If GCHQ had reason to review my exchanges with Giris over the last 17 years they would see that we were very concerned about a range of intriguing matters of State; the condition of my backside while cycling the length of the Country, the most appropriate way to recondition the rear bumper of a TR4, the best way to conceal the impulsive purchase of a Massey Fergusson tractor, the merits of this year’s potato crop, naming a drugged puppy Hendrix, a casual observation that a photo of ‘my home’ was actually a picture of a building, my home being something more ethereal. We could have hidden a major heist, perhaps we did, I always thought there was much he wasn’t telling me.…. there is not a clue that we worked on serious projects continuously for all those years and all stuff that got built too, eventually.

One thing is certain. I shall never work with a more infuriating man. I will never again need to resign every month. He isn’t going to drop in unannounced for a 5 hour meeting with a box of biscuits. No more delight in watching him ‘explain’ a project to a new consultant. No more meetings where we plot not to say something beforehand, and then he blurts it out on siting down. I don’t have to put my coat on to get the meeting finished.

Never again will I answer a question that wasn’t put to me at all but to the flashing blue light in his beard. I will have to carry on with clients who explain things in sequence. Who tell you what site they are asking you about. I am stuck with clients who have yet to discover telepathy and don’t hold meetings in the middle of a Bollywood dance troupe.

You couldn’t get away. He turned up at Stansted at 7am, I thought he was coming skiing with the family. Turned out we needed to sue the Council but my evidence wasn’t finished… he didn’t know whether it would finish at the top, middle or bottom of a page, so he got me to sign one of each, just in case.

As he said, ‘What’s a poor boy to do but play in a rock n roll band’ it felt like the gig would last forever. But it hasn’t and he is back in the audience with Judith clapping Leonard Cohen…

Now I bid you farewell, I don’t know when I’ll be back
They’re moving us tomorrow to that tower down the track
But you’ll be hearing from me baby, long after I’m gone
From a window in the Tower of Song

Giris will be speaking to us sweetly for a very long time I am sure.

Greg Cooper – ‘Just a Consultant’