Diving in to post this, after the shock of learning Denis had died, my spelling declined badly. Then the Mudcat submerged when I tried my first posting ... so I copied my text onto a thumb drive and came to work.
The heading of the next attempt to post somehow got garbled (OK ... my typing got a bit blurry ...). The heading should have celebrated the locally irreverent description of Denis - as our cheeky national conscience. (I'll see if I can find a Joe Clone to amend my blurred typography!)