The former England Rugby player, Andy Ripley, has died of prostate cancer at the age of 62. I only met him once, and that was over 30 years ago at a friend’s leaving party in Wimbledon (he was off to the Orient). I know this sounds like a horrible, phoney cliché, but I’ve never met anyone so full of life and energy (Ripley, I mean, although my friend has always possessed a far higher-than-average share of both).
I’ve never forgotten the experience, partly because Ripley was the first person I saw perform the feat of remembering the names of the six people to whom he had just been rapidly introduced for the first time. It’s a Derren Brown-style trick, I know, but, speaking as someone who can hardly remember his own name, let alone anybody else’s, I was impressed. Can’t remember a thing we talked about, but I left with the distinct impression that I’d met someone genuinely exceptional – and that hasn’t happened very often.
Pretty good rugby player as well, by all accounts.
(Ignobly, I don’t expect I was the only middle-aged male who, upon reading the news of this evidently good man’s death, decided it really was time to seek out a medical person willing to stick a finger up their bum.)
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