FROM THE ARCHIVES:Accountant Russell Murphy looked after the tax and financial affairs of many well-known people, especially those in the arts and entertainment industries. After his death at 59, it emerged he had also been helping himself to significant sums of their money. Among those defrauded was playwright Hugh Leonard, who wrote this appreciation before he learned Murphy had stolen £285,000 from him. – JOE JOYCE
He was the kindest man I ever knew. In the beginning, our relationship was purely that of an accountant and his client: then I went to England to live and in due time wrote to Russell saying that I had found someone who was perhaps more au fait than he when it came to the content of brown envelopes marked “OHMS”.
If he was stunned by this piece of effrontery, he gave no indication; but when I returned to him, cap-in-hand, some years later and begged to be allowed to rejoin the fold, his reply was: “But, my dear friend, it was always understood that you would come back to us some day”.
I cannot claim to have known him well – rather to have liked him enormously. He was retiring by nature, perhaps shy, but over the years facets of himself could be glimpsed: he was, to use a dreadful but necessary word, a workaholic; his idea of a holiday was to take a mortally ill friend to Lourdes.
Stories were told of fees waived, or forgotten, of great kindnesses. One day he suggested that he look after my financial affairs as a whole instead of merely my taxes, and he proceeded to take on the role of guardian angel as far as my wife, my daughter and myself were concerned. A few weeks ago, we decided to move house, and I asked his advice. He at once took over every detail of selling one house and buying another like a general planning a campaign.
As a companion, he was charming, courtly and often richly funny. [. . .]
Often he would write to me, saying that he liked this or the other piece I had written, particularly if it was a jab at political jobbery. His own sense of humour was so acute that he could hardly comprehend the want of it in others, and where the Northern troubles were concerned, he held the paramilitaries in a contempt as fierce as it was unrelenting.
Once or twice a year, he would invite me to his office. Inevitably, there was no business to discuss. Cardigan-garbed, he would walk to and fro, hand clasped in hand, head seemingly scraping the ceiling, and tell me that everything was “highly satisfactory” and that I was there only because he had not seen me lately.
The fact is that Russell was one of those rare creatures who loved their fellow men. One of the reasons – a selfish one, admittedly – that I was proud to be his friend reposed in his unfailing good taste, for if he was fond of you, you could not wholly dislike yourself.
His death gives the lie to the canard that no man is irreplaceable. Russell is.
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