Low life
At the finishing post
Jeffrey Bernard
The grim reaper is certainly thinning out the fields of Soho. Last week Tom O'Keefe died and he was a good compan- ion and a gentleman up to about, say, four p.m. Known either as Big Daddy or Fat Tom, he weighed in at roughly 18 stone. He was as thick around the middle as a beer barrel and that may have been be- cause he was one. He had been known in his time to drink 30 pints of lager in one day. He used to wear a blue yachting cap of sorts and a white T-shirt which doubled as a beer mat, and the whole effect made him look like a blown-up Popeye. Have you ever tried to lift 18 stone of drunken deadweight on to the Orient Express? One day about five years ago it took six of us to do precisely that.
We had gone down to Newbury races and that day British Rail or whoever had laid on the Orient Express from Padding- ton and back. How Tom got into the Members Enclosure wearing that awful T-shirt I'll never know. Ties and shirts are de rigueur. Anyway, the dreadful vest was soaking wet by the last race as though it had been worn to soak up the ullage. Then he crashed out and I mean crashed. He took a table, three chairs and about 20 glasses and bottles with him that had been on the table. We woke him in time to get the train but he passed out again as soon as we got on to the station. The Express was on the other side of the station and we could only reach it by crossing a bridge. By then it was raining. Four of us got hold of a corner of him each and the other two manned his guts up and down the stairs. It was killing. And then on to the train which was a few feet higher than the platform. It may sound very sordid but we kept drop- ping him for laughing so much.
He was such a likeable man. He once put Ian Board, the guvnor of the Colony Room Club, over his knee and slapped Board's bum until he yelped like a puppy. Quite a good afternoon's work. It was odd to me that this lager-swilling hulk was one of the few people in Soho who really did know a bit about racing. But the end is always sad and Tom was very lucky to have had two good daughters to look after him. We shall miss the fat old bastard.
Last week Norman went to two funerals. He returned from the second one and gloomily said that they always go in threes. `Don't keep looking at me', I told him. Sometimes his concern is touching and sometimes it is slightly sinister. Concern is a very elastic thing. But I never thought I would live long enough to be able to be in the position of compiling an anthology of obituaries of friends. Not long ago I accidentally found out who has written one for me. As I will not be here to read it it shouldn't worry me, but it does because this man doesn't even like me much. The task should be left to old friends, I should have thought.
So Tom won't be on the coach party to the Derby this year. Give it another five years and I expect the driver will be on his own. Never mind, they probably race angels in Heaven. The billiard hall is downstairs.
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