BY THE EDITOR

A couple of weeks ago, Tarquin Sutherland died in his flat in Devon.

The errant son of a famous conductor, the friend (and foe) of many, ‘T’ (as most knew him) led an extraordinary life – choosing the alternative path of rockstar rebellion whenever that dull option called normality presented itself to him.

I call T ‘him’ as that was who he was – a bloke – and that was how I know he’d like to be remembered. As Tarquin. As a man who was conned by the Tavistock crowd into thinking that he was a woman. A man who woke up in a private hospital in Wimbledon one afternoon without his penis. A man who was then pushed around by the rainbow crew who made money from him and tried to use him to perpetuate their trans ideology.

A him who had no time for a multitude of pronouns.

I met T late in his life when he was living in Newcastle with an old cat, for whom he was waiting to die before committing suicide himself. Sam White, the finest writer to have graced the pages of this magazine, introduced me. T was scared up there. The local Geordie trans sect had cast him as a pariah for not playing their game. So, T came down to the South West and he took a room with an old friend, working out of my office in Taunton, making films and music, as was his passion. He named our joint venture Fireship – it was designed to cause Corbyn trouble – and it certainly lived up to its name. There in the office T found calm and solace – often sleeping on the office sofa to see through sessions of late-night creativity. He worked hard. Work for him was a life buoy.

Tamsin – T’s alternative female persona – was well gone by then. There had been a wig-burning in my garden at his behest. The costume jewellery and dresses went to a charity shop and the nail extensions were lobbed in the bin. That was the end of Tamsin. Tamsin died in 2018, Tarquin five years later.

T wrote a lot. Mostly through a Scotch haze on Twitter where he, as InfamousT, rattled through a succession of accounts, exposing what Tavistock had done to him. He played the victim so well because he was a genuine victim. His articles for this magazine were lucid and often ground-breaking. Before the trans issue became so prevalent, T knew he was kryptonite to the goals of the absolutists hiding out in the diversity crowd and he was never scared to call them out, finding an odd affinity with readers of Mumsnet who shared his opinions. T liked to communicate. In the office he was forever ranting and raving at ‘Queer ideology’ and ‘POMOs’ – to the point where colleagues would occasionally show up at lunch wearing headphones.

At times T was great fun. On one occasion he reduced a whole train carriage at Waterloo into hysterical laughter when a loo door opened, and a foul stench engulfed the carriage. “Crikey O’Reilly, mate,” he exclaimed out loud (T was always loud) in the direction of the guilty party, “you need to go and book an appointment sharpish with a proctologist.” At other times T was a nightmare as would be anyone whose body was a repository for cocktails of oestrogen and tramadol tablets, drugs and whisky. The highs were high and the lows were fathomless. He often mentioned his Scottish roots giving him the hardiness to overcome all threats and ailments and he tested this theory to the full on a daily basis.

T was unquestionably brilliant. His film-making was awesome, his writing had its moments, and his music-making had a wide and established following. Each day he’d sit there in the office strumming on his electric guitar (much to the annoyance of the vegan café below), smoking something or other and ranting about ‘Mermaids’. T’s multi-tasking was highly impressive, and he’d have been a credit to the security services – especially in the way he saw round corners.

He’d often invite people from the street back to the office, so occasionally a traffic warden would stop by for a cuppa, or a Jamaican coin-collector/pump attendant, and once or twice I’d be working on a project when T would march into my office to introduce me to a homeless fellow and his dog or, on one occasion, to a smiley Korean evangelist he’d bumped into at Tesco’s. T was fond of waifs and strays perhaps because he saw himself in them.

T was unquestionably naughty. He’d spent some time in an open prison as a young man for buying alcohol using stolen credit cards. He’d escaped the police in a Capri and he’d had a run-in with counter-terror police for bringing smoke bombs to the filming of a music video. He’d never conform. T was – and was determined to be – a true rebel to the end. His last hours were spent annihilating one of the ‘Leftwaffe’ on social media (he’d once been a socialist himself) and drinking heavily to numb the pain from what he described as ‘unnecessary operations and superfluous pill-consumption’.

T, you were a crazy and brilliant creature.

You are already missed.

Requiesce in pace.