Philip was too smart to die. Philip always liked to live close to the edge. Philip had it sussed. Philip had everything sussed.

For some reason I always thought that Philip was immortal. If we got drenched in the same rain storm, he'd sit there in his wet clothes, smoking a joint, while I would have my clothes out on the rads and my hair under a dryer. Still, I'd end up sniffling for a week while he'd be out partying every night. And so I reacted with complete and utter incredulity to the news of his death. Ironically it was in the Bailey, his favourite haunt, that I first heard of his death. I had been out all day and missed the phonecalls and I was having a lunch hour drink with my ex-wife and two old friends of Philips, Tony Higgins and Tom Collins, when a guy opposite lifted up his early edition evening newspaper and we read the headline 'PHILIP LYNOTT DEAD'.

For some reason my mind flashed back to a beautiful summer evening on the Burrow beach, about three years earlier. There was a big gang of us gathered for a football match that myself and Philip had organised, including myself, Terry Woods, Noel Bridgeman, my son Conánn lined up against Philip, Brush Shields, Robbie Gaffney - I think Frankie Murray had flown over for that one aswell. Philip scored the first goal and Brush was brilliant ; they were all over us for about twenty minutes but they slowly ran out of steam. I scored a scorcher from deep inside my own half (inside my own imagination!). Terry Woods hacked at everything that moved and by the time we quit at two-all we were banjaxed. Caroline and the girls brought the beer and we all smoked ourselves senseless. I ended up slide-tackling Philip in the sea under three feet of water while the others all fell about the place. That is the Philip that I remember to this day ; full of life and energy; black, beautiful and charismatic; kind, gentle and generous. The kind of man who'd give you the shirt off his back, which in my case he actually did, but that's another story.