Nigel Faulks

A nice chap, but our bathroom was perforce multifunctional, and if brushing your teeth or taking a bath, you had to be prepared for Jonah to come rushing in, exclaiming "Terribly sorry, must have a dump, hope you don't mind". Not everybody wants to have their mind broadened to that extent, and I'm not sure if he lasted the course.

Nigel's father was, so Jonah said, a High Court judge, very probably Sir Neville Major Ginner Faulks (1908 – 1985), with literary talents as witness A Law Unto Myself and No Mitigating Circumstances, who had the misfortune to deal with Anne Robinson's divorce proceedings.

I did in fact have a tangential, or lesser still, an osculatory, contact with him at some point in the mid 1960's. The phone rang, and inspired by a Jak cartoon in the previous day's Evening Standard, I picked it up and said "007 here, Bond, James Bond, licensed to kill with gun, knife or bare hands."

There was the merest pause, and the voice said "How very nice for you. Might I speak to Nigel?"