The sting of death is always hurtful but sometimes it hurts more when the person was familiar, witty, interesting, and even provocative. Andrew Hamilton remembers the late Ted Bonner
Ted Bonner for me was very much in that category. On the wet Friday that Ireland went to the polls, we met for lunch along with Joe Gantly, Fiat's PR man. The form was good, we talked about cars and motoring people and soccer and, of course, the election. A little lean-burn - Ted's euphemism for white wine - was the predictable stimulant to our conversation.
He wanted to write some pieces for Motors. "Of course Ted," I said. "Send them in." He posted me about 1,000 words on his first car which arrived by post on Tuesday. Ted was incredibly punctilious and unlike many of his confrères, he was a "here-and-now" doer. With the article was attached a short thank you note for the lunch I hosted and he signed off, "Shalom Ted".
That last article of Ted's will appear next week. Just as it was arriving on my desk, we were all unaware that he was about to bow out and say goodbye. He passed on very much in the way that he wanted to go, with little or no suffering, requiring no ongoing care or attention. I knew Ted for well over 30 years when he was driving a Renault 16TS and working with Irish Distillers. The 16TS he said offered the most comfortable chairs around, even exceeding those in his sitting room.
He was knowledgeable and even controversial in the motoring sphere. We all remember how he intensely disliked catalytic converters which are now a standard fitting on every modern car. The way forward to greener and cleaner motoring he insisted was through the lean-burn engine.
He wrote under the pseudonym Richard O'Hagan for the old Motoring Life magazine which had a huge readership, even outside Ireland.
Like many of us who are getting on a bit, he enthused more about the cars of yesteryear because they were more easily understood. Cars with modern computer-controlled management systems had to be viewed with "honest stupdity".
Ted adorned many motoring occasions with his storytelling, much of his based on life and growing up in Belfast. We were often regaled too about his wartime experiences - he had an intimate knowledge of the great military strategists on both sides in the second World War. He served in the RAF and was posted to wartime Italy.
Travelling for Decca all over the world also provided rich storystelling material. One of his most hilarious accounts related to losing his trousers - not his heart - in San Francisco.
On the plane journey there, wine had been spilled on the trousers. He left them out to dry on the balcony of his high-rise hotel room. A maid calling to turn down the bed activated a huge draught and it sent the trousers floating downwards to lodge on top of a tree in the hotel's external reception area.
Ted was an expert on so many things aside from motoring. Egyptology was one of his passions and he had a big following as a lecturer on Tutankhamun. Of course, one of his primary lessons was in correct pronounciation.
Even mention of Ted's passing at this time just one week on, seems unreal, not true. We glory though, in a good life graciously shared with his lifelong companion, Kay and a multitude of friends.
Ted was wonderfully generous. We always remember his favourite description of those who were tight: "There are moths in those pockets that haven't learned to fly."
Now we say adieu to him. Goodnight, sweet prince, and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.