Terry-Thomas, George Clooney And A Different Perspective On Life

How a joyous photograph sparked a spot of soul-searching.

It all began with my dear friend Paul Rohan forwarding me this photograph:

Terry-Thomas in Ibiza waterskiing one-handed mid-smoke - if it’s not the definition of cool, it’s certainly a perfect encapsulation of joy.

Naturally, when you get a picture like this, you want to share it with as many people. So it was that T-T at sea featured on both my Twitter and Facebook feeds.

In the wake of this, one person got in touch to say how they found said photo incredibly sad since Terry-Thomas’s life ended so tragically - for those unfamiliar with his bio, T-T succumbed to Parkinson’s Disease and near-bankruptcy, the combination of which led to him living in reduced circumstances towards the end of his life.

And that’s when George Clooney came to mind.

Or rather, something George Clooney once said with regard to his aversion to films having happy endings: “I don't believe in happy endings, but I do believe in happy travels, because ultimately you either die at a very young age, or you live long enough to watch your friends die. It's a mean thing, life.”

Not perhaps the cheeriest of thoughts. Indeed, add it to that one particular reaction to the Terry-Thomas photo and you could be forgiven for giving Dignitas a call.

Clooney, however, has a very good point. For when Good Night, And Good Luck came out, the actor-writer-director was asked why the picture concentrated on a particular incident in the life of the journalist Edward R Murrow rather than documenting his life in full.

Clooney response was, again, rather bleak - since Ed Murrow died in his fifties following a lengthy battle with cancer, and as his death was linked to the cigarettes that were his constant companion throughout his working life, to present the man in full would mean depicting some very dark things indeed.

And with the exception of the few Francis Macomber’s who’ve walked the earth,
you could say the same for just about everybody. Yes, we all know how this journey ends, and we appreciate that few things will get easier with age.

All of which being so, it’s incumbent upon us to remember people how they’d like to be remembered, or at least, as we might assume they’d want us to think of them. For while I wouldn’t dare to assume what Terry-Thomas thought, I can imagine that a man who brought so much joy to the world - and whom clearly had a bloody good time spreading it - might favour that shot of him all at sea over the local news footage of the impoverished, infirm actor living in barely furnished rooms.

I urge you then not to dedicate too much time to contemplating the inevitabilities of a life long lived but instead to look back - or even live out - your equivalent of waterskiing with a smile and a cigarette-holder.

Now where did I put my Rothmans…