Drinks and smiles all round at Compton Miller’s funeral (it’s what he would have wanted)
AT THE WAKE: Chris Williams, Alan Frame and Sue Peart
As Jane Austen didn't say, it is a truth universally acknowledged that the older we get the best places to meet old friends are at funerals and memorials.
That was certainly the case on Tuesday when many of us old Express hands were among the congregation of 130 saying farewell to Richard Compton Miller at the beautiful Temple Church.
Richard died aged 80 on November 26 from pneumonia but his funeral, very much choreographed by him several years ago, was a joyous affair, the only thing missing from his list of requests a blues band playing at the 'after-party' in the Parliament Chamber of the Temple.
The venue was important; Richard was brought up in those very environs, living in an apartment in Crown Office Row with his father Sir John, a judge, Mary, his 'wee mother', as he called her, and sister Sylvia.
There were three tributes, a brilliantly funny and moving one from his wife Nicola, and from Trudi Brown whom most will remember from her Express days as Trudi Pacter, and one from me. Three of his godchildren, Sam Esser, son of Robin, and Bea and Willem, whose mother is Jane Warren, read poems. And, as at St Bride's, just a stone's throw away, the music was sublime.
Nicola told us that Richard had instructed: “I have lived a happy and enjoyable life so please, whatever happens, avoid a ghastly crematorium service.” I can report that she followed his wishes to the letter. Here's the cast of Express oldies (many of whom sadly but wisely decamped to the Mail), and others.
Chris Williams, Sue Peart, Neil Mackwood, Jeanette Bishop, Adam Helliker, Jane Slade, Geoff Levy (sadly both Jane and Geoff have been bereaved in the last two months), Mary Corbett, Jeremy Deedes, Caroline Hendrie, Justin Walford, Maureen Paton, John McEntee, Charlie Garside, Helen Minsky, Steffi Callan, John Blake, and Andrew Lownie, rapidly becoming the world's most famous/influential/best-selling/destructive author (just ask Mr Mountbatten-Windsor).
If Richard had been there to work the room he would have filled a week's worth of Hickeys but I can report that Lownie is busy working on an updated version of Entitled to be called, appropriately, Untitled and has the Romanovs in his sights for a future biography. And he's suing Simon and Schuster in the US for pulling the plug on Entitled.
Chris Williams travelled down from Glasgow and he and I found ourselves unashamedly lurking outside the Old Bell in Fleet St waiting for it to open at noon. Plus ca change! Justin Walford has clearly found some magic elixir because he's ageing in reverse — at 67 he looks younger than he did in the 1990s on the Express. Oh and McEntee, he went for a pee, resting his trilby in the wash-hand basin, not realising the water was running. Should this man be allowed out in public? And it was good to meet Bernard Shrimsley’s son-in-law, Mark Loveday, who is a colleague of Nicola in her barristers’ chambers.
Incidentally, the short walk from Ludgate Circus to Middle Temple now has to be undertaken via a series of cranes, boardwalks, scaffolding and full-on building works. We felt the need for a hard hat. Our great Lubyanka still stands proud though with a great hole where Aitken House and the Popinjay once stood and we played. Who says there is no money in London?
I said in my tribute to Richard that seeing him out of his wheelchair and gently bopping to a Rolling Stones tribute band at John and Maria Blake's wedding party in July is a lovely way to remember him.
Better still, as Nicola said in hers, was his maxim for life: "Always look at the donut, not the hole."
*****
So Donald Trump is going ahead with his action against the BBC, claiming damages of $10billion. He says his reputation has been harmed and that the offending Panorama programme "put words in my mouth". It didn't. It crassly and crudely edited a speech by him but no words were inserted and spoken by a Rory Bremner-type impersonator. Trump said "We're gonna fight and fight like hell" and that is exactly what his MAGA supporters did when they attacked the Capitol Building.
He claims reputational damage but how can you damage a man who has already damaged himself in everything he does and every word he says? Would any normal, sane, decent human being react to the murders of Rob and Michele Reiner by saying the film director suffered from "massive, unyielding and incurable affliction with a mind crippling disease known as Trump Derangement Syndrome", implying he deserved everything he got?
There certainly is Trump Derangement Syndrome and it's so-called because it is Trump who is severely deranged. How else can his behaviour be explained? He fires off mad posts on his Truth Social platform at 3am, craves adoration, repeats almost every sentence he speaks, thinks Putin and Xi Jinping are his sort of guys because they are strong and don't have a democracy to worry about. I squirm at the way Starmer and the King had to fawn over this odious creep.
Trump is mad and very bad and the best Christmas present the world could have is him being taken away in a straight-jacket never to be seen or heard from again. Failing that the BBC should tell him to fuck off. That's the sort of language he would understand.
*****
I much enjoyed Dick Dismore’s tales from the river bank. As a kid holidaying in Ireland I spent most weekends sea fishing with my great-uncle who was great in both senses. From this distance it seems the abundance of mackerel hung themselves on to our hooks.
But my most vivid memory is more recent. About 30 years ago I was fishing over a shipwreck about ten miles off Lyme Regis hoping for conger eels, skate and other big fish which favour wrecks to live in. I got a sharp tug on my line and when I couldn’t pull it more than a couple of feet assumed that it has snagged on a rock or part of the wreck.
It wasn’t, and an hour later I finally had my prize, a 56lb conger almost five feet-long. It wasn’t destined for our supper that night, not unless I invited most of Beer village where we were staying on holiday. I took it to the fishmonger on the beach who swapped it for some delicious king prawns. Happy days, though not for the conger.
*****
AND FINALLY
Remember the days when many of us worked on Christmas Day bringing out the Boxing Day edition filled with crap which had been prepared weeks ahead? Did anybody actually read the paper we produced? Anyway, I suspect that most of you reading this (assuming anybody is) no longer works for a newspaper and instead spends Christmas Day with family of all generations. Whatever you are doing, Happy Christmas to you all.
But not to Agent Orange.
ALAN FRAME
18 December, 2025
