He was a Falstaff in his drinking and in celebrating life, but his greatness lay in his friendships. Like his closest friend Nick Scott, who left us three years ago, he roamed the world making friends and being as generous to them as a fairy godfather. The years, with all their disappointments, teach us caution, but Tim Hoare remained reckless to the end. This is High Life about him fifteen years ago: “We hit a hurricane while sailing off the Riviera last week, a hurricane called Tim Hoare. I have never in my long life met anyone quite like him. The words, in posh English vintage 1940s tones, tumble out so fast, enwrapped in alliteration and so clogged with onomatopoeia, that a poor little Greek boy like me misses three out of every four.” On that particular trip, Tim’s private plane blew an engine in mid-flight and was turning uncontrollably in circles. He was alone with the two pilots. So he rang us but failed to tell us he was in trouble. He just said he might be a while. He spent only one night on Bushido, and presented me with the grandest and most beautiful old Cartier lighter, which has stood proudly on a mantelpiece ever since. It is half a foot high and was made in the ’20s.
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A friend described him as Falstaffian in girth and height, with a booming voice—also assured and confident, generous to a fault, extremely intelligent and well-read, and atop it all possessing an abundant shock of jet-black hair. He and Bob Geldof were like brothers and made a very strange couple: the rich old Etonian clubman, the proud and extremely talented Irishman playing the poor Irish lad scrounging a living. Nick Scott was the third musketeer.
Now it looks as if things are coming to an end, like an Agatha Christie novel, but without the mystery of who’s next. Three of us in the merry band of Pugs are in our 80s, but fear of the man in the white suit is not the problem. Missing those who have recently left us is. Tim never lost touch with the overflowing joy and curiosity of the young. And like the young, he remained confident of the future despite the degradation of our culture. Toward the end he expressed love to all his friends and thanked them for a life of happiness. Whatever sorrow he may have felt for his untimely upcoming death he kept to himself. That is what courage is all about.
