He ain't Heavy.... Happy Birthday RPJ!

Rory Patrick Jackson
Hong Kong 26 September 1964- London 16th May 1994

Honestly, I could have killed him. My brother, that is. How many times over the years did I have cause (and a just one at that) to utter the self-same threat? If you knew my brother (and I suspect many of you reading this will remember him well), you would seriously sympathise...& with me, of course…

This time, it was different. I really could have killed him and I very nearly did. For a start, it would have been so easy and besides, I had been up all night and frankly, I had had enough. My rib cage was cranking in on the squishy bits inside, my pelvis was no longer connected and the mother of all hangovers was starting to pulse in the base of my skull. But that, as they say, is quite another story, (although it is one I will try and come back to a little bit later).

“Do you have any siblings?” It’s a reasonable enough question; tends to come in the top ten at a dinner party, somewhere below “What do you do?” but usually ahead of “New Labour or Old Tory?”.

Well, funnily enough, I do. I have a brother. Just because he is a dead brother doesn’t mean he is not my brother any more. He’s not my ex-brother, or even my former brother. The evidence is there: in a thousand childhood photos, in that unmistakeably identical nose. I have a brother and just because he’s a dead brother doesn’t mean that today is somehow no longer his birthday.

Just because Rory has shuffled off this mortal coil, it doesn’t mean I won’t be raising a Bacardi Coke or two to him. Obviously it is a pity he’s not here to pay for a few rounds of birthday drinks. But then again, when did Rory ever pay? For his own drinks, let alone anyone else’s!

I can’t pretend it’s not often awkward: having a dead brother, that is. There’s simply no word for the sibling-less. Rory’s death did not make me an orphan or a widow – although, perhaps quite carelessly – I am now both the latter and the former.

“I’m so sorry to hear that,” is the usual polite, if embarrassed, response, “What was he like, your brother?” I’m aware I tend to respond with the wriest of smiles. You mates of his will understand my predicament. How to describe Rory? I usually resort to a now oft-repeated, slightly trite formula.





“Well, if you can imagine Robbie Williams crossed with Graham Norton, then you might get a teeny tiny idea of what my brother was like?” Charming, vulnerable, handsome, talented, creative, funny, camp, bitchy, outrageous, needy, irresistible – need I go on? But I digress. One of my main incentives for writing this post was the number of Rory’s friends to whom I owe an overdue and protracted e-mail.





IMHO, you gotta love the worldwide intrawebs and social media - which I passionately do. I am now, extremely gratefully, in touch with scores of old friends, including childhood playmates from Hong Kong, many of whom were trying to get back in touch with Rory & only found me: the scary, bespectacled big sister, back from boarding school. Where is he? Can I have his e-mail? What happened? How? When?

You’ll forgive me if I keep to the bare bones? In my (sadly too broad) experience, the brain really tends to box up & seal the stuff which is just too painful to dredge up on a regular basis…. Rory came back to the UK from Hong Kong in about 1982, having achieved no academic success but having scored widespread and popular notoriety at King George V School. My fault again, I guess, why bother to clock up any exam results when your boring big sis already had more than sufficient for one family?

He made a desultory attempt to take a few more exams but then finally found his métier in hairdressing (stands to reason: creative, adventurous, gift of the gab et al..) For a while, the future looked bright & Rory, being Rory, was having a huge amount of fun – (tbh? I was never quite sure about the hair salon/pet shop combo idea – particularly as I was supposed to be the main investor…)

In the late 1980s, Rory was diagnosed with something called HTLV-III – the first official designation for what we now know as HIV-Aids. At that time – though it is difficult to cast our minds back quite so far to such a dark age – it was thought they had only a few months to live. Rory, and his partner Patrick, decided that they would enjoy whatever time they had left and whoever succumbed first would be cared for by the one who – hopefully – remained healthy.

And that is exactly what happened – although Rory managed to stay perfectly well for far, far longer than any of us had originally expected. At my 1992 wedding, he was frail but handsome as ever in his morning suit, full of acerbic observation, graciously holding court.

By 1994, he seemed bored. His increasing frailty meant he was increasingly housebound: he and I had to give up our weekly cinema trips, our rendezvous in hidden-away pubs. He seemed, more than ever, to be awaiting a reunion with our mother, who had reluctantly left us, a combative victim of breast cancer, in 1975.

I could go on. If you’d like to read my 1996 memoir of Mum & Rory (“I went as a Zebra – and won 1st prize”) I am planning to transcribe it to the web in a form which will be available to download in the next couple of weeks. If you have questions I haven’t answered above, please don’t hesitate to contact me directly via this e-mail address - dominiquej@atlas.co.uk.

In the meantime, if you are able, please raise a glass – Bacardi Coke or similar would be most fitting – to Rory Patrick Jackson – 26/09/64-16/05/94). Thanks, as ever, for reading.