Page 33dressed and impeccably mannered.
He was greatly disappointed when,
as we got a little older, John invaria-
bly got up from dinner before cheese
or dessert and asked to be excused.
As he left the room, he would say,
without fail: ‘But Papa, life is
so short.’
As ever, he was right.
My earliest memory dates from
October 31, 1967. The image is as
clear as crystal: us on the deck of a
ship, with our parents, just off
Southampton Sound.
We were waving our handkerchiefs
at passengers on the RMS Queen
Mary as she embarked on her last
voyage to California. John was so
upset for me when my favourite
handkerchief fluttered from my tiny
grip and disappeared into the green
blue wake of the departing liner
that he dropped his too, so that
they could be together for ever.
A red polka-dot and a blue polka-
dot hankie, tossed by the swell. We
watched as they got smaller and
smaller, no longer upset by our loss.
It was our birthday and we had just
turned four.
John never let me forget that he
was ten minutes older than me but
in home movies and pictures taken
when we were younger I have no
idea which one of us is which.
Distinguishing us is possible only
when we are ‘in costume’, John in
the Captain Scarlet uniform he got
one Christmas.
I was very jealous of that and,
although my Native American
uniform with feathered headdress
eventually grew on me, John would
always kill me with his pistol before
I’d even reached for a suckered
arrow in my quiver. Ten minutes
older, always.
SUMMER 2018
WORkINg again with Jamie for
the first time in ages, there was the
added bonus that for one shoot at
the end of July he brought his son
Buddy along. Jamie was one of the
two best men at my wedding to my
darling wife Ange in 2016, and I’m
godfather to Buddy. He is the
sweetest of sweet boys.
It saddens me that John will
never meet my own son Paros or
my daughter Pascale, nor they him.
The children from my marriage to
my first wife Debbie, these two
young adults are caring and sensi-
tive souls, as I was reminded when
in July we went on a family holiday
to Paros, the greek island after
which my son is named.
Since John and I spent many
happy summers there, a visit
seemed a must during my ‘year of
living retrospectively’, but it was
the first time I had been back since
he died, and walking up the white-
washed streets was overwhelming.
So, too, was the evening Paros
was jumping from rocks in a bay
called Agios Fokas. After seeing me
on the shore, photographing his sil-
houette against the setting sun, he
said he knew it would conjure
memories in me and he was right.
I have an almost identical picture
of John, and the photograph of
Paros on my phone could so easily
be my twin: same wild hair, deep
tan, knees tucked in for maximum
splash and a little tummy from too
much greek food and beer.
I keep the photo of John in my
‘cabinet of curiosities’, a deeply
personal room at my home in
South-West London, shared only
with Ange and the children.
One photo, snapped at the front
door of our childhood home, showsJohn and me smiling nervously in
our uniforms before we set off for
our first day at our all-boys gram-
mar school. Three years later we
are seen skinny and bronzed, long
hair soaked, laughing hysterically
as we play in a swimming pool at
Niagara Falls, aged 14. god we were
happy on that trip.T
He ephemera of our lives
together spans 25 years.
One of the last photos I
have of John, hand-
somely moody in black and white,
is one I took in our back garden
one balmy evening in 1986.
It’s so hard to believe that this
beautiful boy was then less than a
year from dying.
Back then everyone was expect-
ing John and his long-term girl-
friend Samantha to become
engaged but then came John’s
brain tumour, first diagnosed in the
summer of 1987.
After an operation to remove it
that August he was cancer-free.
However, he continued to experi-
ence extreme headaches which
were only belatedly diagnosed as
meningitis, and when he had to be
readmitted to hospital after much
unnecessary suffering, our ire was
directed mostly at a cold and
unfriendly junior doctor who, as
he’s now a professor and these
events happened more than 30
years ago, I will refer to as Dr S. We
desperately wanted John to be
treated by somebody else and hisbosses seemed to agree to this, but
on November 3, three days after
our 24th birthday, it was Dr S who
walked into his hospital room to
inject him with the antibiotic
gentamicin.
