John and I met in September 1966, when I first started at Stratton Grammar School in Biggleswade, Bedfordshire. Almost at once a few of the other kids started asking me if I was John Butler's brother? “No, I'm not. I haven't got any brothers” I replied, while quietly wondering to myself who this poor unfortunate was, who was apparently so similar to me… So, I asked someone to point him out to me and approached this phantom brother only to find that he was hearing the same thing. And the rest, as they say, is history. Which, of course, is the problem; it shouldn't be history, it should still be going on, and until recently, it was. Very much so. And the one word which keeps appearing in my mind, to describe the friend I’ve known for so long is 'irreplaceable'. Last year, at the age of 52, John had taken early retirement but he was as busy as ever, with plans a-plenty for doing all the things he'd never had the time to do while he was working or lovingly taking care of his mum and dad. In some respects he was really only just getting started again. Back in the late 60s John and I would regularly get together on Saturday mornings, either at his parents' house or mine, though more often at his because I was the one with the bike and John was one with the tape recorder. We seemed to become the brothers who neither of us had and certainly to John’s parents I was like a second son. Having fun with sound and creating and recording our own comedy being another early shared interest. We went through school together listening to I’m Sorry I’ll read That Again, watching Monty Python’s Flying Circus. Two of John's great passions were hill-climbing and photography which he was able to combine with great success, often following, quite literally, in the footsteps of one of his heroes Alfred Wainwright. But where Wainwright produced his fantastic hand-written guides John produced an ever-expanding website cataloguing all his walks and climbs, and illustrating them with the most stunning photographs. And it didn't end there. He also had an interest in, and an eye for good, urban architecture. John's interest in comedy and live performance made him an annual visitor to the Edinburgh Fringe, though to say visitor makes these trips sound like casual holidays. In fact they were anything but. John organised his Edinburgh trips with the kind of meticulous planning that made military manoeuvres seem slap-dash. The Fringe prospectus was trawled on the week it came out, shortlists were drawn up, timetables created, tickets bought and accommodation booked well in advance. John had it off to a fine art. Even spontaneity was built into the plan, with time allowed and free slots left for buying tickets for anything which came to his attention or got rave reviews while he was up there. Michele and I went with him a couple of times and John set an ambitious pace. Enjoying comedy, it seemed, was a serious business. But it worked, and we did all enjoy ourselves very much, even if I didn't quite make it down to breakfast every morning! I'll never forget those holidays and I think, in a small way, Edinburgh - and The Pleasance courtyard in particular - is going to miss John next year. Neither John nor I were what you might call sporty children. In fact we both absolutely hated games at school, but John developed a great interest in Tennis which, of course, was sparked by the BBC's coverage of Wimbledon. His interest rubbed off on me too and we went to Wimbledon together a few times. Now I should explain that unless you're lucky enough to have advance tickets the whole business of getting into Wimbledon, especially on the middle Saturday, is something which also requires planning and tenacity. And so it was that one June Saturday John came down to stay with us and we got a very early train from Luton into London, arriving to join the queue at an already busy Wimbledon Park at around 6am. At that time of the morning much of the queue consisted of people asleep in tents, but they gradually emerged into the daylight and started to pack up their tents, a process which allows the queue to contract. This happens every year and is always a very orderly and controlled process. This is England, after all. By now it was about 9am and the sun was out, warming us as it turned into an absolutely glorious summer's morning. On such a day, in the bright sunshine, when you've been awake since 4.30 and in the fresh air for hours already, the lure of an ice cream van parked provocatively in the centre of the park is impossible to resist, so, having already taken my jacket off I left the main queue and sauntered casually over to join the smaller queue at the van. As I did so I heard the sound of a small herd of Wildebeest migrating across the plain. As I turned around what I saw was the queue disintegrating and heading, as fast as its many legs could carry it, to the far end of the park, where chaos was clearly mounting. Whatever madness, hallucination or mass-hypnosis had gripped the queue had clearly, and uncharacteristically affected even John, who could normally be relied upon to be completely immune to such things. The other possibility, much more likely I felt, was that John had been abducted by aliens and that this had scared everyone else off. Curse these aliens, they had not only taken my friend but also my bag, my jacket and my mobile phone which had been in one of the pockets. What to do? Well, the first thing was to remember the wise words to be found in large, friendly letters on the front of every edition of The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy: DON'T PANIC. So I made my way down to the chaotic throng and started casting around to see if I could see John being returned to us. Sure enough 5 or 10 minutes later he re-materialised, much to the relief of us both. Not long after that a couple Wimbledon stewards appeared and with the aid of only straw boaters and walking sticks they re-assembled the queue using the serial numbers on the back of the leaflets we'd all been given when we first joined it. There was no fuss and the incident was never referred to again. We are English, after all. I'm not surprised the aliens never kept hold of John. They probably didn't know what to make of him; he was not exactly your typical Englishman after all. John never really did Casual, for example. You never saw John in jeans and a T-shirt. It was unthinkable. The other thing was, you could never argue with him. He just didn't do it. If you held a different opinion from him that was fine, he'd accept that, but you could never persuade him round to your view. That makes him sound appallingly arrogant, doesn't it, but that’s wrong - because he wasn't. He could change his mind. It just didn't happen very often because JB was usually right. More than that he was actually the kindest and the most reasonable man you're ever likely to meet. Of course, he didn't suffer fools gladly and I think that when the patience was being handed out something odd happened while John was in that queue too. All of this meant that in due course, he would have gone on to become the most wonderfully Grumpy Old Man ever. But we'll never know now. I'm still inclined to think that for the aliens it's now third time lucky, so wherever it is John’s been abducted to this time I hope there are plenty of hills to climb and great scenery to photograph, and I know that as soon as he finds an Internet Cafe or a sub-etha terminal he's going to sit down, have a cup of tea and send us an email to tell us all about it, in the most beautifully written detail.

Thank you for setting up this memorial to John Butler. We hope that you find it a positive experience developing the site and that it becomes a place of comfort and inspiration for you to visit whenever you want or need to.

I am I and you are you, whatever we were to each other that we still are. Speak to me in the easy way which you always used. Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight? Life means all that it ever meant, it is the same as it ever was.