I have known Self, off and on, since the 1990s, when I first encountered him on a rare visit to the Groucho Club, where, surprisingly, he was hanging out with two members of the Bristol trip-hop group Massive Attack, having interviewed them for an article. Initially, I had him down as an intriguing, though tricky and temperamental character, but when my younger brother died in 2000, he was incredibly kind and solicitous, much more so than I had expected, given our fitful friendship. More recently, he lived on the same street as me in south London and we’d cross paths from time to time, usually as he was walking his small dog to and from Kennington Park.
