Mr R. could pull them off without sounding a snob, an American wannabe, or an ingratiating twit. I felt that the music and fanzine scenes he frequented could sometimes breed a degree of snobbery and wariness of outsiders. For me, Mr Roberts would often be the one person in a room of intimidating ‘scenesters’ that I felt I could approach and chat to safely, without feeling I’d get told off for NOT using the word ‘cool’. He was never, dare I say it, ‘up himself’. And that’s coming from me.

One last abiding memory. I was never the recipient of one of his famous compilation tapes, but I did once pop into Camden Waterstones, where he worked, to buy the latest Alan Bennett spoken word CD. Mr Roberts insisted on giving me a sly staff discount, even though I hadn’t come to any of his gigs for ages, or even seen him much full stop. I was taken aback by this, and I remain grateful. The CD was ‘Alan and Thora’, a compilation of Thora Hird’s Bennett monologues about dying. Paradigms of English tragicomedy. Which is where we came in.

Andy Roberts – the missing link between my father, Bikini Kill, and Thora Hird.

Splendid boy, all of him. I’ll never forget him.