Born Tenterden, Kent, 1 August, 1949; died London, 14 FebruaryGenerous though he was, Nigel threatened to sue me on a number of occasions when the credit for The Ford Cortina and My Way routinely came my way They were his films through and through. One part of a legacy which has made a truly original and indelible mark on the history of documentary film-making.He was a gloriously incongruous figure, when I first met him in the BBC in the Seventies, flying in like a bird of passage to his nest in Shepherd’s Bush. He was not so much dressed as upholstered in black leather jeans and that startling green jacket with an owl emblazoned on the back. (He had a pet owl as a child.) Spreadeagled in the chair, or in the trim bin, he was a sensational adornment to the cutting room.

And the gifts he bore were no less exotic than himself – images for the editors, to delight, to perplex, to infuriate them.Hehad a brilliant eye, a transforming eye, which could land in surprising places And wherever he looked he found a new perspective. It may not always have been the right one, but the point was it was never the obvious one.Nigel had trained as an art historian but he had a passion for the contemporary world and a genuine, unpatronising love of popular culture Each film for him was a celebration of differences And he endowed each one with wit, curiosity and humanity. In the early days he specialised in miniatures, short, exquisite films usually about painters Then he got bolder, and the canvas got bigger. The subjects got wilder.On 28 February – Mardi Gras day – seven years ago, Nigel and Anthony Wall decided to try their hands at outside broadcasts, offering me, the new Controller of BBC2, a live five-hour event Full of confidence and optimism, I went along for the ride It was Nigel and Anthony’s excellent adventure It was also a complete fiasco. You see, Nigel succumbed to the adventure of life not just willingly or even wholeheartedly but often quite recklessly. Hunter S Thompson, Robert Mapplethorpe, My Way, The Ford Cortina – no venture was taboo.The pleasure of Nigel was often in the paradoxes Yes he was sociable, but he could also be solitary.

He was a hedonist but he was also a monk – that dashing zippered leather suit was his habit There was a lot of the puritan in Nigel He was wedded to the work ethic. If you called him at 9.00 in the morning he’d have been up for three hours. And the studied frugality of his meals – grapes and hot water for long, substantial periods wasn’t affectation or novelty, it made him feel good.It was said of Huw Wheldon that he was a big game hunter who bagged his prey Nigel had a different technique He was a monstrous flirt. Among his conquests were William Burroughs, Kurt Vonnegut and Graham Greene – he would discuss love and sex over tea at the Ritz.Alan YentobPEGGY PUREY-CUST by John Betjemanfrom Summoned By BellsO Peggy Purey-Cust, how pure you were:My first and purest love, Miss Purey-Cust!Satchel on back I hurried up West HillTo catch you on your morning walk to school,Your nanny with you and your golden hairStreaming like sunlight. Strict deportment madeYou hold yourself erect and every stepBounced up and down as though you walked on springs.Your ice-blue eyes, your lashes long and light,Your sweetly freckled face and turned-up noseSo haunted me that all my loves since thenHave had a look of Peggy Purey-CustVivian Stanshall, musician: born Shillingford, Oxfordshire 21 March 1943; twice married (one son, one daughter); died London 5 March The Central School of Art, London: early Sixties. There I am, working on a drawing of Enrico Caruso, when suddenly – “My dear boy, you’re a real artiste, the first one I’ve encountered in this scrotum-scratching cesspit.

Where did you get that shirt?” Looking over my shoulder is a tall, plump, gingery bloke wearing Rupert Bear trousers (yellow and red), a purple velvet Victorian smoking jacket and pince nez Vivian Stanshall. As far as I am concerned, that initial encounter contained all the elements of our subsequent messy and protracted friendship. I was struck immediately by Viv’s recognition of Caruso – and then the next minute he’d burst into “Di Quella Pira” from Il Trovatore. I was a Rocker from South Wales who relished classical opera, and here was a seeming lout, dressed as a Victorian Music Hall comedian, who not only knew operatic arias as well as I did, but was nothing loth to sing them.I remember one Christmas, while we were still students, finding an expensive German magazine at the newsagents at Holborn Underground, and discovering that they’d printed some drawings of mine (almost the first I’d had published). Viv was with me at the time, but neither of us could scrape up the money to buy it.