It was Di Gribble who introduced me to John Clarke. They’re both dead now, leaving that same sense of unfillable loss, of something just gone from life.
John was a man of many conversations and we shared more than a few. In corridors, on phones, in studios.
It always amazed me, early in the piece, that he made time, someone so accomplished, so well-known and adept. But it dawned on me eventually that having a chat was one of the things John liked most, perhaps second only to working.
There would have been other private priorities above these I know — to his family and closer friends — but ours was a particular conversation, full of ideas, wit and a constant fascination with literary and performance form. It had the intimacy of mutual fascination, but not a true closeness …
