At the back of my mind, I always entertained the notion that when it came time for my funeral, Dermot would be the friend I could rely on to say a few words that would adequately capture the blacker side of me without being patronising or maudlin .
It was not an unreasonable expectation. We shared a rabid anti-clericalism, a fruity irreverence which first brought us together as friends more than 20 years ago when my performing soubriquet was "The Man Who Knocks The Establishment" and he was my acoltye. As the years passed, the student eventually became the master and, unable to match his brain for speed, I was happy to surrender the mantle and sit in his company, enthralled by his razor-sharp dissection of the cant, pomposity and bungling bureacracy that surrounded him. I never met anyone to match him for wickedness and his humorous darts were dipped in the most dark and delicious relish.
Many times in the past few days people have commiserated with me as though Dermot were my own family.
Again, it was understandable. In so many ways we were brothers, drawn from the same, demented gene-pool that makes hopeless dreamers out of would-be grown-ups. In our frantic individual quests to impress, we supped the same mad wine from the vineyards of ego so that, even in his moment of triumph in receiving his Bafta Award as an actor, an Everest of ambition was still calling to him as a writer.
Our last conversation, four days before he died, was heavily pregnant with his good news, optimism and a clear sighting of his name in even bigger lights. We vowed to meet this week and hurl further invective at men with feet of clay, but now we can't because he is stardust and I am still a mere mortal. Thankfully, I can still hear his many voices in my head. And I hope I always will.