Keith Floyd, Mark Hix and How the World Turns.
September 16th, 2009
As I have aged it is strange how bit players from my younger days have come together in strange circumstances. A perfect example of this happened this week with the untimely death of Keith Floyd.
I never really knew Keith Floyd other than to look down on him with the arrogance of youth when I would go for a drink at (among others) The Greyhound Pub in Clifton, Bristol. Back then I was at the top of my yuppie game with an, on the face of it, thriving financial services business and all the accoutrements that went with it. I felt I was the man at the time.
Keith would occasionally be propping up the end of the bar with a glass of wine in one hand and a cigarette in the other. He would invariably be with another chap in a similarly merry state and would be holding forth about all the things he had been famous for in years gone by. I have to be honest and say that I formed an opinion of him as a bit of a loser who would spend the rest of his days bathing in the faded glories of his previous successes. Not because I had spoken to him or anything you understand, but because I was obviously on the way up and he was so obviously on the way down. I was young and the future, he was old and the past.
He would probably have been all of 42 or 43 at the time.
Going back even further in time, my dad’s second marriage brought me and Mark Hix together. We are step-brothers. Again we hardly knew each other. Mark lived with his grandparents and his younger brother whilst I had the joy of switching my time between boarding school and living with his mother.
Mark speaks very highly of his grandparents and I can confirm that his grandmother was a great woman. (She once caught me stealing change from the charity jar at her work and never told a soul.) Top lady!
Mark went off to London where he made a great success of himself in the restaurant trade. He owns his own restaurants, writes books and articles in national newspapers and is an authority on English cooking.
I only really know that he has been so successful because it has been in the news this week that Keith Floyd ate his last lunch at Mark’s restaurant in Lyme Regis before heading off to Bridport where he died on the sofa in front of the TV, his stomach full of oysters and partridge (Which should have been Grouse apparently but Keith saw the funny side with the misplaced order and didn’t complain.)
I have not really thought about either Mark or Keith for at least two decades but today I sit here thousands of miles away in Florida and offer a toast (and an apology of sorts) to Keith Floyd and then another to Mark on his success. Best of luck to both of you!
PS. Whilst reading up on Mark I have discovered he has spent many a drunken Sunday afternoon in his bachelor pad, and is good friends with Tracey Emin. That makes me just a little bit jealous. 
PPS. A big hello to my Sis in Bridport. It all goes on down there, doesn’t it?
