SIMON HOGGART

I first met Simon Hoggart at the Richmond Literary Festival five years ago, when we had the hapless task of choosing the most important book of all time.   I was amongst formidable intellectual heavy weights. Best selling author Ann Sebba who chose Homers Odessy (my son seven at the time remarked he didn't know The Simpsons had written such an important book) and Jonathan Aitken found God again and put up the Book of Psalms as the ultimate tome.  

Simon wanted to talk about the Punch Book of the best Political Cartoons. I chose Winnie the Pooh, as it was the book I was reading to my son a lot at the time, and believing it crossed all genders, racial and religious barriers, truly universal and a best seller in Latin, it stood a chance.

No one wanted to be first, so Simon said he would.   He walked up to the podium to the room of eager and earnest literary Richmondites who were expecting heated and intellectual debate, and smiled.

"This book is not the most important book of all time, this is not even the most important book of this month or year, but I like it, so I'm going to talk about it."

From that moment on I loved him because like he always did, he took the pretention and pomposity out of every situation and every person he met, including politicians and politics.   He burst the bubble of illusion effortlessly, with grace and charm and he was an effervescent generous spirit with his time, his advice and his intellect.  He was one of life's givers.

I miss him as a friend even more than I will as a political commentator for which he was widely celebrated.  My heart goes out to his family.  He was a good friend and a good man.