Michael's "Hurry up and die" story is hilarious and sad. It's hard to escape the conclusion that only a humourless prig would fail to find such a remark amusing. It's the sort of thing close friends feel at liberty to say to each other with no fear of misunderstanding. But he didn't, by all accounts, confine such utterances to close friends. In this, he was a sort of Kingsley Amis of folk, using calculated outrage as a means of weighing people up. If you responded priggishly, he was probably unrepentant. If you were on his wavelength, however ("simpatico" was his term), his generosity and warmth were remarkable. Kate and I once stayed the weekend at his house in Keighley. "Bring lots of blank tapes," he counselled in advance. Once there, I was given the freedom of his compendious record collection (by then all converted to cassette). I returned home with so much stuff – all patiently copied by him in real time over two days – that twenty years on there are still two albums I have yet to listen to.

Later that year he dropped a fat, impenetrably written American fantasy novel in my lap. "See if you can get to the end of that," was his challenge. I reached the final page half an hour before Jenny came on the phone with the news of his death. It's one of the most extraordinary books I've ever read.

I suspect many others will have similar tales to tell.