‘Still enjoying life’, said James McCormick's Christmas card a month ago. ‘I'm sorry I'm not here,’ says his familiar, courteous voice on the answerphone today. Soft and brown and welcoming, like Guinness, ‘Please leave a message’. So I will.
You were one of the kindest and wisest men I have ever known. Your address to the Harrogate Spring meeting (zero rated for those ridiculous educational points) was one of the key events of my life. ‘It is GOOD to be plump,’ you said, infecting with your precious ‘scepticaemia’, ‘Anyone who is fat enough to be at risk doesn't need to be told, they know it already. You don't have to work out their body mass index — you LOOK AT THEM!’.
Then at the 1994 Spring meeting where you contributed so much to my Paradox of Progress session. ‘Poor people don't need health initiatives, THEY NEED MORE MONEY!’ That evening meal afterwards on HMS Warrior, laughing at Sunil Bhanot's clowning, three loose cannons between the great black guns. Your foreword for my book, which I think you understood better than I did. Your bravery to speak your mind, ‘If doctors are not prepared to get out of bed, they should forfeit their special position.’ Your courage to be a father figure, in a world which tells doctors to be plumbers.
Those words of Theodore Fox you loved to quote:
‘Life itself is not the most important thing in life,
Some cling to it as a miser to his money and to as little purpose,
Some risk it for a song, for a hope, for a cause,
For wind in their hair.’
- © British Journal of General Practice, 2007.
