Smoking Can Improve Your Health...
May 7th, 2007
My name is Alex Priest. I was lucky enough to know Chris for 20 years, first as a colleague and then as a friend. Outside work we shared a love of music, playing together in a band made up of other colleagues and friends. The thing I remember above all about Chris was his fantastic sense of humour. It was this above all else that I loved about him. As far as Chris was concerned, the more impertinent or disrespectful the joke, the better. I therefore found it easy to make him laugh ! Chris, Tim Benbrook and I used to draw heavily on The Derek & Clive Live album for humorous content, often helpless with laughter as we repeated the sketches back to each other, usually across the crowded office...
One event sums up Chris' love of gallows humour more than most: I once went to see him at the hospital to help relieve the boredom of chemotherapy. He was missing from his room and nobody knew where he was. I searched everywhere and eventually found him on the fire escape, smoking a cigarette. I sat there with him as he smoked and we cracked terrible jokes to each other until a nurse heard us cackling and came out. She ticked us both off, saying that there was no point in Chris being in hospital if he was going to harm himself by smoking, and that I should know better than to encourage him.
A fair enough comment, I thought, and sat there shamefaced, but Chris just laughed and said to her "What, am I going to catch cancer or something ?" The nurse's eyebrows shot up, but to her credit she realised she was on to a loser and retired gracefully. Chris and I were like a couple of kids who'd got one over on the grown-ups, shaking with laughter for a good five minutes; it was a truly magic moment. Derek & Clive, eat your hearts out !
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