My great friend Mike Shuttleworth died this week, taken without warning and unjustly early, although some of us with a few miles on the clock will at least envy the presumed quickness and lack of pain.

    I’ve known Mike for more than 50 years. I remember clearly the first time we met. I was walking home from school in Hayward’s Heath, 10 years old, and caught up with Mike walking along Church Road. Mike had been trying out for the New England Road school football team. Even then he had an awesome left foot, and was noticeably fast, small and wide. I’ve still got the old photo of the team.

    We have been firm friends since then – all of 52 years – and shared some great experiences and the odd up and down. Mike has always been brave and firm in his views. He was one of those traditional British Bulldogs who would always say what he thought, even if it put him in danger, or risked jeopardising, temporarily, the most important friendships. The truth was always most important, even if it caused aggravation for a while.

    We rarely disagreed politically, being thankful for the revolution led by Margaret Thatcher, and sharing the senior citizen’s view that the country was going to the dogs, mainly because it wasn’t listening to us. I fear that it is just as well he departed on Tuesday, because he would have simply vaporised with anger if he’d lived long enough to hear the Archbishop of Canterbury saying an alien culture like unreformed Islam’s medieval, uncivilised ways should take precedence in England. 

    But above all, this man was funny. Mike had an endless well of jokes, and could liven up any party. And it wasn’t only the never-ending, often self-deprecating repertoire. He had the gift of timing so that even the least powerful jokes would have everyone splitting their sides. I’m sure that with a bit of luck, Mike could have had a career on the stage, because he had the gift of turning every day events into comedy.

    Whenever Mike’s name is mentioned among my American family, the old story is dusted down about the famous Florida Water World incident. Mike was trying out the black run on one of those scary water slides, after graduating from the junior slopes. While Mike was trying to sit on the little mat for the most secure way to ride down he slipped, and managed to career all the way down, terrified and backwards. This led to a dressing down from a whistle wielding lifeguard gauleiter who said he was banned, for being too flash!   

    Mike took up the tools, as he would have put it, qualifying as an electrician from which he made a very good living. I can remember in my early 20s feeling a bit envious as Mike cruised around town in his MGB, while my grubby student lifestyle meant Ford Anglias and Austin A35s. After many years of contracting and then working at Gatwick, Mike forsook the tools for a second career, in management for the BAA, at Gatwick. Mike managed to keep his trap shut in the face of serial incompetence for long enough to get a deal which meant that he could face retirement with a smile.

    What a tragedy that all Mike’s carefully laid plans foundered, not least because of the ill-luck of having two hip replacement operations, with the first one failing last autumn. I remember Mike telling me of the moment he felt the hip go, and spent what were to be the last months of his life gritting his teeth for the immobility before the operation, and the long period of recuperation required afterwards, with all his plans on hold. A lesser man would have been full of self-pity. Not Mike. I spoke to him on the ‘phone the weekend before he died and he told me that the most recent operation had failed, and he would have to go through it all over again.

    I still can’t believe that Mike has gone from us. I’m almost expecting some kind of Reginald Perrin moment, where he reappears, saying “Gotcha”. But I have to face up to it. Goodbye Mike. It was great knowing you.