John and I were alone and I was
helping him open some presents
he’d been too ill to unwrap on the
day itself. Mine to him was a trip
for him and Samantha on the Ori-
ent express the following easter.
The doctors thought he would be
fit to travel again by then but his
card to me was probably the last
thing he wrote. The operation had
left him slightly cross-eyed and
with no feeling on his right side,
forcing him to use his left hand.
‘Dear David. Love Johny x. I. O. U.
1 prezzie.’ it read.
It reminded me of a moment at
the breakfast table many years
before when his wry smile of supe-
riority alerted me that something
was off. It was only when he
buttered his toast that I realised
that he was using his left hand, and
dextrously so.
That teenage desire to be differ-
ent must have meant hours and
hours of training himself to be
left-handed.
Poignantly, the only time he ever
needed that skill was upon our last
birthday together and the effort it
must have taken him to write each
wobbly letter still tears me apart
whenever I see it today.AUTUMN 2018
THIS time of the year is always a
countdown to the anniversary ofJohn’s death on November 11.
When it came I was glad to be dis-
tracted by long days shooting at
Jamie’s studio, my grief forever
compounded by guilt about not
having protected John from Dr S.
I’ve relived what happened
millions of times and whatever
anyone tells me I will never forgive
myself. Mother would have told Dr
S that she didn’t want him to give
the injection that day but, because
John didn’t want to make a fuss,
neither did I.
Later we discovered that he had
administered 80 times the pre-
scribed amount of gentamicin. It
was a careless mistake made by a
young doctor under pressure, not
deliberate but avoidable.
Within seconds John was being
violently sick and slipped into the
coma in which, bar a brief awaken-
ing a few days later, he remained
until his death.
We took it in turns to maintain a
24-hour vigil at his bedside and I
was at home when Mother rang to
say that John had died 20 minutes
earlier. Somehow I managed to get
to the hospital and, utterly bereft
and heartbroken, spent two hours
holding the cooling hand of his
dead body.
Later, the hospital would be
uncommunicative and unrespon-
sive to our distress, while the coro-
ner and the general Medical Coun-
cil appeared unwilling to address
our questions about procedures
for administering potentially dan-
gerous drugs.A
S FOR Dr S, he would go
on to become Professor
S at a hospital elsewhere.
He has never apologised
for what he did and my family
continue to feel great bitterness
and anger about John’s death.
It plunged me into an ocean of
loneliness so dark and deep that I
thought I would never find my way
to the surface but two years later I
met Tim. We had set aside half an
hour for our first chat but ended up
talking for hours and hours. Both
struggling with lone twindom, we
were like long-lost friends reunited
after forever apart.
With Tim I found myself laughing
like I hadn’t laughed in ages and he
filled a vast chasm in my life.
I once read a newspaper article
about the ‘Top 10 types of people to
avoid having a long-term relation-
ship with.’ Pop stars came top but
identical twins were number two
and photographers number three,
and the article even said that the
only thing worse than an identical
twin was a lone, identical twin.
I’m sure my first wife Debbie
would agree. We married in 1990
and, although we eventually sepa-
rated 20 years later, I will always be
grateful that she persuaded me into
fatherhood. Along with Tim, it was
Pascale and Paros who helped save
my life, as has Ange who I met
when she was working for Jamie
Oliver’s company.
On my first date with Ange, I fal-
teringly told her about John — she
tells me now that the way I told her
was as if I was telling the story for
the first time, there was so much
hesitant emotion in my voice. Later,
waiting for our cabs, I braved a hug
and a gentle kiss, surprised and
relieved and oh, so over-excited to
see her head turn towards mine for
the first of an eternal number of
kisses on the lips. Our fate was
sealed, sealed with a loving kiss.
In our early days together, she
found a patch on my upper back
that even today still comforts both
of us whenever she lays her hand
on it. I think that patch is where
John soothed me in the womb.
It makes me happy that she is
the only one that can feel the
extraordinary energy it gives outDaily Mail, Thursday, August 29, 2019John never let me forget that he
was ten minutes older than me
’
‘
Peas in a pod: Even David
struggles to say which twin
is John and which is him in
their childhood photosTURN TO NEXT PAGE