Malcolm was a friend of mine since the late 80s. He was going to sessions when I started. This was many years before the Internet was invented. This was in the days of 10:30 – 11:00 closing time, and with neither of us being early risers, especially him, we'd often find ourselves back at someone's house afterwards, to chat airily of this and that, drink cups of tea (or sometimes homebrew,) and listen to all sorts of (to me) obscure stuff. It was an invaluable part of my musical education – especially as I was in my late teens/early twenties at the time.

Although most people know about his considerable erudition, and his reasoned, rational arguments, (which is absolutely the case), there was another side to him. He was in real life a bit of an eccentric character (one of the reasons I was drawn to him), who delighted in the absurd, and had a highly developed sense of the ridiculous. Bizarre, out of the ordinary things he'd treat as matter of fact, whereas lots of 'ordinary' things struck him as absurd. However he favoured a very dry and 'deadpan' delivery style. I used to take great delight in making him laugh.

I was very upset when he died.