Funny people aren’t always nice, and they don’t often feel the need, in person, to make you feel the world is a better place than you'd supposed. David Austin did that.

I don’t know whether his cartoons or his company were more cheering and he was also enormously funny. I never saw him regularly after I stopped drinking with the Spectator crowd, though sometimes we would bump into each other at the Guardian. This is one of his pictures, bought at a show in 1994. I asked him if I could use it as my Christmas card that year. I wish I’d never had to use it for this.