Gone but not forgotten

Was it really that long ago?
Where the years have flown heaven only knows

We think about him often
As the nights close in and the whisky flows

O the wit of the man the yarns he could spin
About Cambridge and MI5

Undercover at Greenham Common
And lucky to get out alive

Adrift in a shark-infested
He swam and kept afloat

Until rescued by pirates
In a people-smuggling boat

Flung from the saddle at Ascot
Remounted and came in third

The night with Princess Margaret
We hung on every word

The SAS, the Hockney heist
The life and soul of the jail

Married? Only his private life
He kept beneath a veil

A God-fearing atheist
And a poet back in the day

Always a novel half finished
Thankfully remaining that way

At his best, of course, in the Red Lion
Corner table, pint of bitter in his hand

Although it might have been the Sun?
Or the Coach and Horses? Or Guinness?

How he did this-and-that and such-and-such.
Stars? He'd met them all

O the wit of the man!
The tales we would tell if only we could recall

For it is the season now of hearses and severed flowers
How each coffin looks the same

Gone, perhaps, but not forgotten
Dear old whatsisname.