We heard recently that our dear friend Michael Gough had died suddenly of a heart attack in November 2020.
We inherited Michael as a friend. Stephen Balme, my brother-in-law Richard Groves and I were working at Les Amis du Vin in the 1980s, and we came up with the idea of occasional ‘tasting dinners’.
Each guest or couple would bring a good bottle of wine from a nominated region, and probably another to go with the supper, which the host would prepare, something from the same region as the wine.
The flaw in the concept was the quantity, not the quality, of the wine.
I think it was at the pink champagne evening that we first met Michael. The evening was hosted by Stephen and his wife Shelley Gare in their flat in Ockendon Road in Islington.
When Shelley and Stephen returned to their native Australia in 1986, their fellow Australian Michael bought the flat, and we became friends with him.
It was much later that Michael confessed that he was stopped by the police on his way home that night, and taken into Kings Cross police station. He engaged the desk sergeant in conversation, whose son, as luck would have it, was living in Australia.
They must have hit it off; Michael was discreetly released without charge the following morning.
Michael worked as a copywriter in the heady world of advertising in the 1980s, a world of extravagant photoshoots and hedonistic lunches. The agencies had big budgets, and they weren’t afraid to use them.
He would quote from his portfolio, with some pride, some gems: ‘Du vin. Du pain. Du Boursin’. He was less pleased with the strap line he came up with for a since forgotten wine brand, ‘Le Soir….. pour le Bon Soir’.
Best loved in our circle was his summing up of Richard’s business:
‘Richard Groves Catering. It’s a Question of Confidence’.
He was a master of the comedy pause. When I was working in the wine trade a fellow dinner guest asked me the dreaded question: ‘what’s your favourite wine?’
I later learned to say something straight away, giving the sort of answer they wanted to hear: aged Sangiovese, or a fine champagne, but that night I paused a little too long, trying to think of a suitable response.
After what seemed like an interminable silence, Michael murmured:
‘No rush Al, but tonight would be good….’
An endlessly entertaining raconteur, Michael was an acute observer of people, and he showed amusement with a chuckle, or sometimes a snort of laughter.
You could tell If he found something really funny; he would fall silent, but his shoulders would continue to rise and fall.
Michael joined us on several holidays over the years. The first was in Tuscany in 1991.
It was there that we noticed a group of attractive and excitable adolescent Italians gathering outside the bar in the town square, prompting Michael’s inimitable comment:
‘Let’s get out of here, before someone gets pregnant’.
At the end of a good evening, when the others had retired to bed, Michael and I would find a bench somewhere in whatever garden we were in. We would watch the shooting stars in the night sky in Tuscany, or the lights of the flight path to Heathrow over Twickenham.
We would linger over another glass of red wine or perhaps of grappa, and usually, in those days, a small cigar.
Asked the next day what we had talked about, I never had the faintest recollection, but Michael once claimed I had fretted late into the night about the declining stocks of sardines off the coast of Portugal.
I was due to start a temporary job in December 1999 and had a week to spare. Michael invited me to join him in an apartment he was renting on a farm in Tuscany.
On the first morning we walked up the track to the village for a coffee, and to buy the wherewithal for lunch. When we got back to the farm, I realised I had lost the envelope containing all my Italian currency.
Michael was a patient man. We retraced our steps up the hill, and sure enough there was the crisp white envelope, lying where it had fallen out of my pocket onto the road.
‘Let me explain to you the concept of a folding piece of leather you put your banknotes in, Al, it’s called a wallet. We’ll buy you one when we go into Florence’.
There had been a hard frost that morning, but it was warm enough to sit out on the terrace for lunch. I can even remember wine we drank, Poggio Alle Gazze (a Sauvignon Blanc from the Ornellaia estate, since you ask).
Time spent with Michael was always memorable.
Michael returned to Melbourne in c1989, but would travel every year or two, so we continued to see him when he was in the UK; he would set up an itinerary of friends to stay with. An exemplary guest, a bottle of champagne and a good red burgundy would typically be proffered on arrival.
He had friends on the other side of the Thames, and he would go to them after he had stayed with us, describing himself as being like the child of divorced parents, spending time with each one in turn.
We continued to see him in Italy too, where we linked up for two holidays in Venice.
In 2014 he joined us on a rowing lesson in the Venetian lagoon. After we had all had a go at steering, our instructor rewarded us with cicheti and wine tastings at a couple of canalside bars.
Michael expressed regret that day that he hadn’t tried longer to row standing up, like a gondolier. It reminded me of his strap line.
‘It’s a question of confidence’
Since we heard the news of Michael’s death, I’ve been thinking about his talents and remembering the pursuits he enjoyed:
He was self – deprecating, describing his physique as ‘the body that men admire, and women crave’
He was a writer who encouraged me to write, leading to the creation of this blog.
A talented photographer, he was also a collector of vintage typewriters.
An avid reader of ‘an improving book’, he especially enjoyed the works of Virginia Woolf.
He was a yachtsman; during his time in the UK he loved to spend time on Chichester Harbour on his ‘junk rig’.
Less well known was his skill as an amateur pilot; he liked nothing better than to land an aircraft in challenging weather conditions, at an unfamiliar airfield….
Fortunately he only pursued this risky pastime on his laptop.
Michael was always a wonderful guest, and a generous host; a bon viveur and raconteur.
No mean cook himself, Michael enjoyed watching others at work in the kitchen.
We still feel his presence today, sensing that he’s standing behind us, murmuring approval, or chuckling at some domestic dispute at the stove.
