I first met Gareth in 1973 or 1974 when he joined the Sociology department at UEA, Norwich, where I had been lecturing since 1971. He was an outstanding teacher and researcher, and he completed his Ph.D from the University of Kent, and published a book with another colleague, Rosemary Crompton, entitled "White Collar Proletariat" (1984). I got to know him soon after his arrival: I saw him as the bright new thing on the block, with an amazing ability to say hello to everybody, all the time, an early example of the friendly sociability which so many people have commented on; he saw me as somewhat old before my time, already married with two children, and a local Labour Councillor on Norwich City Council, and buttoned up (his phrase was more colourful). He was a major catalyst in my unbuttoning, introducing me to pub culture, in which he had a second honorary Ph.D. My first marriage came to an end in the late 1970's.  The homelessness which resulted from the marital break-up was solved by Gareth, and I moved into a room in his house in St Phillips Road and enjoyed the delightfully chaotic lads' culture of his open house. Around this time he and Shirley got together, so she became my second oldest friend. My then young children, Jane and Rachel, got to know them both at this stage, and have been close ever since, and Gareth and Shirley attended both of their weddings. 

Sport was a very big thing that we shared, and we were both ridiculously competitive, even competing over who was the more competitive: we played tennis (badly, but he got much better in later years), squash (I was better to begin and he slowly caught me up), and 20-over cricket (we played in a team based loosely on our bit of the university). He was football mad, while I had been to a rugby only school and didn't play, but still loved football, and I hung around with Gareth's team, again based loosely on the university, called Colney Athletic, which played in the local, very good standard Norwich Sunday League. During the season we met up every Sunday lunchtime at the Warwick Arms in Norwich for a post-game drinking session and quiz. Gareth's next influence on my life was that he suggested that I train to be a football referee ("you like football and you're a bossy bugger, so why not?"), so I did, and it was one of the best decisions of my life. I refereed for 18 seasons, became a Class One referee, and even ran the line once at Carrow Road. I fitness trained with the Colney players, and even refereed games involving Colney a few times, having failed to declare an interest. Reference was made more than once at the funeral service to Gareth's uncompromising tackling skills, and I can confirm that he was up there with Norman Hunter. I became a lifelong fan of Norwich City, but an honorary fan of Spurs (clearly a requirement for the friendship to continue) and the only time I have been to Wembley was at Gareth's invitation to see the FA Cup semi-final between Spurs and Portsmouth in 2010 (0-2 sadly).

The next phase of our togetherness was semi-academic, although it was more about earning a bit more to supplement our salaries. In the early 1970's I became an O and A level examiner in sociology for the Oxford Board, and then rose to the dizzy heights of Awarder, which involved going to Oxford in the early summer to mark the markers, as it were, and to determine the candidates' grades. I recruited Gareth to join me, as a marker, and then as assistant awarder, and we spent a few delightful years at the end of the 1970's and early eighties working hard during the day awarding grades at the Board's offices in North Oxford, next door to the OXFAM HQ, and visiting pubs and playing pool and snooker in the evenings. They were the best of times. Actually, living with and spending time with Gareth were always the best of times.

In 1985 Gareth left UEA to start at the London Business School (LBS) and UEA and Norwich weren't the same, so it's no coincidence that at the end of that year I decided to change career and applied for jobs in London and landed the one I wanted at the Association of District Councils as a policy and lobbying officer. There is something completely predictable and appropriate that I was in his office at LBS, later in the day of my interview, when I got the phone call telling me I had got the job. Drinks followed, and the beginning of a new phase, with Gareth and Shirley living in Muswell Hill and me in St Thomas's Road, Finsbury Park, dangerously near Arsenal FC, the Devil Incarnate. There was a pub in the Muswell Hill area which I went to with Gareth a few times, the name of which escapes me, which he adored and was so him, full of interesting street philosophers and great conversation.

When Gareth and Shirley got married (about 1990, I think) I was asked to be his Best Man, and to my eternal shame made the worst Best Man speech in the history of the tradition. It was spectacularly ill-judged, but Gareth and Shirley generously forgave me, and when Pauline and I got married in 1996 Gareth kindly acted as my Best Man, did not take his revenge, and gave a typically lovely speech, perfectly judged. Pauline had got to know Gareth and Shirley in the preceding years when we stayed at each other's houses; she was very nervous about meeting him for the first time, knowing how prominently he had featured in my life, but the two of them hit it off over industrial quantities of port late into the night, and became firm friends. One of Gareth's lesser known interests was gardening, and he and Pauline, an obsessive gardener, shared this interest from then on.

From 2000 or so onwards get-togethers became less frequent, particularly after we moved to Ramsgate in 2011, but telephone calls increasingly took their place, with visits on big birthdays. He gave me the collected works of Miles Davis for my 60th birthday, jazz and Miles in particular being yet another thing we had in common, and it was lovely hearing Miles play at the service. The last time I saw him was at my 70th birthday celebration, and the last time I spoke to him was a couple of weeks before he died. As usual, he was taking the dog for a walk. Enough said.

Thank you Gareth, for everything, for being the extraordinary force of nature that you were, for being such a huge and enjoyable part of my life. RIP x