I saw him in Waterford last November at the Forum - and excellent he was. Superb voice and guitar work, and very funny. Just before his final number, he came out on stage with a digital camera, took three pictures of the audience and said, "I'm going to paste these on the windshield of my car - yours will be the last faces I see as I go over the clifftop."

By coincidence, we were staying at the same hotel in Waterford as he and his wife. We got chatting and drinking coffee in the hotel bar on the rainy Saturday afternoon after the Friday night concert. He was a charming and witty man - revealed nothing about himself, and we asked him nothing.

At breakfast the previous day, my wife had turned to me and said, "Who on earth comes down to breakfast wearing a flat cap and dark glasses?" I replied, "Leon Redbone does."

A time to savour.